In reply to Grimsby H. Baskerville (msg # 91):

     "Well said, Grimsby!" Joseph adds in, "Come on Aubrey, old man, of course you must come with us!  After all, would you stay here, back with the fools who wouldn't listen, when you said there was something to the story of a Man Frozen in Ice?  Yet, you went in search of the truth, and proved them wrong!"

     "Now you have the chance to go to Mars--Mars, old fellow!--and look, yourself, into scientific marvels which your colleagues, here at Gibraltar, can only dream of researching!  Of course you must come!"

     "By the way, will you be needing to make a report, or anything of that nature, before you leave on this sabbatical?  Need anything from your lab?"

"Oh yes" Catherine agreed. "It won't be right if you don't come along"

"It's settled then!" Petras sums up the conversation. "We're all going to Mars!"

"I see that the carpenter has done a most excellent job at constructing our stairway to heaven. Better than I even imagined!"

"So, all aboard that's going aboard!"

He lets the women go first, then the others, and finally brings up the rear.

Once everyone is on board, he pulls on the ropes fastened to the steps and they begin to raise even as the steps fold flat. Once it is horizontal to the deck, he is able to fold it over onto the deck. He then leverages it over onto the wall of the aft cabin.

He replaces the railing and heads for the helm.

Anyone who's interested can join him at the helm and he will explain how it works. The obvious wheel is for direction... port or starboard, but unlike on a ship, it doesn't spin all the way around. It takes only a little spin of the wheel to change direction. There are pins on the back side that keep it from going too far.

"The wheel mechanism inside the housing here is connected via wire to the lifting surfaces and the rudder," he explains. "In theory, the ship could turn on its central axis, but I hadn't worked out the mechanism for that yet. It could also turn 360 degrees on its Y and Z axes, but why would we want to fly upside down?"

"If you pull back on the wheel, the ship will go up. If you push forward, it will go down. I call it the 'yoke', because I got the idea from the yoke used on oxen."

"You see this gauge here? That's an altitude meter; it tells you how high above the ground you are. Well, technically, how high above sea level you are. If you were only 500 feet above a 6,000-foot mountain, it would indicate you are 6,500 feet above sea level, not just 500 feet above the mountain."

"That's because it measures air pressure. As I'm sure you are aware, the air gets thinner the higher you climb. This section marked in red is the danger zone. When we get that high, the air is to thin to breathe. We have to be inside the ship by then."

"You'll notice that it's mounted on a gimbal. If I pull this pin, I can rotate it around the pivot point till it's facing the other way, reinsert the pin, and then lock it down again with this leather flap."

"The entire yoke and wheel is mounted the same way. When it's time to move inside, I release the gimbal and this whole section of deck rotates upside down, putting it inside with us. So that it's facing forward, a second gimbal lets me flip the wheel upside down as well so that whoever is manning the wheel is facing forward. And the altitude meter can also be flipped right side up again."

"I know you were concerned about that, Joseph. There's a second air pressure gauge outside that will show us here inside the air status on deck. That way, we'll know when not to go outside."

He turns the wheel over to Joseph then as he roams about deck making sure all the lids of all the hidden compartments are securely latched down.

"Go ahead, Joseph... take her up!" he says when he returns.

In reply to Petras Valois (msg # 94):

Grimsby listened politely to the explanation but merely commented, "Very ingenious." Privately, he was glad to leave the steering to Joseph.

In reply to Petras Valois (msg # 94):

OOC: I think I get how the "control deck" re-orients itself for atmospheric flight vs. interplanetary flight--although, the way Petras explained it, it sounds like you'd be standing on the deck, when it flips over... ^_^

Petras Valois:

He turns the wheel over to Joseph then as he roams about deck making sure all the lids of all the hidden compartments are securely latched down.

"Go ahead, Joseph... take her up!" he says when he returns.

     I'm taking this to mean that he also shouted over the side to have some British Sailors pull the 4 Ground Anchors out of the dirt--though whether Petras then pulled all of them up and stored them away, himself, or he left that job for some of us to do, as we rise up, I'm not sure of...

     Joseph had noticed the ship begin to wobble a little bit, as the Ground Anchors were released, and by the time Petras had returned to the Control Deck, Joseph was fully involved in holding the ship in a steady hover, just abouve the landing field.

     "Aye, Captain.  Taking the ship up." Joseph responds, then--just as he'd observed Petra do, on the trip here to Gibraltar, and without touching the throttle for the engine--Joseph slowly, gently, pulls back on the wheel....the 'yoke', as Petras calls it.

     With a slight sensation as if everyone were being gently pushed downward, the ship starts to rise straight up from Gibraltar....

     Well, not straight upwards--as soon as the vessel is high enough, it encounters a westerly wind that the bulk of The Rock had been diverting.  So, with a slight list to the right (starboard), the ship begins to drift to the east, while continuing to slowly rise.

     "Got it...got it..." Joseph grunts, as he spins the wheel to bring the ship around to point into the wind--but his old naval instincts have him do so with a subconscious expectation of the ship moving through the much thicker medium of water, rather than air, and so he spins the wheel 'hard about', causing the ship to rapidly turn into the wind--and he spends a few moments correcting his over-compensation.

Catherine watched Joseph steer the ship, fascinated. She'd never seen transit between worlds before.

Petras had negotiated with the British soldiers to release the anchors when the ship departed, and with Joseph at the helm, Petras quickly pulled up the ropes and anchors with Aubrey's, Mathias's, and Felicity's help, and then stowing them in the compartments on the deck and making sure the latches were all secure and tight. Even though there was a double latch system, that was still no guarantee that the hatches couldn't fly open under stress.

As he stows the ropes, he informs the others.

"We should be good until about 10,000 feet as far as breathable atmosphere," he tells everyone. "It'll start getting cold, though, at about 5,000 feet, so we should bundle up if we want to stay on deck. Breathing might be hard, but as we'll be ascending slowly, we should adapt a bit."

"Just warning you all again. Venturing into space is still rather dangerous, especially if you don't know what you are doing."

He repeats this information to Joseph and Catherine, and Grimsby if he didn't hear it otherwise.

After hearing this announcement, Grimsby went to his cabin and put on a heavy overcoat and a slightly bloodstained fur hat before returning to the deck to observe this next stage of the voyage.

In reply to Grimsby H. Baskerville (msg # 99):

     When Petras swings by the ship's wheel to repeat his information about the concerns of higher altitude, Joseph gives the young Captain a concerned look,

     "Ah, yes, well, you see...I've spent much of the last few years wandering back and forth across Africa." Joseph says to Petra, "As well as some time along the coasts of southern Europe--and I've done very little mountain climbing in those places, so I haven't had much use for cold weather clothing..."

     Joseph suddenly winces, as if in pain,

     "Darn it all!" Joseph spits out, "I was so focused on Mars being a desert, I completely forgot that Mars is actually cooler than here, on Terra Firma.  I only purchased a few items of clothing of a rugged nature--I didn't think to purchase any dedicated cold weather clothing!"

     "Although..." Joseph looks as if he's suffering a moment of panic, before he, again, merely looks concerned, "I do have an old woolen greatcoat in the bottom of my carpetbag..."

     "Um, Petras--just how long do we have to remain exposed to the temperatures at high altitude, before we can batten down for travel between planets?"

"Oh, it's not that we have to remain outside at all," Petras replies to Joseph. "It's about how long we have to remain inside that's my concern. The sooner we batten down the hatches, the longer the confinement."

"I know... a few hours won't make that much difference. But, then again, maybe it will."

In reply to Petras Valois (msg # 101):

     Joseph looks a little pensive for a moment, then nods his head,

     "Yes, I see your point, Petra--I mean, Captain." Joseph agrees, "I've been aboard ironclads during foul weather, and the close quarters was something that pressed upon us all pretty quickly."

     "Well, then, would you take the wheel for a few minutes, Captain Petra, while I run and dig up my old wool frock coat from the bottom of my carpet bag?  Thank you, Sir."

     Joseph hand over the position at the wheel, then hurries off to the cabin where he'd left his luggage.  Once there, he pulls his watch-chain from the vest buttonhole he'd put it through--producing the set of three tiny keys he uses as a fob.  One of the tiny keys opens the small padlock on his large carpetbag travelling bag.

     Joseph digs down past his clothing to the bottom of the carpetbag, where he keeps several tightly bound, oilskin-wrapped packages.  Pulling the largest of these out of the carpetbag valise, he quickly unwraps the tightly folded jacket it contains.

     Shaking the jacket out, Joseph gazes at it sadly, for a moment, before throwing it over his shoulders and heading back up to the Ship's Wheel.

     When Joseph appears back at the wheel, he has slid his arms into the jacket's sleeves, and is just finishing the buttoning of the last button.

     The jacket he's wearing is a short-collared, double breasted frock coat of a steel-gray color, which hangs halfway down to his knees.  The jacket is made of a tight wool weave with a black serge lining, possessing two rows of six brass buttons, running from waist to collar, and a few belt loops can be seen around the waist, but no belt is on the jacket.

     The end of each sleeve has a wide band of black serge covering from cuff to halfway back to the elbow, with a pair of gold-colored braid bands circle the hem of the cuffs--the 'lower' band (the one closes to the hem) being a solid band of braiding, while the 'upper' band (the two braids being separated by but a half an inch) also make an uninterrupted circuit of the hem, but on the outside of the sleeve this band loops up to form a small circle, before completing it's circuit around the sleeve.

     A pair of buttoned-down straps, or epaulets, adorn the shoulders, each showing some slight wear at their outer ends, just abouve the points of his shoulders.

     "Thank you, Petras.  I have the wheel." Joseph says, before taking control of the wheel.

     "This isn't so different from sailing a ship on the sea." Joseph smiles, "I mean, as long as we're just rising straight up."

     Joseph turns a concerned look to Petras,

     "We are just going to keep going straight up--right?"
This message was last edited by the player at 05:59, Sat 21 Nov 2020.

"More or less. The ship should remain level all the way but we're heading forward as we rise," explains Petras.

"In theory, the ship could roll over, either left or right, and front to back as well, but I never installed the controls for that. Mainly because there'd be a problem with the gravity. If the ship rolled upside down, we'd all fall to the ceiling."

"I did consider the problem, but never worked out the details. Maybe on my next ship."

"I look forward to that!" Aubrey says as he walks up. "Maybe by then the rest of the world will have caught up to you."

"I am curious, though: what would be the use of rolling the ship over?"

In reply to Petras Valois (msg # 103):

     Joseph--with a startled, wide-eyed look on his face--simply nods slowly, at Petras comments,

     "uh-huh...yeah, some of my German friends mentioned something about non-dirigibles doing that...flipping-thing...yeah." Joseph said, slowly, "You should work on that gizmo sooner, rather than later, maybe."

     Joseph gives himself a shake, then adds,

     "Hey, Captain, that brings up a question I've been meaning to ask--here on Earth, gravity pulls everything down!" Joseph points down toward the deck--and the ground rapidly falling away, under the ship,

     "How's that going to work when, you know, we've moved away from Earth?  Will 'down' still be back towards Earth, or what?"

"A good point, Aubrey," Petras replies. "I've yet to figure that out myself. The only usefulness I've been able to think of is to point the weapons at a different target. In the air and space, any battles can be fought in three dimensions. So, if one side of your ship gets damaged and you lose a weapon, you can roll the ship over to bring another undamaged weapon to bear on the enemy."

"That's the theory, at any rate. Not sure it's ever going to be practical."

"This ship can't do that because I didn't build the lifting device on a gimbal. So, the hull is always stationary to the lift device. That's why I said I'd have to wait until I build a new ship. The problem is the people and equipment within the ship that would get turned upside down. I was thinking the living quarters could be mounted within the gimbal. That way, we'd always stay upright regardless of how the ship spun about."

"Anyway, Joseph, as to your question. I pondered that for months before I finally figured out what was happening. Because the ship was built on earth with a downward gravitic force, it will remain that way until it encounters another gravitic force that's in a different direction. I'm not sure if it has to be stronger... or how much stronger, but that would realign the gravitic.... orientation. Don't really have term for it yet."

"Supposedly, if you build a ship out in space where there's no gravity, your ship wouldn't have any orientation at all. It'd be like there was no up or down on it."

In reply to Petras Valois (msg # 106):

     Joseph frowns in puzzlement for a moment, then asks Petra,

     "So...are you saying we will still have gravity, on the ship--that the Deck will still be our 'down'-- during the trip to Mars?"

"I think so. I'm not really sure," Petras answers. "I've never been in space before."

"It may not be true gravity. It just may be your perception of it. No, that's not quite right either. Whatever, I expect 'down' to be towards the bottom of the ship the entire way to Mars."

Grimsby eyes Joseph's coat with some curiosity and remarks quietly, "Puts me in mind of the one Captain Waddell was wearing when he surrendered the Shenandoah at Liverpool. But that is no longer the concern of Her Majesty's Government."

     Joseph gives Grimsby a sharp look--which quickly turns into a grin and a chuckle,

     "Heh.  Yeah, I guess it rather does, at that." Joseph says, letting go the wheel with his right hand, and running the hand down the front of the jacket, between the twin rows of not-quite-shiny brass buttons.

     "I, uh, bought it, back before I came over to Africa, because it sorta reminded me of my Father--I think I mentioned that he was a Navy Captain for Texas, during the War Between The States..."

In reply to Joseph Rudyard Hunnisett (msg # 110):

In reply to Grimsby H. Baskerville (msg # 111):

The ship continues to rise, and everyone gets a turn at the helm just so they are familiar with how the ship operates.

Plus, everyone (except Grimsby) is astonished at the view of the Earth below them as it gets smaller and smaller. Small details disappear quickly, giving rise to views of rivers and mountains. By the time you are above the clouds the curve of the earth is clearly discernible.

And, of course, it starts getting colder.

All too soon, Petras signals it's time to retreat inside. For those who are interested (Joseph, Grimsby and Solar in particular), he shows them how the helm is designed to fold up, then fold down inside the ship. Everyone then goes below, and he shows how the locking pin is removed, the helm is then rotated 180 degrees and the pin re-secured.

Likewise, the periscope is folded down from the ceiling and locked into place. He explains how a series of 'deck' prisms are aligned to allow the periscope to view what's in front of the ship.

He's already made sure that all the deck compartments and hatches were firmly secured from the outside. He now makes the circuit of the interior and does the same.

He also shows how the solar mirror doors can be opened from the inside, the mirror raised and rotated so it's always facing the sun. As soon as that is done, the interior begins to warm up.

In reply to GM SteamRoller (msg # 113):

Grimsby comments on the folding gear, "Very ingenious. Quite unlike the usual pattern for space vessels that I have travelled on."

"Yes. I had the advantage of having no preconceptions about ship design," Petras replies. "Or, more specifically, a spaceship."

"I did consider putting the steering in the front so you could see where you were going, but I felt it would be confusing with the rudder in back. That was before I realized that the rudder would only be useful in the water. By the time I worked out that the ship wouldn't be in the water very often, I'd already had the ship half built."

"It just didn't make sense to scrap what I had and start over. But I've made notes about doing that when I build the next boat."

Catherine is totally fascinated by the view of the Earth getting smaller, and she only retreats when the cold starts to make her uncomfortable. "Perhaps I should have brought more winter clothing!" she joked.