Free Trade World Saga 1: Manual Interpretation by Ken Pence Page B

twenty-five (25) meters long. They had been made for above ground chemical storage but new safety regulations had banned their use after a terrorist incident at a storage facility in Texas. These had been slated for installation but got 'stored' when the legislation was passed. Desiree tracked down the owner and after some judicious bargaining; bought the tanks for pocket change. The one codicil was that they had to take all ten (10) off the site before the end of the month -- ten more days.
    Desiree's dad got the tanks moved. He owned several construction companies and his daughter could talk him, or about any man, into any bit of mischief. The university officials were outraged about putting the tanks anywhere on the sprawling campus until Desiree's dad came through again and reminded them of the generous, generous endowments he had given the university over the last ten years...some lean years. The team realized where Desiree had gotten her bargaining skills. Andrew placated the Synthesist School with promises of their low cost, non-polluting power plant. Andrew failed to mention that the small units he planned would enable people to be independent of utility companies... a scary idea for many if they had known.
    Susan and Joel, the mechanical gurus came up with a cool design for the "Wildcat" as they came to call it after the school team. Four cylinders would be in a square, with the fifth cylinder in the middle like the five dots on dice. Five additional cylinders would be attached end on end with the first five. They would be assembled and launched horizontally as there would be no ‘down’ when the field was active. The difficult part was alignment during assembly. They were easily attached together with special carbon fiber-aramid ply-board and bonding agents. Tod said it was like gluing model airplanes...only bigger.
    Joel had made a detailed computer model of the hull and the team could then pull up and manipulate any detail before they lifted a finger on the actual cylinders. The biggest problem was cutting the stuff. The team would be covered with black residue from the hydra-jet and thermo-lance they used to cut the portals and poke holes for wiring. The strips of fiber-ply to hold the tanks together were carbon fiber, rigid strips covered with an aramid based laminate. It only took a week to rough out the basic hull. When they had finished the rough-in, the team started the wiring and layout designs to fit what the laid out. It was like building a house. The outside shell went up fast and the basic wiring, ventilation and plumbing went in next. Many internal arrangements had to redone because the computer model didn’t work out well in actuality. Kind of an 'ass backward' way of doing it but the computer models did give them the working basis for all their calculations of volume and structure.
    The project started to attract some other teams and onlookers since the project had taken on a rather grand proportion. Andrew had a working meeting because the questions and faculty attention was beginning to erode the manic efficiency of the team.
    "Suggestions?" Andrew addressed the group.
    John raised a palm, "Need to schedule a demo with a power plant. We can block off the view of the hull with an opaque fence."
    "We need a fence anyway. I've had tons of folks coming over when Joel and I were working on this sucker," Steve said.
    Susan looked concerned so Andrew nodded to her, “Something the matter with that?"
    Susan hesitated, "I talked with Drucker, the Dean of the Synthesist School, yesterday. He's hedging about continued support and wonders why these power supplies have to be so big. I don't know how much longer we can keep up the fiction of the 'Wildcat' being a small independent power plant. I told Drucker that the power plant was smaller, much smaller but we were putting it in a low-cost, sealed test structure to monitor environmental impact these power plants will make. I told them we have to look for any