CostLess Cosmos

Chapter: Launch

My very-much homebuilt and quite experimental craft ('Fenn') rose slowly in the foggy Vancouver-area dusk above my farmhouse. I had cobbled things together and tested every component and then system of components, exhaustively, and sometimes to destruction.

When you're betting your life that your math is right, yeah, you're gonna focus your mind.

I even knew how everything was supposed to sound - I'd heard it enough - so if things were wrong, I hoped I had that as a doublecheck to the crapton of sensors I'd slapped on everything. The massive whooshing-air sounds were comforting in familiarity, but I still had huge nervousness in my quest for self-preservation.

The 'sounds good' test passed, I was thinking, but I was about to hear entirely new things since it's Really Different to run systems at full power, at speed, and at altitude. It turned out as I increased thrust that it was just too damn loud. I had to close up the little porthole window, tightening the latch and feeling my ears pop as the cockpit air pressure ramped up to its setpoint.

That was one more thing to fix, and I'd avoided it. I'd set the pressure at 14.7 (sea level, I was close), but 12 was good, that was like Denver. Really, though, I liked having some extra so maybe in a leak I'd get a few extra seconds to seal up or get somewhere tighter.

Adjusting the pressure would mean leaving the pilot's chair. The air pressure knobs were on the 3 pressure tanks; 2 were behind me but out of reach, the third Really out of reach in the main engineering space. I didn't need any fancy remote control crap. Even the 4th backup air-tanks would need a dial-down, but they were offline on purpose to prevent venting everything in a rush.

For mission critical life-and-safety stuff, I really paid close attention to redundancy.

Of course, given the semi-fragile nature of the craft I was flying in? Yeah, that concern was probably misplaced.

I'd done a shitload of hover tests, but this was a maiden voyage, sort of, and I wanted to get some parameters settled and find out something of my craft's 'envelope' (basic abilities).

Increasing thrust a little at a time, my rate of climb increased enough to pass my farmhouse's roof height, off on the other side of the yard. Following a checklist duck-taped to the wall, I cut my landing lights but left the red blinking "wing" strobes on, per aircraft regulations. Those showed at the edge of my vision as spheres of red off to either side.

I wasn't supposed to fly at night, I wasn't licensed for that. But, I couldn't fly the Fenn in the daytime - someone might see me! This wasn't exactly a licensed flight.

My craft was seriously ugly. But, it was first of a kind and I was all about function over form. Three shipping containers made up the bulk, two of them fully attached in parallel and the third crosswise over the top, with a variety of struts and framework beams that had the air of haphazard but were mostly of a 'that seems strong enough' design motif.

Of course, after I welded it, I found out I'd seriously overbuilt it and the structure could handle huge loads, an order of magnitude over anything I was thinking about using. The weakest link in the entire structure was my frail human body, and possibly the table the microwave was on (tack welded to the wall 'cuz screws going through a pressure bulkhead was a bad plan).

Around the containers was a metal latticework (think: theater lights, tube steel triangles). Outboard on (it turned out, overbuilt) pylons, were six oil-drum motor housings to make me look like I was flying a massive toy-drone configuration.

Each motor was an independently-aimable thruster, pulling in air at the top in what looked like a turbine compressor setup, running it through a plasma heating arrangement, and ejecting a portion of that air out the bottom at speeds well over mach 25, though expanded with bypass air to prevent the unmistakable crackle of sonic-booms typical of rocket exhausts.

The design was super-wide because I had to mount the thrusters far away from my shipping containers. If I didn't, the exhaust might hit the ship and I'd drill a hole or cut right through, which could end a flight abruptly. My glide slope would be about like a thrown set of keys, so once thrust was off or problems set in, yeah, I'd have a bad day - almost certainly a last day.

Safety was a focus, but then again, just about everything was Brand New and mine.

The paint scheme was a new addition and it still struck me as a little jarring. I didn't want to be lost at sea, so I'd painted her with bright yellow rust-proofing paint, in case I needed rescue somewhere. I was traveling alone. My control systems were basic in the extreme, avionics cobbled together from a scrapped Cessna 152, plus some boat radars I'd picked up secondhand.

Technically, I had a pilot's license. Of course, the ink was still wet; Nav-Canada had mailed it only a few weeks before. I was comfortable in a '152, barely, but my experimental craft was in NO way compliant with Transport Canada's 'Airworthiness Manual' since it had neither wings nor was it strictly a rotary-wing craft.

No part of the craft rotated except some aspects of the turbine compressor blades, but those weren't crucial because I could just use onboard stored air and accelerate it to arbitrary speeds for more thrust. That made a mess (read: drilled holes in the dirt) so I accepted that having a turbine compressor with some bypass air might be quieter and kick up less dust.

Rising into the night air, I knew what risks I was taking. There were no certificates or licenses because the propulsion system was my own design. Only moderately inefficient (but better than my previous fantastically-inefficient version), it basically ionized air with sparks, plasma, and microwave emitters, then railgun-accelerated it out the exhaust pipe.

Technically, it resembled an MHD drive I read about in a Scientific American from the 1980's, but there wasn't much available in the literature because the electrical requirements of the thing were so freakin' huge. I really kind of had to sketch it out, run some computer models, and trust that each component was over-designed enough to cope with any oddities from the components adjacent to it.

Working out some of the failure modes I had to consider if the microwave ionizers would literally bake me, just leaking and bouncing around through the windows in front of me. I was mostly water, and I liked being alive.

Two factors fixed this. One was tuning the emitters to not use the resonant frequency of water molecules like microwave ovens (one of which was sitting on the aforementioned table behind me). Instead it used resonant frequencies of N2 and O2, since that's what I stored in high-pressure and liquified tanks aboard and that's what was in the atmosphere around me.

The second safety factors were 3 layers of faraday cages around the heating chambers, preventing them from boiling people below my craft, too. Really, the microwaves were efficiently absorbed by air, so above about 300 feet I wasn't going to hurt anyone.

I kept rising.

The fog was helping my efficiency, since the water just dissociated and became more O2 to push with. I had water to use as reaction mass as well (dense O2), but for liftoff I left that system off. Why waste 'fuel' when I could hover for weeks with no mass penalty.

My lithium-6 reactors were capable of shunting enough power to rip the engines off their mounts, so I had limits for each of them both hardwired and physically limited to keep me from overdoing things.

Once I was at 500 feet over rural Parkville, BC, I was technically VFR ("visual flight rules"). In this soup, though, typical of the pacific Northwest's spring weather, no one would see me and I could be safely invisible over unpopulated mountain areas all the way to the coast.

Tilting the joystick controls forward, I aimed my thrust backwards and started accelerating. Moving upwards felt like progress, but I had to carefully watch my airspeed.

I was not aerodynamic!

Sturdy? Yes. I was very, very sturdy. But, just like not having any rotating bits, I also completely lacked laminar flow. Cargo containers welded together with oil drums and theater beams? Yeah, this wasn't a rocket, it was an oversized and vastly overpowered drone.

I had filed my flight plans with NavCanada the previous week. One said I was going to take off from a home airstrip, the other from a nearby general aviation airport. The transponder would show the same tail number as the wrecked Cessna I'd scavenged it from, but I had to wait to turn it on until I could conceivably have been coming from the airport. Two plans meant plausible deniability and confusion by air officials.

This was my big constraint. I could only fly my craft at the heights, speeds, and accelerations possible in a single-engine overwing small aircraft like the Cessna 152. Getting clear of the area and headed west, I found and followed a river valley at 350 meters up, 120 knots airspeed.

The other big constraint was that I was not IFR (Instrument Flight Rules) certified, so technically I wasn't supposed to fly at night or in a fog at all. I'd been advised no one would check this unless something went wrong. And then, the nighttime-thing was the least of my problems.

I suspected some of the equipment onboard could be dual-used to have military applications and thus was probably regulated somehow. Normal people don't own railguns that fire super hot plasmas in the mach 25 range, much less the redundant set of 3 Lithium6 power plants (unique on the planet and of my own design) in the container next to me.

Really, I was mostly just at the 'pretty good' level of piloting, but the controls were very different from what I'd qualified on. The Fenn had two simple joysticks to steer (and some dials to adjust if I wanted individual thruster controls), but I regarded the simplicity as Better. I didn't want to spend years optimizing my controls. I wanted to Fly!

Looking around, I could compare my altimeter, airspeed, and other avionics to my GPS systems - both a good airplane one and a hiking one. Heck, it worked, why argue!

My altitude was rising steadily as I went, just as I'd do if I had been legit, since I had to fly over the mountains ahead of me. They rose 1500 meters up, so I went through that to well over 2500 to play it safe. Mountains weren't sparse on Vancouver Island.

The altimeter and GPS disagreed slightly, so I decided to get a good air pressure reading from the tower at Port Alberni airport. I radioed and asked, and they happily gave, and wished me good flying in the soup (correcting altimeters was totally normal).

An hour later, Fenn and I were over the Pacific, "bouncing" in the updrafts from the coastal mountains before it evened out into relatively calm air.

Now was the time I wanted to see what my craft could really do.

First things first, though, I thought. Being not entirely stupid, I decided to check in with Vancouver ATC (air traffic control) and asked, basically, where the patterns were. It was an innocent question. At small airports, you ask it all the time. I didn't want to get caught up in Vancouver or SEATAC airports' inbound heavy stuff from Asia.

The trouble was, they wanted to know things.

At first, it was pretty innocent. I settled my craft back down to the more-reasonable '152 altitude of 1000 meters, and keyed the radio.

"Vancouver ATC, This is N1203 on IFR. Request transponder code."

"N1203, Vancouver Center, squawk 893."

"Vancouver, squawk 893, thanks. Request clearance heading 3-1-0 climbing to flight level 3-0, N1203." (30,000 feet). It was out of range of a Cessna, but plenty of prop planes went that high. Mostly, I wanted the ATC to explain their patterns for Vancouver for the night, and I'd be okay.

I turned the knobs to 893 so their systems could match a transponder and radar data and awaited a response.

There was a pause.

"N1203, eastbound heavy traffic south of you, state destination, Vancouver."

"Vancouver, sightseeing flight, possible destinations Juneau or Anchorage but may change my mind. N1203."

Another pause.

"N1203, please state aircraft type and capability. Transponder indicates Cessna 1-5-2, airspeed 120 knots, but altitude requested is 3-0-thousand, these data conflict, please clarify, over."

I didn't know that the transponder had aircraft type in the datastream. Oops!

The hard question, then, had happened right away, and WAY too soon.

I could just pretend to still be a Cessna and claim I was stupid and had said 'flight level' meaning 30,000 feet, instead of angels 3-0, 3000 feet.

The OR question, and it was a big or, was if I wanted to see what my shiny new bicycle could do!

I couldn't land too many times without getting noticed, so I knew I'd have to come up with a plan sooner or later. I'd planned for this, but it was a little striking when the moment of truth rolls around.

In for a penny, in for a pound.

"Vancouver, N1203. Airframe is experimental, originally from a Cessna 152. Please note I'm currently in international waters, over."

It was a gambit.

It didn't work.

"N1203. Sightseeing at night, flying an experimental airframe is... unusual. Do you require monitoring? Vancouver." The disbelief in the controller's voice was palpable.

"Vancouver, affirm that, request flight following. I'm pressurized. Will request altitude checks, probably, to validate my equipment. N1203."

Another pause.

"N1203 roger that flight following affirm. State intended airspeed. Vancouver."

"Vancouver, request airspeed varying 1-3-0 knots to 3-0-0 knots, increasing with altitude. Heading 3-1-0, ascending to 3-0-thousand feet. N1203."

Again, a pause with a request to repeat, which I did.

"N1203. Fly safe, advise caution, squalls well southwest of you 3-0-0 kilometers. Clear heading 3-1-0, ascend pilot's discretion, 3-0-thousand feet, speed varying, confirm. Vancouver."

I confirmed and said thank you, and that was that...? I hoped, at least.

I flew on, having already turned northwest to heading 310, and started pulling back on the controls to increase height. I didn't want to show off too much, so I put it into about what a Cessna Citation jet's max climb rate would be, about 3000 feet per minute.

In retrospect, the Citation only can climb 3k feet a minute if it's going forward at about double my airspeed, but I didn't know that at the time, I'd read the specs and knew just enough to think I knew more. Dunning-Kreuger effects strike again.

Mostly my worry was watching my air pressure gauges internally to see if my pressure hull was holding. I had an oxygen mask handy, but no pressure suit, since those were pricey. There was a door (I had closed) between the cockpit and the rest of the craft, and another door (closing the opposite way) also, plus an emergency set of controls in case the cockpit got a leak. Really, though, the emergency controls were rudimentary and basically just let me return the main controls to straight-level and a power knob.

This was an experimental craft. I should have had someone else aboard, but I didn't trust anyone. I even welded down a second chair in my cockpit, in case.

Ethically, I didn't want to risk anyone else in this heap, in the first hour of flight. Just lifting from my farmhouse like that, without a lot of flight testing - yeah, it was risky.

More than that, I'd worked too long on my new reactors to let anyone in on the secret. The engines to use the power those reactors created? Those had cost me years, too, but they'd been something to think about in the background when the reactors were frustrating me.

The inside air pressure held steady, though there was a 'clunk' from one of the side-walls when it had to cope with much lower outside pressure. That made me think of metal fatigue and how I might need to address that at some point.

Ten minutes later I called in. I was pretty sure I was right where I should be. "Vancouver, request altitude check, N1203"

He came right back. "N1203. You're at 3-0 thousand feet, heading 3-1-0, speed 566 kph, 300 knots ground speed, Vancouver."

"Vancouver, matches here, thank you, N1203." I took a breath. Now was the time to start using water instead of ambient air to make sure the flow was regular and efficient even at altitude. I opened one ball valve (one engine only!!) and closed another, shutting the air inlet scoop and starting water spraying into the plasma chamber.

The internal sounds changed from one kind of whoosh to another one.

Oh -- and yes, moving ball valves means I was using pneumatic control systems for that subsystem. Fine, laugh at me, but it made the job a lot simpler and I could control it more delicately if I needed to blend both ambient air and onboard reaction mass.

Slowly, I moved both valves, playing with a third control at the same time, to match the power output to the reaction mass and not overheat or overpressure anything. It was a little tricky and I hadn't created software to do it yet since I was just getting the feel of it and I didn't do it that often in any given flight.

A huge unknown in this whole thing was finding how much water I was using for the thrust I needed, given the ambient outside air pressure?

Watching gauges, I finished the cutover and then waited as my usage rates traced out graphs and showed on low-tech pressure gauges screwed to the wall beside me.

It matched predictions! At this water consumption rate, I could hover for days. Of course, I didn't have much payload aboard, and the engines were rather insanely efficient.

What to do with this newfound power? I certainly didn't intend to hover!

"Vancouver, request clearance, same heading 3-1-0, decrease airspeed to 1-0-0 knots, ascend flight level 6-0 thousand feet, N1203."

"N1203, repeat slower your request, Vancouver."

I did.

Pause.

"N1203, Vancouver. Following your flight. I have a request on my desk that you report through your military chain of command immediately, if you are military. Also request maintain squawk mode C. Clearance granted, ascend pilot discretion heading 3-1-0, airspeed 1-0-0 knots, ascend at pilot's discretion maintain 6-0-thousand-feet, over."

"Vancouver, roger squawk mode c. Thank you. Over."

I pulled back on the forward motion, which was noisy from lack of being any kind of an 'aerodynamic' shipping container craft, coming back to zero knots forward but 100 knots vertical. The seat pressed me down as I climbed, but I kept the vertical airspeed low and was quickly at 60k feet. I decided to hover. I could see the curve of the earth, and the stars were brilliant dots.

To the south, the light of Vancouver and Seattle glowed on the horizon.

My radio spoke, "N1203, advise you have an escort coming, over, Vancouver."

"Vancouver, copy that. Request Altitude check, and advise of any overhead traffic, N1203."

This was, in itself, a laughable thing. No airframe on the planet could have done what I just did. At least, none that I knew about. There certainly wasn't any other 'traffic' over my 60k-foot altitude, since commercial aircraft usually stuck in the 30's and only rarely in the 40's.

I heard an odd tone to the controller's voice, kind of a disbelief. "N1203, we make your altitude is 6-0-thousand feet repeat feet, ground speed 7 repeat 7 knots..." He paused, "No traffic over you, N1203, and we've cleared the area under you as well, over. Uh... Right. I'm being handed a paper. It says, 'advise N1203 that military aircraft will be on station soon, and at frequency 1-2-5-point-8, over."

"Vancouver, copy that. Ascending to indeterminate altitude to validate airframe characteristics, will advise soon. N1203."

I basically ignored the mention of the military escort coming for me. I didn't doubt they were going to escort me to a military base and take my ship apart into tiny pieces, away from public eyes, then lock me in a room and throw away the room.