We’ve been living on the hellish landscape of Titan for 8 months now. We’ve yet to encounter any life or fresh water on the planet, making living conditions unbearable. We’ve done too terrible of a job with our rationing, and we’re dangerously low on water. If we want to survive, we are going to have to start by desalinating the ocean water below us. Being one of the few engineers aboard the USS Manifest Destiny, I’m tasked with building a large enough desalinization plant to sustain us for the rest of our lives. Luckily, we left Earth with all the required pieces to construct a desalination plant, with instructions to do so. Luckily, the Manifest Destiny had tons of explosives that we could use to get to the salty ocean down below, and after a matter of a few weeks, we managed to get down to the freezing cold water underneath.
First, we had to scout out an area to build our plant. After countless hours of scouring the barren, frozen landscape, we managed to find a flat, stable patch of solid ground. We had the lifting gear moved here, and the actual plant was placed down and welded together. Titan’s extremely low gravity was perfect for lifting and moving large parts. We were able to get the pumps and multi-media filters down quickly, and we finished up the plant with the cartridge filters over the course of a month or so. At this point, we had everyone on the ship working long, hard hours to complete the plant. When working on the underwater tubing, we had a lot of trouble with freezing machinery. A lot of the time, as soon as we put a machine into the water, the circuits would completely freeze within a few hours. This impeded our progress as we had to take out the machines and essentially thaw them out. The underwater construction process is grueling. The surface construction was a breeze. We were able to get everyone to work on welding or transporting materials. However, in the dangerous depths of Titan’s frosty oceans, we could only lower 5-10 people into the water at a time. It was simply too dark and too dangerous underneath the icy crust, and we needed to have as few hands to count for as possible. Unfortunately, I was one of those hands. Titan’s ocean is unlike anything we’ve ever seen on earth. We were essentially working blind. The sun simply could not break through the thick ice crust, and the only light we had came from our dinky headlamps. Luckily, our underwater crane-subs were able to navigate the ocean floor through sonar. Because of this, we got all the big pieces down to where they were supposed to go. However, this also meant we had to go down just as far and weld them together. Going down that low was the stuff of nightmares. I could only describe the bottom of Titan’s ocean as the equivalent to the vacuum of space. You were deaf, blind, and alone, and no one could hear you scream. Every Time I was down there, I couldn’t help but feel like there were a constant pair of eyes on me, but who knows, it could be the cold messing with my head. We had finally finished welding the last of the pipes under water when we heard large grumbling sounds. None of us knew what was going on, and we assumed it was a large piece of ice collapsing into the water from the surface. Panicked, but composed, we all resurfaced and regrouped. When we reached the surface, we did a head count. All hands accounted for. The rumbling sound spooked the entire team, and we decided to call it a day.The crew has been very hesitant to return back to the depths of the ocean after the rumbling incident. There’s been working spreading that Ramirez, our lead designer, saw a large shadow moving under the ice and someone whispering his name in his ear. However, this is very unlikely, as the ice crust is about 1-2 kilometers deep. Even after I explained this to the rest of the crew, they all remained uneasy. Either way, the plant was nearly complete, and all we needed to do was weld the final tube together, and we would be finished. We decided to head back down into the ocean three days later, the nerves had finally gotten shaken away. After welding the final tube together, we resurfaced and did a headcount only to find that Ramirez was nowhere to be seen. I knew I had seen him behind me when we were coming back to the surface but no one could find him now, the only option was for a small group of us to go back and look for him. Janice, Sinam, and I went down together, we must’ve been searching for an hour when Sinam finally caught sight of Ramirez’s suit and pointed him out. Slowly, we all approached the figure which had it’s back faced away from us, and I reached out to turn him around. Confusion was probably what we should’ve felt when we saw that there was no body in the suit, no water, nothing, as if Ramirez had just disappeared out of thin air, but I found myself horrified, my heart had never beat so fast. All of a sudden, a loud rumble came from behind us and we turned to look at where the noise came from. Nothing. We looked at each other, and then back at Ramirez’s suit. Nothing. Ramirez’s suit was gone and we were again surrounded by black nothingness. The dinky headlamps that we were wearing weren’t helping at all creating a sort of lighting you would only find in horror movies and I couldn’t help but feeling like I could hear a faint whispering in my ear. As quickly as we could, we resurfaced and kept quiet about the incident, not wanting the crew to think that we had gone mad. For two days, everything was normal and I couldn’t help but finally feel safe, everything was going to work out. Three days later, I laid down to sleep with a smile on face and it wasn’t until fifteen minutes of laying in silence with my eyes closed did my smile start to fade when I heard the gentle words in my ear and the hair on the back of my neck began to raise, “Ramirez...” |
A. The purpose of this project was to find a way to discuss situations that showcase examples of physics while incorporating some sort of supernatural/fantasy element into a story.
B. I started by researching a planet or moon to use as the base of my story and then moved to do the math behind actually traveling from Earth to the planet that we chose. After we figured out the math and research, we moved to writing fictional stories that incorporated the calculations that we had gathered. C. Something that I learned from this project was how to calculate different values such as the force needed to blast out of Earth's atmosphere. I also learned that in order to work successfully as a group you must has a lot of patience, good communication, and perseverance. D. I truly believe that a large amount of money in the world should be put towards space travel and exploration because outer space is the only thing that there is besides us here on Earth. If we don't explore as far as we can , we will all be stuck on this planet for ever and no one will know anything outside of Earth. |