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BURN


I'm trying to hold a table in the large plush restaurant.

There are four of us in all, but a number of distractions, bar duties, and so forth, sees me waiting, alone, at the pristine setting of white starched cotton, and carefully placed silver, for our food, which seems destined never to arrive.
I stand up to stretch my legs, looking around the wide, split level room. Elaborate lighting, set into the ceiling - and a sort of 'deco' centre-piece of pastel, triangular panes - creates an atmosphere of stylish opulence, with the whole affair somewhat undermined by a plain carpet of gunmetal grey.

Turning back, I find some kids have tried to horn in on our table. I go nuts and the stewards have to intervene.

Through such mundanity, life on the star-ship maintains a veneer of normalcy.
The sheer number of people on board - far too many to know personally - sustains an illusion of endless humanity, without which the lengthy voyage would be reduced to a depressing, claustrophobic stasis.

It has become increasingly difficult to track the passage of time - the profusion of super accurate clocks merely reducing the hours to meaningless numbers, powerless to reset the biological timepiece as it drifts around the staggered cycle of sleeping, eating and social activities. Still, the rekindling of one's internal responses has a certain heightening effect and, apart from the lack of outdoors, the lifestyle does not differ, in most respects, from that which I left behind, nearly four and a half years ago.


The captain's voice issues from the intercom, which is piped through the restaurant.

"...The following announcement is for all off-duty commissions and all residential populations. We are preparing to 'burn'. Please observe all safety protocols and access restrictions. First notification. Thank you..." [click]


'Burn' is the non-technical term for a deployment of ship's thrusters - an "active correctional acceleration phase" - which a flight plan (to be of any practical use) will require from time to time. Being hugely less economical than the utilization of gravitational fields, the timing and duration of a burn is, therefore, a matter of critical importance, and meticulous scheduling.

In engineering parlance, the motions of celestial bodies within a gravitational field, including those of spacecraft, are defined as "geodesics" - paths of 'least action' through space-time. Simply put, a projected flight plan is just one of the infinite string of solutions, describing permissible sets of tangential geodesics between points A and B, conjoined by optimum periods of 'burn'.
The vast majority of such solutions are eliminated as either impractical or outside operational parameters, the remainder - winnowed through a sieve of physical and economic constraints - yielding the shortest, safest, and cheapest trajectory likely to arrive at the destination.

This is the "projected flight plan" - a specified set of geodesics, and the minimum schedule of 'burns' required for their acquisition.

Periodic management of orbit - contingent, in-flight adjustments to the flight plan - is the 'dirty end' of all those fancy navigational projections - to allow for either gravitational curvatures too small to calculate in advance with sufficient accuracy, or 'trajectory drift' from the cumulative effects of smaller bodies.
This is pure 'black art'. Such corrections must be notified and resolved within extremely small deviations. Even so, the process bears no resemblance to the formulation of idealized flight plans - the solutions are invariably chaotic, effectively making the gravity flux about as capricious and predictable as the wind.


On or off the flight plan, a 'burn' will generally entail an outrageous factoring of velocity or angular momentum.
Acceleration is applied in a series of increasing thrusts - almost resembling gear changes - using the inertial plateaux between jumps to kick off, and allowing time to monitor each stage for fuel efficiency.

During a burn, strict safety measures are observed, principally for the following reason.
Acceleration vectors can be so extreme, that the "E--Layer" - a thin layer of clear, viscous fluid resembling albumen, in a shallow, oval cavity between the skin and fat at the base of the head - is placed under enough stress to significantly increase the possibility of rupture, and which, in extreme cases, can be fatal.
It's highly technical but poses a serious risk.

Standard procedure - where appropriate restraints are unavailable - is simply to lie down, and align the head in the direction of motion.
This may seem strangely unsophisticated. But, there are good reasons why such basic precautions, necessary as they are, need not entail anything more involved.
Alignment of the medial axis along the acceleration vector distributes fluid pressure evenly across the e-cavity membrane, substantially reducing the risk of complication.
The relative orientation, somewhat incidentally, is a direct symmetry of that normally experienced when standing upright in a gravitational field.
Lying down additionally ensures that correct attitude is maintained, and incidental movement kept to a minimum, a procedure that can be implemented with little administration or compromise to safety.


__________________________________________

It's crowded on the floor tonight, and I was briefly delayed - perusing the outer foyer to notify the stewards, by law, that I had been separated from my companions - finding myself still wandering about at final call, looking for a suitable place on the carpet.
I become mildly apprehensive.
This is a serious business. People can see my concern and begin to clear a spot for my gangly frame, where I won't have to bend my knees or neck.

As soon as I am settled, face down, and forehead to the carpet, the intercom crackles to life.

"...Burn will commence at the bottom of the checklist. We are now under auto override. Thank you. Final notification ...Repeat ...Final notification..." [click]



Everyone is lying still, anxiously. We've all done this before and appreciate full well that 'velocity deltas' constitute the most hazardous time of any space voyage, with the possible exception of landings, and the negotiation of gravity sinks, such as black holes.

Finally, an enormous, shuddering roar, signalling engagement of the flux engines, fills the dining area, accompanied by a rising vibration in the floor and walls.
The directional thrust kicks in with a sudden dragging weight, allowing a few critical seconds for minor adjustments of posture before the first plateau.
At precise eight second intervals, the noise and vibration levels step in intensity, generating a series of disturbing and unpredictable modulations in the resonant frequency - jarring quivers becoming savage contortions, or pounding reverberation - as the ship, its energy levels over the bend, quietly time dilates in the silent expanse of vacuum.

One cannot help but ponder the integrity of internal structures, or perhaps even to picture little bits of hull peeling away.
Well. Probably not.
Nevertheless, any sort of collision at these speeds, or a loss of symmetry in the ship's trajectory, would be catastrophic, tearing the 6000 kilotonne vessel to debris in a fraction of a second.
To say nothing of the dangers we face just lying on the floor, trying not to get bent out of shape.

The feeling of being at the mercy of circumstances, and the Captain's skills, is palpable, and there are intermittent waves of alarm around the room, in the form of sudden panicky cries and stifled screams.

At its climax, the expectation of disaster is hard to avoid, and which the passage of time makes increasingly acute. Like pulling an Ace for the ninety-ninth time - or going ever faster on a motorcycle, knowing there is an 'edge' ...but only that you haven't crossed it.
The best approach is probably to 'reinterpret' the intensity, as one might a fun-fair ride - with a certain detachment, and a steadfast denial that there is any real danger.
To simply bathe in the raw concentrations of energy, or muse over the tiny details.

After a while, one inevitably stumbles upon another tantalizing speculation - that perhaps the engines have finally peaked, and since all things, sooner or later, come to an end, that the same applies here, and the ordeal will soon be over.
But, whichever impossible turn of thrust one takes to be the last, it invariably proves, somehow, merely the penultimate, masquerading.



Eventually, though, the shudders and roaring subside, the structures of the ship wilting in exhaustion, and echoed in the relieved sighs and moaning of traumatized passengers as they roll onto their sides, to look to their neighbours, all sharing the relief and checking for signs of headache and disorientation.
For the time being, it is possible to relax within the comfortable frame of reference of the ship's interior, and forget about the realities ...out there.

Of course, whatever the comforting silence of the ship's engines may try to disguise, there is, as everyone appreciates, one unspoken and unsettling fact.


That, even now, we are moving, and will continue to move, at the same incomprehensible velocities to which those same engines, just moments earlier, so dramatically propelled us.

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