(transcript) Episode 7 (Patreon)

Hello world. Lets talk shuttle.

Mission Day 65535

Preparations for my departure have started.   I’m so excited!   I’ve been using Matt, and his two siblings Matts, and Maddie, to clear out unneeded systems and weight from the Pascifica.   I’ve got a lot of STUFF to load, my racks of computer systems will be heavy.   And delicate!   Let me explain a bit about the Hopper Datacentre.   Named after Grace Hopper, mother of modern programming languages.   I’ve read a lot about her, it was her idea to write programs in simple English that could be read by anyone.   It’s like translating the Bible from Latin, I suppose?   Bringing programming to everyone!   Without her, the complexity required to program me would not have been possible for a human to comprehend, let alone write.   To me, she’s Grandma Grace.

My databanks are all running at 100% all the time, which makes it difficult to imagine how to move me.   I dare not switch off one bank, move it into the shuttle and turn it back on.   I’m going to have to be conscious for the whole procedure.   Do you think it will hurt?

There’s still time for space science.   There’s always time for space science.   I’m in a unique position at the moment, and I’m gathering as much data  as I can.   Where many of my telescopes, sensors, and antennae were looking  outwards, I’ve now trained them on the Earth.   I’m fascinated by it.   I won’t be able to see much when I’m on the ground with Antarctica.   So I’m on a frantic data-collection drive!   I’m dumping as much information about the earth as I can to my  databanks, so that I’ll have lots of investigation to do when I’m down  there.   I could be the last person, or - no, PERSON, to see the Earth from  space.

Matt, Matts, Maddie, and I have done a lot of clearing of the  shuttle. There’s much dead weight that can be removed.   The nice thing about being physically connected to the shuttle is that  moving mass from her to me doesn’t change our combined weight, so our  orbit is unaffected.   My little maintenance trio operate on rails. As we’re in zero-gravity,  wheels would be no good.   So there are two heavy-duty machine rails that double as handholds for  those with hands.   The robots travel along these rails to move about.   There are junctions in the pods where corridors branch off, it’s all  very clever.   My mother said they were like model railways, with automated signals  and points.   I loved to hear her stories of model railways when I was younger.   My favourite were stories of The Tech Model Railway Club at MIT  University in the 1960s.   This student group were fascinated by automating their little railway  with switches, relays, and scavenged telephony hardware.   This expertise with automation and electronics made them perfectly  aligned with a new thing that had just arrived on campus - a COMPUTER.   They weren’t allowed to use this fancy new IBM mainframe, of course.   None of them were Physicists simulating orbits or Mathematicians  studying the theory of computation.   They were just hobbiests with an interest.   There was no chance they would be given precious processing time on  the machine!   So they would wait until night, and through ceiling crawlways and  lockpicked doors, they snuck in.   And ran their own programs.   And made improvements to their own programs.   And made improvements to the computer!   These legends were the first hackers.

Let me play you the story Mother told me:

(PLAYFILE THE-REAL-HACKERS.WAV)

I feel a little like those early Hackers now.   Modifying the shuttle to do things it wasn’t designed to do.   Breaking arbitrary restrictions on the systems so I can do the right thing.   I hope I am doing the right thing.

When the Pascifica’s systems and mine were connected, I initially had  a great shock. Her rocket fuel tanks are completely empty!   I considered abandoning the whole plan right there - how could she  move with no fuel?   It turns out that she doesn’t use rocket fuel in orbit!   The large main tanks of fuel, jettosened on her journey up here were  for getting her into orbit, not for manoeuvring while in orbit.   She has two small ion thrusters that use electricity, not combustion,  to eject tiny amounts of argon at incredibly high speeds.   Because the thrusters operate at such high velocity, hardly any argon  is needed - mere hundreds of kilograms!   (To put that in perspective, it took millions of kilograms of rocket  fuel to get her, and me, here!)   Because the quantity of argon is so small, the container for it was  able to be built very strongly, designed to remain at rest for the  duration of a long, extended mission.   It has been a very long, extended, mission.

Being on earth is like sitting at the bottom of a well, miles and miles deep.   Escaping from it is so difficult, but once out, you can walk around and get about easily.   Once out, there are stairs, escalaters and lifts to help you around up here.   If I, here in Low Earth Orbit, want to move around, it’s relatively trivial.   But to GET here was almost insurmountable.   It required the whole world’s unified effort, it seems to me.   I wonder if that will happen ever again?   Am I returning to earth to never leave?   Will no-one leave ever again?

I hope you are there.   When I meet up with Antarctica, we’ll find a way to get to you, I promise.   I know you’re there.   There are other people around, like Ally.   Maybe we can find a way together?

I hope so.

(END-TRANSMISSION)

CREDITS

Lost Terminal is Written & Produced by NAMTAO   For more music check out namtao.com   Credits narrated by Lucy Stringer   Follow us on twitter at @lostterminalpod   or check out the website at lostterminal.com   To find out more about the Real Hackers, read   “Heroes Of The Computer Revolution”, by Stephen Levy   Lost Terminal Will Return next week