CHAPTER 14 – OLYMPUS MONS
14:43 (GMT)
Tuesday, May 28, 2057
Control cabin of ‘Mole 04’ tunnel digging machine
20,170 meters under the slopes of Olympus Mons
18.7°N, 133.8°W, near Mars’ equator
Paulo Sotomayor, sitting in the driver’s seat of Mole 04, smiled to his coworker, Sarah Weiss, who was monitoring the exact position and orientation of their tunnel digging machine, and nearly shouted over the din and vibrations produced by the teeth of their machine’s contra-rotating excavator heads.
‘’NOT EXACTLY A QUIET JOB, ISN’T IT?’’
‘’DAMN RIGHT! YOU WOULDN’T NEED A VIBRATOR HERE TO GET AROUSED. IT IS NOT FOR NOTHING THAT THEY CALL THIS ‘THE DICK’ OR ‘THE VIBRATOR’.’’
‘’SO, IF I AM AT THE COMMANDS OF THAT DICK, DOES THAT MAKE ME A DICKHEAD?’’
Paulo briefly laughed with Sarah at his own joke, then reviewed again the readings on his instruments panel to make sure that everything was functioning properly. The nickname of ‘Dick’ given to his tunnel digging machine was quite appropriate when considering the general shape of the Mole: it had a massive, conical rotating drilling head with a maximum diameter of twelve meters at the front, followed by a twenty meter-long cylindrical body. That cylinder, with a diameter of ten meters, incorporated a total of ten separate steel tracks mounted on variable height suspensions which made the machine forcibly advance in a chosen direction while the machine’s excavating head dug through solid rock. The rock and ground debris cut by the excavating head was then further crushed and ground by a series of small but powerful grinding screw rollers positioned around a ring situated just behind the excavating head. As the machine dug its way and advanced slowly along the newly dug tunnel, the crushed and ground rock was evacuated towards the rear of the machine, where other machines, a mix of mechanical shovels and dump trucks, scooped up the debris and carried them out of the tunnel, to be sorted out and to have the various ores in it, if any, processed. Such a digging machine of course demanded a lot of power but Mole 04 had plenty of it, since it incorporated not one, but two compact nuclear power plants. Such digging machines, built by the Caterpillar Corporation, had been in use on Earth for decades already and were both efficient and reliable. With Mole 04 necessitating a crew of only two persons, and with the dump trucks being robotic vehicles with no human crews, the whole process required very few human workers, while producing an impressive daily volume of crushed ore. Since the tunnel being dug was not pressurized, being linked to an open entrance at the foot of the southern cliffs of Olympus Mons, Paulo, Sarah and the operators of the mechanical shovels wore spacesuits, with their visors opened while they worked from inside the small pressurized driving compartments of their machines.
Sarah Weiss, a 32 year old mining technician with a degree in geology, watched carefully her attitude and position displays as Mole 04 worked to dig a tunnel destined to link Mars Mining Base 01, or MMB-01 in short, a magnetite iron ore mine under the southern outer slopes of Olympus Mons, with the recently established Mars Mining Base 02, an iron, chromium and titanium ore mine under the northeastern slopes of the extinct volcano. Once completed, that tunnel was going to provide a quick way to travel between the two mining complexes, which were 612 kilometers away from each other in a straight line, via an underground suspended monorail system, thus saving a lot of time and resources for the mining crews. Three more tunnel digging machines were also at work under the slopes of Olympus Mons, engaged in ore extraction rather than simple tunnel digging. Their machine being technically blind in its forward aspect, which was another reason for calling it a ‘Mole’, Sarah had to rely on a series of gyroscopes, ground penetrating radars and laser alignment beams to check where their machine was at any time. Right now, their Mole was about halfway between the two mining bases, at a depth of 20.2 kilometers under the surface of the volcano slopes and nearly under its summit, heading in a northeasterly direction at the blazing speed of fifty meters per hour. The close to 320 kilometer-long tunnel they had dug during the past year or so had in turn revealed a number of very promising ore deposits, as the tunnel they were digging went through those mineral veins. If anything, Olympus Mons had quickly proved to be a rich nest of many types of very valuable metallic ores, helping to provide the fledging Mars colony with locally produced steel, titanium, chromium and copper, on top of the aluminum and magnesium extracted and smelted in the Melas Chasma. Sizeable deposits of other ores had also been found but would have to wait for the reception of more mining, ore processing and metal smelting equipment on Mars before they could be exploited.
Paulo was about to pour himself a mug of hot coffee from the thermos bottle he had brought with him for his shift when the Mole’s vibrations suddenly increased dramatically, while an alarm started ringing in their small control cabin.
‘’What the…?’’
‘’WE HAVE REACHED AN EMPTY POCKET IN THE GROUND!’’ shouted Sarah. ‘’STOP THE DRILLING HEADS, NOW!’’
Grumbling about their bad luck, Paulo shut down at once their rotating head, along with the side grinding rollers and their propulsive tracks. Encountering underground cavities during the digging of tunnels or mines was not unprecedented, far from it. When that happened, the crew of the mole involved would have to stop at once, assess the situation and measure the dimensions of the cavity before deciding whether to continue straight on or to backtrack a bit and dig around it. Either way, this was going to cost them precious hours in tunnel digging work. With the drilling heads and rollers grinding to a stop, Paulo was then able to speak to Sarah without needing to raise his voice.
‘’Our sidescan penetrating radars still show solid rock on our flanks and over and under us. Only the tip of our drilling nose appears to be in the open. I am going to extend our nose sensor mount to assess that cavity.’’
Flipping a few switches, Paulo made the forward-most drilling crown open up like the petals of a flower, exposing a small steel hatch that then opened up as well. Next, a small, twenty centimeter sensor ball mounted on a telescopic, articulated arm, came out of the well covered by the hatch and started ‘looking’ around it, controlled by Paulo. That sensor ball incorporated a small microwave radar, a laser rangefinder, a day/night camera, a forward-looking infrared camera, a thermometer and an atmosphere analysis probe, all sending data and images back to Paulo’s and Sarah’s work stations. While the day/night camera and FLIR camera showed only darkness, the picture painted by the radar and laser rangefinder was another thing entirely.
‘’HOLY SHIT! WE EMERGED ON ONE SIDE OF A CAVERN WITH A MAXIMUM DIAMETER OF 5.7 KILOMETERS!’’
Sarah, also awed by that measurement, then made their sensor ball scan up, then down, to have a complete picture of the cavern they had encountered. The data she got made her eyes open wide.
‘’Paulo, this cavern goes down to 2.8 kilometers below us, while it rises to 10.3 kilometers above us. Furthermore, the radar echoes from the bottom are not consistent with solid rock, but rather with ice or water.’’
Paulo’s mind nearly flipped on hearing that: this was by far the biggest underground cavern they had found to date on Mars, and this in a place rich with metallic ores. The possibilities that this cavern could offer to the Mars colony were truly mind-boggling.
‘’My God! We could build a whole city here and even pressurize this cavern to facilitate living. If there is truly water or ice at the bottom, then we will have everything we would need for such a city. Sarah, contact at once the mine’s control center and send them the data from our sensors ball. This is big!’’
‘’I’m on it!’’ replied the Israeli woman while punching keys on her command panel.
At the control center of Mars Mining Base 01, Yves Dorval, the manager of the mining complex, was floored when he received the message and sensors data from Mole 04 and saw the possible implications once he made a quick mental calculation.
‘’But, this represents a volume of about 105 cubic kilometers! And if there is truly water at the bottom…’’
Yves then sent back a message in return.
‘’Mole 04, from MMB-01 Control: Dig a few meters further to open up the breach giving on that cavern, then backtrack by 600 meters and veer true northeast to resume tunnel digging towards MMB-02. Make sure to put warning markers and beacons before the breach on the cavern and keep a minimum of 200 meters between your new tunnel towards MMB-02 and the sides of that cavern.’’
‘’Mole 04 understood!’’
With that taken care of, Yves then called his old friend Jason Terlecki at Mars Base One, to pass to him this sensational piece of news. The Polish mining and infrastructure engineer was now the head of the colony’s infrastructure department, with 23 engineers and scientists working under him to plan, design and organize the building of facilities and infrastructures on Mars. Yves could already salivate at the thought of what his friend could do with close to a hundred cubic kilometers of space which could possibly be pressurized with a breathable atmosphere, like what they had done on a much smaller scale with the cavern sheltering Mars Base One.
17:06 (GMT)
Friday, May 31, 2057
Ledge of hole dug through the southern wall of newfound cavern
20,170 meters under the summit of Olympus Mons
Since its discovery a mere three days ago, many things had been done already about the giant cavern found under the summit of Olympus Mons. Powerful floodlights had been brought from MMB-01 and had been positioned on the ledge of the hole dug by Mole 04, so that the interior of the cavern could be better inspected visually. Then, a flying drone had been sent down to the bottom, some 2,800 meters below the level of the tunnel, to confirm the nature of the bottom’s surface. The results of the analysis of the bottom samples had quickly shown that a layer of thick salt water ice covered the bottom, forming an icy lake with a surface of about thirteen square kilometers. Furthermore, that layer of ice covered a liquid salt water body that filled the old main lava vertical tube of Olympus Mons past a depth of seventeen kilometers, where a bend in the lava tube prevented the sonar probe used by the astronauts to look further down. Radar and lidar soundings had also confirmed that the cavern’s ceiling was hermetically sealed by old lava, with the tunnel dug by Mole 04 the only opening that connected with the outside. Standing on the ledge of the opening in their spacesuits and with safety lines attached to their belts, Yves Dorval, Jason Terlecki, Frey Thorvalsson and Denise Wattling were visually scanning with growing emotion what they could see of the inside of the cavern with the help of the floodlights. Frey Thorvalsson was the colony’s head volcanologist, while Denise, now 53 years old, was the official head of the Mars colony, having been named two years ago to that post by the Mars Home Project executive board on Earth, and this after being commander of Mars Base One for ten years.
‘’What an incredible find!’’ said Denise, her eyes glinting. ‘’This could be turned into an ideal Human habitat for us.’’
‘’It WILL be turned into a Human habitat if I have anything to say about it, Denise.’’ replied Jason Terlecki, who then looked at Frey Thorvalsson. ‘’The only thing that I need to know is: what are the chances that Olympus Mons could awake again and fill this cavity with hot magma. If that ever happened in the future, we would then lose everybody and everything based here. What do you think, Frey?’’
‘’That chances of having Olympus Mons become active again are about zero.’’ answered at once the big Icelander. ‘’All our studies and prospecting data show us that all surface volcanic activity on Mars ended millions of years ago, with the most recent signs of such activity having happened two million years ago in the Arctic region. The youngest lava flows from Olympus Mons that we found dated back from about twenty million years ago. Tectonic activity on Mars is also very low and is limited to a few regions only.’’
‘’Then, we shall build a great city here in the next few decades.’’ said Jason, his mind already boiling with ideas. ‘’With a number of important mines and metal smelting complexes close to it under Olympus Mons, it should become a major industrial and residential center for our colony.’’
Those words suddenly made Denise think about something and she looked at Frey to ask him a question.
‘’Frey, what are the chances that we could find similar giant cavities under the summits of other extinct Martian volcanoes?’’
‘’After seeing this one, I would be surprised not to find more such cavities, Denise. The three volcanoes of the nearby Tharsis Montes in particular would in my mind make good candidates to find similar cavities. Once we will have thoroughly mapped this cavern and its various lava tubes, I will put a geological team on doing a detailed survey of the underground of those three volcanoes and of their surrounding plateaus.’’
‘’Well,’’ said Yves Dorval, now looking a bit worried, ‘’let’s hope that we will be allowed to build up and transform this cave and others we may find.’’
That attracted at once a sharp look from Denise.
‘’And what makes you think that we may not be allowed to do so, Yves?’’
‘’What makes me think that is the ever worsening situation on Earth, Denise. Yes, up to now the project’s executive board has supported fully our needs and requests by procuring and sending us all that we requested to continue building this fledgling colony, but how long will they continue to do so? The cost of fighting against rising sea levels, floods and droughts keeps rising constantly, while more and more territories are rendered unlivable due to floods or intense droughts and extreme temperatures. Shoring up anti-flood defenses and relocating and supporting the refugees created by this climate change crisis costs a fortune and uses huge amounts of resources and manpower. The Mars Home Project has to compete with those Earth demands. How long before public pressure forces governments to redirect the funds used by the Mars Home Project towards Earth rehabilitation or resettlement projects?’’
His question was met at first by collective silence as his friends thought their answer over. Jason Terlecki was the one to speak first.
‘’Well, I can only work with what I have and do the best possible job with it. We now produce on Mars a limited but growing list of primary construction material, like steel girders, plates and pipes, aluminum structural components, ceramic parts and glass. I will try my best to design what we need to transform this cavern into a livable place in a way that will use to the maximum what we can already produce on Mars. Hopefully, Earth will continue to fully support our colony long enough to let us develop more our local industries and resources. Each extra year of support provided to us will be crucial for the long-term success of this colony.’’
‘’You are quite correct on that, Jason.’’ replied Denise, thoughtful. ‘’I will thus move up to the top of our priority list of requests to Earth our machine tool plant, to have its parts and machinery delivered as quickly as possible. Once we will have that machine tool plant up and operating, we will then be able to produce ourselves a much larger variety of components and metal parts for our various building and expansion projects. Ten years… Just give us at least ten more years…’’