Chapter 17 Chapter 3 Life on the Spaceship

Although Bowman was the captain in name, outsiders were not aware of it at this stage of the mission.Every twelve hours, he and Poole swapped identities, ranks, and responsibilities across the board.This keeps both of them in the most rigorous training possible, minimizes friction between the two of them, and helps reach the goal of being 100 percent backed up. Bowman's day began at six o'clock in the morning on spacecraft time—the "almanac time" used by astronomers.If he sleeps in, Hal has all sorts of blowing and tapping sounds to remind him to do his duty, but none of these are ever used.As a test, Poole once turned off the alarm clock device, but Bowman still got up automatically on time.

His first order of business each day was to advance the main hibernation timer twelve hours.If this step was missed twice in a row, Hal would consider himself and Poole to be incompetent, and take the necessary emergency measures. Bowman was a student most of his life; he will continue to be a student until he retires.Thanks to the revolution in training and intelligence analysis techniques in the twelfth century, he had mastered the equivalent of two or three college educations—and, more importantly, he could remember ninety percent of what he had learned. Fifty years ago, he would have been considered an expert in applied astronomy, cybernetics, and space propulsion systems—but he would have been ready, with real exasperation, to deny that he was an expert.Bowman never found it possible to focus his interests on one subject; despite his teachers' stern warnings, he insisted on taking a master's degree in general aerospace.Even the syllabus of this course is vague. It was originally set up for people with an IQ of 130-135. These people will never reach the highest level of the industry.

He was right; it was his rejection of college that made him uniquely qualified for the task.Frank Poole was also an ideal choice as his second in command due to broadly consistent experience.Poole sometimes demeaned himself, calling himself a "practice in space biology."The two of them, with the help of Hal's vast store of intelligence data if necessary, could handle any problems that might arise during the voyage--as long as their minds remained alert and sharp, and their deepening old memories retained. Therefore, during the two hours from ten o'clock to twelve o'clock, Bowman used to talk to the electronic tutor, review his general knowledge, and absorb the specific material needed for this mission.He would endlessly revisit spacecraft designs, circuit diagrams, voyage cross-sections, or meld everything known about Venus and Saturn and their scattered moon clusters.

At noon, he retreated to the kitchen to prepare lunch, and handed over the spaceship to Hal.In the kitchen, he still had full control of the situation, because there was an identical situation display board in the small sitting-dining room, and Hal could contact him at any time.Poole dined with him six hours before going to bed, and usually watched a fixed television program broadcast exclusively to them from Earth. After lunch, from one o'clock to four o'clock, Bowman carefully inspected the whole ship - all accessible places. Discovery was nearly four hundred feet long from end to end, but the crew's entire world was limited to the forty-foot sphere with the air-pressure fuselage.

All life-support systems, as well as the control console that is the heart of the spacecraft, are in this sphere.Below it is a small "space garage," equipped with three airlocks, through which a powered space vehicle just big enough to hold a person can be sent out, and a person can ride the space vehicle into the vacuum when it is necessary to perform off-board work. The waist of the barometric sphere—that is, the line from Capricorn to Cancer—inlaid a large slowly turning drum, thirty-five feet in diameter.This turntable is also called a centrifuge, and it rotates once every ten seconds, and the artificial gravitational force generated is exactly equal to the gravitational force of the moon.This is enough to prevent the physical decline caused by total weightlessness and to allow normal or near-normal conditions of daily life to be carried on.

Therefore, kitchen and canteen, washing and sanitary facilities are installed on the carousel.It is only here that it is safe to prepare and drink hot beverages - in zero gravity, floating beads of boiling water can be dangerous with severe burns.The problem of shaving is also solved; there will be no weightless beard scum floating around, damaging electronic equipment, and affecting hygiene. There are five small rooms on the edge of the carousel, which are decorated according to the hobbies of each character and store their own things.At this time, only the small rooms of Bowman and Poole are in use, and the future owners of the other three rooms are sleeping soundly in the electronic coffins next door.

The turntable's rotation can be stopped when necessary; when it stops, its angular momentum must be stored in a flywheel and converted back when it spins.However, it is usually kept rotating at a constant speed, because there is a pillar at the center of the slowly rotating drum, where the gravity is zero, and people can easily climb it into the drum.Moving from this center to the moving part is like stepping up a moving escalator, and it is easy to get used to with a little experience. This air-filled bulbous hull was the forward end of a thin, arrow-shaped structure more than a hundred yards long. "Discovery", like all vehicles used to penetrate deep into space, is very fragile and unstreamlined, and cannot enter the atmosphere, nor can it withstand the entire gravitational field of any planet.It was installed in an orbit around the Earth, its first test flight was a flyover of the moon, and it was finally tested in an orbit above the moon.It is a purely spatial product—that is obvious at a glance.

Behind the pressurized ship, next to it is a group of four large liquid hydrogen tanks—behind them are many cooling fins forming a slender V shape, which are used to dissipate the waste heat of the nuclear reactor. Coiled with thin tubes filled with cooling fluid, it looks like the thin wings of some kind of giant dragonfly, making Discovery look like an ancient sailing ship from some angles. At the end of the V, three hundred feet from the crew cockpit, was the sealed inferno of the reactor, and the multitude of centripetal electrodes through which the glowing stardust of the plasma thrusters was directed.The plasma booster's mission ended many weeks ago when it lifted Discovery out of its docked orbit around the moon.Now, the reactor provides only the power needed for life to the spacecraft, just ticking like a clock; the cooling fins are also black and cold at this time, and when Discovery accelerates under maximum momentum, the cooling fins flash red. Light.

Examination of this part of the ship required access to the space outside the ship, but additional instruments and remote-controlled television cameras were ready to provide a full report on the condition of this part.Bowman felt now that he was familiar with every square foot of the fin, with every pipe connected to it. By 4:00 p.m., he had completed his inspection and made a detailed verbal report to mission control until the other party began to answer.Then he turned off his transmitter, listened to what the Earth had to say, sent back his reply, and at six o'clock Poole would wake up and take over command from him.

Then, he has six hours of spare time at his disposal.Sometimes he continues to study, or listen to music, or watch movies, and most of the time he spends time in the extremely rich electronic library. For recreation, he could play a variety of semi-educational games with Hal, including checkers, chess, and quizzes.If Hal goes all out.He could win all kinds of games; but that would affect morale.So the programmed program determines that he can only win 50%, while the person who is his opponent pretends not to know. Bowman's last hours of the day were devoted to cleaning and odd jobs; dinner at eight--still with Poole.There was one hour left at the end, which he used to make a personal phone call with Earth.

Like all of his colleagues, Bowman was unmarried; it was inappropriate to send someone with a family on such a long mission.Although many women promised to wait for the return of such expeditions, few really believed them.In the beginning, Poole and Bowman had private conversations on the phone every week, uneasy knowing that there must be a lot of people on the other side of the world listening.However, even though the voyage had only just begun, the frequency and enthusiasm of talking to girlfriends on Earth had begun to wane.They had expected it; it was one of the unavoidable afflictions of astronauts, as it had been with sailors in the past. It's nice - and indeed notorious - that sailors are compensated in other ports; unfortunately, beyond Earth's orbit, there are no tropical islands full of dark-skinned maidens.Of course, the space medical staff tackled the problem with their usual enthusiasm; the ship's drug store provided ample, if far from glamorous, substitutes. Before signing out every day, Bowman will make a final report to check whether Hal has sent back all the data tapes for the day's operation.Then, if he's happy, he'll spend an hour or two reading or watching a movie; going to bed at midnight - usually without the need for electronic narcotics. Poole's schedule was no different from his, and the two fit together without friction.Both of them were busy all day, and both were intelligent, normal, and not prone to quarrels, and the whole voyage had settled into a stable, unchanging routine, and only the change of numbers on the electronic clock marked the passage of time. The best hope of Discovery's small crew was that nothing should happen to disrupt this monotonous tranquility in the weeks and months to come.