turned out to be as lifeless and sterile as Venus itself. The technology, as obsolete as it was, was still awe-inspiring to the early Venusian settlers, and they kept its remains in the corner of a warehouse as a reminder of the progress and incredible will of the human race.
The second, third, and fourth phases of the project were about expansion and establishing critical systems like water purification and waste management. The third phase brought components for the construction of a massive aeroponic life support system beneath one of the largest plastic geodesic domes ever built on Earth or anywhere else. There were huge tanks of compressed oxygen on every flight, but it was clear that the V1 colony would need to establish a self-sufficient environment if they were to expand and prosper on their own.
After the first four initial phases of Project Genesis, the amount of fresh supplies and new equipment gradually decreased. The colonists were able to synthesize plenty of food, purify water, and maintain a perfect environment. Everyone worked, and a more or less routine — albeit labor-intensive — existence had been firmly established.
The amount, quality, and flow of air throughout all of the individual pods in V1 was very carefully monitored, recorded, and controlled. Huge tanks of compressed oxygen could automatically be added as needed in the event of a level zero oxygen lockdown, and redundant systems of pumps and valves were always ready to balance the atmospheric pressure. In the event of a catastrophic failure, there were over 25,000 perchlorate "candles" distributed throughout V1, each one capable of producing enough oxygen for one human for one week once ignited and placed in a special reactor. As a backup plan, the GSA maintained three rockets on three different launch pads in three different parts of the world which could be launched in a matter of hours, all filled with nothing but emergency supplies. Two of the many satellites that orbited Venus were also capable of being remotely instructed to drop capsules of emergency supplies close enough to V1 to be easily retrieved via robotic rover, or with a short trek in an environment suit.
But the life support monitoring systems weren't just designed for redundancy and reliability. They were also designed to constantly calculate how much air was being used, how quickly it was being recycled, and, most importantly, how many humans the system could support. When it first came online, the readings were in the negatives since all the air in the colony was coming from tanks and none of it was being recycled, but as the Environment Department started using aeroponically grown, genetically engineered ferns to recycle air, and as the valves of the oxygen reservoirs were gradually sealed, the numbers started climbing. At first they crept up slowly as the averages were thrown off by being in the negatives for so long, but it didn't take them long to hit their initial benchmark of 1,000. The predictions and calculations of the GSA's biologists and botanists and engineers had proven almost perfectly accurate.
Now the Environment Department needed to push the numbers past 1,000 so that history could be made once again. They added additional aeroponic terraces until the massive greenhouse was actually slightly beyond its intended capacity, and they completely rewrote the airflow algorithms so that they increased or reduced oxygen levels throughout V1 in realtime depending on where people actually were and the amount of oxygen they were consuming. Everyone watched the stubborn numbers gradually increase until they peaked at exactly 1,100. After six months of minor fluctuations in either direction, it was definitively determined and then officially declared by Kelley himself that V1 could support 100 additional inhabitants.
That night, the conception of Gen V began.
CHAPTER TEN
Homecoming
A rik had always thought of people as being more or less static. Of course they
The second, third, and fourth phases of the project were about expansion and establishing critical systems like water purification and waste management. The third phase brought components for the construction of a massive aeroponic life support system beneath one of the largest plastic geodesic domes ever built on Earth or anywhere else. There were huge tanks of compressed oxygen on every flight, but it was clear that the V1 colony would need to establish a self-sufficient environment if they were to expand and prosper on their own.
After the first four initial phases of Project Genesis, the amount of fresh supplies and new equipment gradually decreased. The colonists were able to synthesize plenty of food, purify water, and maintain a perfect environment. Everyone worked, and a more or less routine — albeit labor-intensive — existence had been firmly established.
The amount, quality, and flow of air throughout all of the individual pods in V1 was very carefully monitored, recorded, and controlled. Huge tanks of compressed oxygen could automatically be added as needed in the event of a level zero oxygen lockdown, and redundant systems of pumps and valves were always ready to balance the atmospheric pressure. In the event of a catastrophic failure, there were over 25,000 perchlorate "candles" distributed throughout V1, each one capable of producing enough oxygen for one human for one week once ignited and placed in a special reactor. As a backup plan, the GSA maintained three rockets on three different launch pads in three different parts of the world which could be launched in a matter of hours, all filled with nothing but emergency supplies. Two of the many satellites that orbited Venus were also capable of being remotely instructed to drop capsules of emergency supplies close enough to V1 to be easily retrieved via robotic rover, or with a short trek in an environment suit.
But the life support monitoring systems weren't just designed for redundancy and reliability. They were also designed to constantly calculate how much air was being used, how quickly it was being recycled, and, most importantly, how many humans the system could support. When it first came online, the readings were in the negatives since all the air in the colony was coming from tanks and none of it was being recycled, but as the Environment Department started using aeroponically grown, genetically engineered ferns to recycle air, and as the valves of the oxygen reservoirs were gradually sealed, the numbers started climbing. At first they crept up slowly as the averages were thrown off by being in the negatives for so long, but it didn't take them long to hit their initial benchmark of 1,000. The predictions and calculations of the GSA's biologists and botanists and engineers had proven almost perfectly accurate.
Now the Environment Department needed to push the numbers past 1,000 so that history could be made once again. They added additional aeroponic terraces until the massive greenhouse was actually slightly beyond its intended capacity, and they completely rewrote the airflow algorithms so that they increased or reduced oxygen levels throughout V1 in realtime depending on where people actually were and the amount of oxygen they were consuming. Everyone watched the stubborn numbers gradually increase until they peaked at exactly 1,100. After six months of minor fluctuations in either direction, it was definitively determined and then officially declared by Kelley himself that V1 could support 100 additional inhabitants.
That night, the conception of Gen V began.
CHAPTER TEN
Homecoming
A rik had always thought of people as being more or less static. Of course they
Similar Books
