Free Analog SFF, June 2011 by Dell Magazine Authors Page B

all meetings are not created equal. He was in a mundane conference room at Goddard, deep within suburban Maryland, but this call was out of this world.
    Whatever grief the week might bring him, the progress review reminded him why everything else was worth it.
    Landscape undulated over the conference table, sliding past as a distant camera swiveled on its post. Somewhere behind the camera, the full moon was about to set; Phoebe's hills and structures cast long, knife-edged shadows. To his right, in the tourist-bot preserve, the Grand Chasm gaped: a vast, inky blackness. The dazzling “star” just above the eerily close horizon was The Space Place, almost two hundred miles ahead of Phoebe in its orbit.
    Ellen limped into the telecom room, bearing Starbucks. Despite physical therapy, her leg still bothered her. She set a cardboard cup on the table beside him.
    "Thanks,” he said, concentrating on the final link left to configure. “That said, you have no respect for tradition."
    She laughed. “Okay, who confirmed for today's session?"
    He gestured at the holo. “The usual folks on the far end, though Darlene Stryker is at the powersat. She'll call in from there."
    "How far is the far end today?"
    As distant as it could be. “As the neutrino flies"—right through the Earth, without noticing—"it's about thirteen thousand miles. Relayed through two geosynch comsats and then down to Phoebe, call it a half second."
    She closed the door and settled into a chair. “Who's joining from on the ground?"
    "Phil and Bethany.” Phil Majeski was the prime contractor's program manager. Bethany Taylor was Phil's chief engineer. Both disdained SETA contractors. “Phil's netting in from corporate. Bethany called to say she's stuck at a subcontractor's facility. Resetter picketing, unrelated to us—something about shale-oil gasification in Wyoming. I'm linking her in now.” Marcus waved a wireless key fob at the sensor in the comm console. The authentication LED blinked green. “Ready."
    "Let's go."
    Marcus shrank the Phoebe image to one-fourth size, then switched views from the surface to the base's little common room, where three men sat waiting. As they and Ellen swapped greetings, Marcus connected the other locations.
    "Everyone have the agenda?” Ellen asked. She started through her list.
    The comm console took notes, but speech-recognition software glitched under the best of circumstances. These weren't. Merely this many people in one conversation sometimes confused the software. With the comm delay between Earth and Phoebe, people spoke over each other as often as not, and echo suppression was less than perfect. Noise suppression filtered out the drone of Phoebe's ventilation fans, but not the random clatters of—well, Marcus did not always know what.
    So Marcus took notes, too.
    Lots of notes. Hydroponics yields in Phoebe's still experimental gardens. Performance data on the thrusters that would slowly lift the powersat, its construction now almost complete, to its operational orbit. Final integration tests on the microwave transmission arrays. Production data on Phoebe's automated factories, churning out solar cells (and in smaller quantities, other electronics), structural beams, and water and oxygen for the construction crew. Defect and repair rates. Assembly anecdotes—but not many, the process having become routine. Assembly statistics.
    PS-1 had just topped two million pounds! How amazing was that ? The late, unlamented International Space Station had massed only about one third as much, and its on-orbit assembly had required more than a decade. But the ISS had been lugged up to orbit piece by piece, battling Earth's gravity all the way—for more than a thousand dollars for every pound. For a powersat fabricated on Earth, launch costs alone would rival construction costs for a coal power plant of equivalent capacity.
    But most of PS-1's ingredients came from Phoebe's mines. And that was why—while there would