"We also received a question from a young man who does not understand the difference between weight and mass. Well, let me say that to you on Earth, there is no difference. Weight is mass, and mass is weight, due to the Earth's gravity field. But here in space, there is no gravity. I could, in theory, lift a locomotive, here. I say 'in theory' because it would take me a long time to get that much mass moving, and I'd actually be worn out by then. But once I did, it would have all the moving mass of the locomotive on Earth. If I got it moving only a few inches per second, and I did not get out of its way, it would squash me like a bug, and probably go right through this ship. In other words, weight is what you lift. Mass is what hurts you. This is something we never forget in space!"
Space travel has been described in many ways, but one word most astronauts and cosmonauts seem to agree on is "boring." For a few treasured hours every day, each spacer had his machines to monitor and adjust, his readings to take, his log entries to make. But aside from that few hours, and rather abbreviated mealtimes, they were largely left to their own devices.
Though he complained endlessly, Dolf came to look forward to his daily 'reports', and the preparation for them. The others began to devote more and more time to monitoring radio and TV signals from Earth in their various languages, and feeding particularly negative ones to Dolf, for inclusion in his daily report. At first, there was a lot of hysteria and misinformation for him to deal with, but as time went on, those being interviewed learned that falsehoods and exaggerations would immediately be exposed. Hosts began having more and more trouble booking guests willing to make false or exaggerated claims about the mission.
Dolf claimed to be writing his book, but he was rarely seen using the communal docking station. He could usually be seen with his nose buried in his tablet, reading and occasionally scribbling notes on the touchpad.
If anyone could be said to monopolize the docking station, it was Yoshi. When he was not typing madly on the keyboard, he was huddled by himself in a corner of the cargo bay, where he had created what the others jokingly referred to as his 'nest'.
Ron Mbele spent day after day tinkering with the ship's mechanical systems. This bothered Yuri considerably. He continually professed a fear that Ron would "break something and kill them all." David, however, considered it a good sign; if Ron was constantly checking, it reduced the chance that something really would go awry without anyone noticing.
Total opposites in personality, David and Yuri turned out to be very close. They learned that they were both deeply interested in computer gaming, and both considered themselves chess experts. The two spent hour after hour up in the pilot's compartment, deep in one game or another.
Raoul was the group's self-appointed 'morale officer'. He had a seemingly endless supply of jokes, few of which were printable, and had even been known to lure Yoshi out of his 'nest'. He had frequent long talks with all the crew, and jollied them along, but the merry eyes glinted with a sharp intelligence. Dr. Jerroult was staying involved with his patients.
Early on, Dolf had millions of listeners around the world, but as the crew settled in, time began to drag, and their most vocal opposition faded, so his reports faded in listenership. Still, he kept doing them; he knew that in a few months, as they approached Carter IV, listenership would pick up again.
Except for Yuri's reports on the reactor, none of their reports to Alcântara were coded or otherwise concealed. When the dehumidifier that condensed the moisture from their breath failed, and the humidity began to climb dangerously, Frank received frantic e-mails from around the world. Luckily, Ron had been able to repair it. He claimed it was "easy" but David reported that he had worked on it for over an hour before deciding to replace it with a spare; then he had immediately set to repairing the original, with a lot of free and mostly useless advice from Earth.
Finally, the day came when they must reverse their attitude, to use the ion engines to slow them, instead of accelerate them, so they could match orbits with the comet. By this time, there was a several-second light speed lag between transmission and reception, but they managed to have an executive conference with the crew, Frank, and a number of mathematicians from Alcântara. Frank and David were concerned about shutting down the ion engines during the reversal. They were not alone. Most of the crew felt that they should adhere to the old adage, "if it ain't broke, don't fix it." In other words, the ion engines were purring along perfectly. Why take the risk of shutting them down, flipping the ship, and then relighting them? What if they didn't light? What if some did and some didn't?
Dolf was in this camp. He was confident he could handle the orbital perturbations involved in executing a "skew turn," a reversal with the engines still driving. Frank and David finally agreed reluctantly, with David specifying that he would throttle the engines to minimum power by reducing the electrical power they received before the turn was executed.
The moment arrived. David reduced power to the engines, and then simultaneously applied max power to the starboard nose attitude jet and the port rear attitude jet. The starfield in the windshield began to rotate slowly, then more rapidly. Suddenly David was scrambling to power the opposite attitude jets to stop the rotation. It took several blasts of the jets to steady the ship in its new orientation. They were too far out for those on Earth to help. It was up to Dolf to verify their attitude and position, and to compensate for the inevitable inaccuracies the maneuver had introduced.
Then he had to transmit his data to Alcântara and wait while they ran his computations through the big computer to verify them before giving them to David to execute. Dolf was gratified that their answer matched his own. He passed it to David, who made the corrections and then boosted the engines back to maximum.
Morale aboard the ship soared. The reversal meant they were more than halfway to their goal. Their orbit was calculated to approach the comet from the side, avoiding its coma. Once they were within a few miles of the head of the comet, Dolf could relax a bit; the actual approach and "landing" was David's responsibility.
They were still weeks from that point, however. There was plenty of time for morale to slip to its previous levels.
They were only ten days from reaching the comet when Ron asked to speak with David in private. He nodded, and he and Ron went up to the flight deck, which was unoccupied at the time.
"We have a problem," the big black man began. Before David could respond, he continued. "I have been running inventories of our supplies, so I'll be prepared for their use."
David nodded. "I know. I'm very impressed with your thoroughness."
Ron gestured impatiently. "Please! This is important!" He took a deep breath. "We're missing two kilos of blasting explosive."