Topic: L1 Intermission 2

[Lieutenant_Q]

Announcer: To talk to George, call The Wild Card line at area code 818 - 501 - 4109. The First Time Caller Line is area code 818 - 501 - 4721. To talk toll free, from East of the Rockies, call 800 - 825 - 5033, from West of the Rockies, call 800 - 618 - 8255.  International Callers can reach George by calling their in-country, Sprint Access number, pressing Option 5, and dialing, Toll Free, 800 - 893 - 0903.  To talk to George Via Skype, use skypename, George97313.  Send George a text message at anytime by texting to area code 818-298-6521.  From the Gateway to the West, this is Coast to Coast AM, with George Noory.

George: From the heartland of the nation, the Gateway to the West, Good Morning, Good Evening, wherever you may be across the nation, around the world listening on cyberspace.  As many of you already know, those of you who are Coast to Coast Insiders, tonight, semi-live, we are bringing to you another interview with Captain James Atkinson.  Hopefully this one will last longer than the first one.  But first, how would like to get a jump on the rest of the audience and know who's coming up in future episodes. Yes, you can sign up to be a Coast-to-Coast Insider. Check out CoasttoCoastam.com for more details. Back in a moment with Captain Atkinson.

Bumper Music: Star Trek: Deep Space Nine Theme.

George: Welcome back. James are you with us?

James:  I am indeed George. Glad to be back with you and your listeners. I can't promise we won't get interrupted, but let's shoot for a little longer this time shall we?

George: I'm hoping to have you for a full four hours, but I'll settle for two. Let's start with the asteroid, that must have been an exciting episode.

James:  Well George, I suppose on the outside looking in you could call it exciting. And as I look back on it, I do agree. But at the time, we were very nervous. As large as our station has become recently, that rock dwarfed us. If it hit us, it was the end of us. It did kind of put the exclamation point on what kind of dangers we have up here.  We had a couple of choices of how to deal with it, the best way we came up with was just to push it out of the way.

George: Why is that?

James: Well, we couldn't blow it up, that would cause problems in of itself.  And we only had a limited amount of fuel, moving the station, as easier as it would have been, we would have had to move it further, because we would have had to move it back to its original position.  We chose to simply deflect it, because we didn't have to move it very far to get us out of it's way.

George: Now, you sold your Nickel, but kept the Iron. We all saw the effects of the sale, what have you done with all that Iron?

James: We knew that selling the Nickel was going to have some affect on the markets, what we didn't realize was just how drastic an affect it was going to have.  I suppose in hindsight we should have expected it. Terrestrial based Nickel mines are difficult to extract from so there's only a small, and usually predetermined amount of Nickel getting to market at any time. Here we are slapping down a couple hundred tonnes of it instantly. We should have expected the London Merc to drop the value of Nickel 10% immediately. We'll be more careful on things like that in the future. As for the Iron, I'm not sure just what its been used for. I know the bulk of it is still sitting in bay 1. We've got three cargo bays up, and each one of them is filled with something.

George: So you don't even know what's been done with it?

James: Oh, he's used it for repairs here and there, but most of it, ninety percent of it, is still just sitting in the bay.

George: Are there any plans for it?

James: Nothing that's come across my desk yet.

George: Alright, so where are you at in construction right now?

James: 40% George. Ops is complete. As is the Promenade. We have almost half of our gravity deck completed, we are still running on one reactor. We'll be getting the second reactor installed here on the next mission. The third reactor will be immediately following,  After that we'll get the rest of the gravity deck finished. Two more reactors, will follow that. During each reactor mission, we'll get a docking arm installed as well, we currently have two. And of course, every time they come up, we get a new cargo bay.

George:  You're currently without a ship docked right now, am I correct?

James: No, the Persian Drone Ship is still docked, apparently until we decide to dispose of it. I didn't realize at the time that Emperor Khan never intended for the ship to return to Earth. Everything he wanted from the ship he got off on a stealth escape pod.

George: What a gift!

James: I don't know if he was being generous, or if he was simply being efficient. Maybe he'll expect some favor in the future. Most likely. When we first saw it we wondered how it would get back.

George: So what did the Emperor give you and for what?

James: About three months of consumables, food, water, stuff like that. We also got two experiments that he wanted set up. One of the experiments is Genetically Modified Crops. Wheat, Corn, Rice, Soy, all supposedly designed to grow in Micro gravity. He also sent up, well, I'm still not sure what it actually is. We're certain at this point that it's not a threat to the structure of the station, and we've got it isolated in its own cargo bay in case it's biological. We also got a stowaway.

George: A Stowaway?!

James: Yes, a Stowaway. We found her when we were doing a sweep of the ship. Checking out what had been sent to us, locking down the ship's drive systems, stuff like that. When we were in the cargo deck overlooking the bay below us, we heard her tapping against the door of a utility closet. Two of us were armed, we pulled our pistols and Ammanda opened the door. I think the young lady was planning on a fight of some sort, but wasn't expecting the microgravity. She floated off towards the ceiling and started panicking real bad. It took us a couple of hours and a lot of help from Nicole, the communication officer on the freighter, before she calmed down.

George: Why was she there?

James: Excuse me?

George: Why was she stowing away?

James: Oh, her father was a member of the old Iranian opposition movement. The ones that supported the Ayatollahs, part of Emperor Khan's move to consolidate power, was to hunt them down. She claims that she slipped out the back of their house in Tehran while her older brother fought with a couple of the guards that came to get them. She and her sister were on the run for six months, but they got separated one night and she hasn't seen her since. She managed to slip through security, or so she thought, and get on board.

George: What do you mean, or so she thought?

James: The other day we found out that Emperor Khan allowed her onboard. She proved a useful distraction for something that I am not going to elaborate on, sorry.

George: That's all right, we're up against a break by my count anyways. We'll be right back.

[Grim Reaper]

Nice, i can see something like that quite easily, plus i like your treatment of the ore issues. Hope to see the part after the break soon!

[Lieutenant_Q]

Bumper Music: Babylon 5 theme.

George: Welcome back. James, let's talk about the future. That is what your station is all about isn't it?

James: Yes, George, yes it is.

George: So take us out six months from now, December 2014. What will be happening up there?

James: Well let's start sooner than that George. In two months time, we'll be welcoming the first docking of the asteroid miners. They'll spend two weeks docked while the crew does their final microgravity training. I'll go over navigational data from the drone we sent to the asteroid belt two months ago. Then they'll leave the station for a six month trip to the belt, where they will pick a cluster of rocks and do their thing.

George: Exciting times then! What are they going to be getting?

James: Well, that is going to be up to their ship's commander. My former executive officer, Ashley Hudson.

George: Really? Wow, it really is a small world isn't it?

James: It is indeed.

George: So why is she your former exec?

James: We had a fallout of philosophical differences. She felt I should have handled the Bunyad Khan situation differently. And definitely should not have spoken at the UN the way that I did.

George: Is it going to be an awkward reunion?

James: Only as awkward as she makes it.

George: As I understand it, this mining expedition is a, ah, unique one.

James: From my understanding, financing options were extremely limited. They'll get a quicker return on their investment than we will, but we had already soaked up a lot of the remaining loose capital in the system. Of course, without the station, they wouldn't be able to even make the trip in the first place.

George: Couldn't they have found something else?

James: They looked at the reality TV show option first, but didn't want the cameras out there with them the entire time. More over, they didn't want to be subject to the whims of Earth Bound directors that would get ever more demanding in their unreal reality.

George: Unreal Reality?

James: Reality TV shows are anything but reality. The directors often stage events that they think would make for good television. Real Reality is often quite boring, even something as exciting as life on a starship or space station.

George: So you never considered it for your station?

James: No one would watch it.  Seriously, maybe one day out of a week is something worth even writing about, let alone turn into a television series.

George: But then you get times where, say the asteroid encounter, and you've got enough television for a mini-series.

James: True, every so often we'll get a run of days where, yeah, we could probably get an episode or two out of it.

George: Are you making any preparations for their arrival?

James: Not so much any preparations for their arrival, we are starting to lease out units on the promenade.  There should be shops open upon their return from the mining run.

George: What kind of shops?

James: Don't know yet.  Anyone who wants to set up is welcome, we've got a plan in place where we'll waive the moving expenses.  But I do imagine that people aren't really going to be willing to move until we get more traffic up here.  That'll start occurring at the end of the year.

George: Go on...

James: Carnival Corporation & plc is in the final construction stage of a ship that they are naming the Virgin Princess.  When complete it will be capable of carrying 500 passengers and 100 crew for a fifteen day excursion that can take it from Earth Orbit, to Lunar Orbit, and back.  We'll be a stopover point at both sides of the Lunar Orbit.  They'll dock with us before entering Lunar Orbit, and dock with us after leaving Lunar Orbit.  They have a shakedown cruise scheduled to take place about the same time as Ashley's Miners will be arriving.  It will take them here and back to Earth.

George: Virgin Princess?

James: This originally started off as Richard Branson's idea.  He wanted a cruise liner that would get here, but he soon realized that operating a Cruise Line, and building one, were two entirely different things.  So, he contacted Carnival Corporation, the largest Cruise Line in the UK, and in the world, and they offered to provide the logistic support.  The put it in with the Princess series of ships, since those nominally service US ports, the biggest source of enthusiasm for a space cruise, and named it Virgin Princess as a nod to Branson's now defunct corporation, Virgin Galactic.

George: So you're likely to have two ships docked at the same time, three if you count the Drone Ship, right?

James: Actually if we count the drone ship, we're scheduled to have four.  Which is one more docking arm than we will have at that time.  It's making us re-think the design of that part of the station.  Our construction freighter will be here as well.

George: How so?

James: Once construction is complete, we're slated to have only six docking arms.  We could be using four, in two months, and we're still considered in the infancy of space travel.

George: Gotta break. We'll open it up to phone lines next!

[Lieutenant_Q]

Bumper Music: Gimme! Gimme! Gimme! (A Man after Midnight) By ABBA

George: Alright, to the phone we go, Ed, Annapolis, East of the Rockies, you're up first on Coast-to-Coast AM with Captain Atkinson!

Caller: Am I on?

George: You are! What's on your mind?

Caller: Ah!  Hey George, Hey Captain.  Uhm, What exactly do you mean by, uh, dispose of, the Ira-, ah, Persian ship?

George: A good question, James?

James: Ah, yeah, Dispose was probably the wrong word to use there.  We're not going to just junk it.  We're not going to blow it up, we're not going to use it for target practice.  We're either going to dismantle it, and use the pieces to build out the station, or we're going to renovate it, and turn it into another picket ship.  Which we do will depend on factors that we haven't looked into yet.  One issue with turning it into a picket ship, is just how open is the computer system to outside control.  It was designed to be a drone ship, while the external communication system has been disabled, there's no way of knowing if there's not some kind of dormant activation code in the computer that would reactivate it, giving Persia, or someone else, full control of the ship.

James: While it is still Persian property, Khan did leave a message for me telling me that it is mine to do with as I please.  There's enough fuel on it to park it in orbit while the Virgin Princess, the Mining Ship, and the Freighter are here, but it can't stay there for long, it will need a berth.

George: Well how many ships are there right now?

James: Four.  No one else has even begun construction of one at this point.  So once the fourth docking arm is up, we should be fine even if every ship in system is docked at the same time.  But as Persia and Carnival proved, they can build a ship in about six months if they really want to.

George: But Persia was a one way ship.

James: Yeah, and technically so is Carnival's.  With current thruster technology, once the ships are put into space, they stay in space for the rest of their lives.  You may be able to control a crash landing, but interaction with gravitational forces beyond half a gee will be the end of a space craft.  Carnival bought a good number of shuttles to ferry people back and forth from their ship.  Heck, we're making a lot of money on the sales of shuttlecraft.

George: Anything look promising on the technology front in regards to thrusters?

James: Hard to say, George.  I know there's a couple projects out there, including one of the Nuclear Thruster variety.  None of them are close to completion, and environmental concerns are hampering the Nuclear Thrusters.  With good reason, it may be the most potent of them all, but setting off micro-nukes to boost you to orbit has all kinds of radiation and environmental issues.

George: No doubt.  Next up, Susan, Vancouver, British Columbia, International Line.

Caller: Hi George, thanks for taking my call.  Captain, I was wondering if you had the results of your science officer's SONAR soundings that you talked about her doing on your last visit.  Over.

George: Oh, well, we've got someone here who's taking notes, well James?

James: Indeed we do.  Let me pull that information up here, just a second.  Short of it is that we didn't find anything unusual.  Ah. There we go. She found a few caverns deep under the surface that could be atmospheric pockets.  Meaning that they are sealed off completely from the surface, and could theoretically support life if there was a way to generate heat and atmosphere there.  But the soundings themselves registered them as empty, nothing that we could detect inside them.

George: What could you have detected?

James: Well, there is a size limit as to what we can detect with SONAR soundings.  Smaller life forms can sometimes be missed by it, we're confident that we could detect anything larger than a bird, such as a Robin, or a Blue Jay.  So there's a possibility that insect or Microbial life can exist in those caverns, we don't view it as a particularly high probability though.

George: Micheal, San Francisco, California. You're up next on Coast to Coast AM.

Caller: Hi George, Captain, How are you tonight?

George: Very Well, thank you.

James: Doing good.

Caller: Good, ah the reason for my call, was that I was wondering, ah, what kind of missions are you going to be supporting up there?

George: What do you mean by that?

Caller: Well are you looking to support manned missions, planetary exploration missions, unmanned probes?

George: Ah, thank you.  James, I'm going to have to ask you to hold that thought and come back to it when we return from break.  This is Coast-to-Coast AM.

[Lieutenant_Q]

Bumper Music: Fly me to the Moon, By Frank Sinatra.

George: We're back, alright James, I wanted to let you have this whole segment to talk about this topic before the top of the hour.  So, as Micheal asked, what kind of missions are you supporting there?

James: Well George, uhm, all of the above.  We're here as a re-fueling and re-supply stop, a gas station in the sky if you will.  If NASA comes to us and says they want to launch a manned mission to Venus, come on up.  If the RSA says they want an unmanned mission to Mars, good for them.  From my standpoint, our standpoint, we want to focus on manned missions, but we're not going to exclude unmanned ones.

George: Any reason for that?

James: We feel that manned missions allow for the most flexibility, in a manned mission you can have a situation come up that was unexpected, and change the conditions of the experiment, you can't do that with an unmanned mission.  Manned missions also allow for quicker response times, if you only have a few seconds to make a judgment call, you can do that.  You're already out of luck on an unmanned mission because by the time you know that such a judgment call is required, the time delay in the transmission has already closed that window of opportunity.  Now there are times where an unmanned mission makes sense, places that would place the personnel on a manned mission at risk, say a solar expedition.  Or someplace where its just not cost-effective to send a crew, Neptune for example.  It would be too expensive to send enough food and water for even one person for the length of time such a journey would require.

George: Let's talk about the range of manned missions, how far can you feasibly go right now?

James: Logistically, all of the inner planets, although there's environmental concerns about travel to Mercury.  We're not sure if our shields can stand up to solar radiation at that close range.

George: When you say shields, you make it sound like they are Star Trek type shields, are they?

James: No.  No.  Not even close.  They are concentrated magnetic field generators that deflect minute particles and radiation.  They couldn't even stop a .50 caliber bullet.  Other places we can reach are the Asteroid Belt, Jupiter.  Saturn would be on the extreme edge of our range, and only then when it's in the right spot in its orbit.

George: Is it in that spot right now?

James: We're at the closing moments of it right now. The next window will open up in April of 2015.

George: How long do these windows last?

James: Well, given how much faster the Earth moves compared to Saturn, they don't stay open long, but because it is so much faster, at least we do get one every year.  Each window stays open almost six weeks before closing again.

George: How long will a mission to Saturn last?

James: Six to eight months, depending on what they decided to do while they are there.  Three months there, three months back.

George: That's faster than the missions to Mars!

James: That's because everyone that was planning a Mission to Mars was planning an Inertial Drift mode of transit.  They have to blast out of Earth's gravitational field, they'll use most of their fuel just doing that.  They won't be able to actually thrust on the way to Mars because they won't have the fuel to do it.  Now though, they can stop here, re-fuel, and they can burn the whole way there, cutting months off their transit times.

George: How are you getting fuel up there in the first place?

James: Two ways at the moment, the bulk of our fuel is coming up on the long hauls that the freighter makes.  We have a collection apparatus set up on the hull that is pulling in free hydrogen molecules that just randomly wander through the solar system, but that only generates a tiny fraction of our fuel supplies.  We are looking into setting up a production facility on the lunar surface to allow for cheaper transportation, but production will be slower because there's just not that much hydrogen out there.  It's plentiful on Earth, but not so much in space.

George: Any solutions on the horizon?

James: Not really, we're talking about capturing a comet and breaking it down, but that's not as easy as one would think.  Best bet for us would be to find an ice rock in the asteroid belt, and just haul it back here.  Or if it happened to be a larger ice rock that couldn't be moved, set up a refinery on it.  Might be a use for the drone ship.

George: Alright, we're at the top of the hour, back with hour two, open lines with Captain Atkinson, after this.

[Lieutenant_Q]

Announcer: To talk to George, call The Wild Card line at area code 818 - 501 - 4109. The First Time Caller Line is area code 818 - 501 - 4721. To talk toll free, from East of the Rockies, call 800 - 825 - 5033, from West of the Rockies, call 800 - 618 - 8255.  International Callers can reach George by calling their in-country, Sprint Access number, pressing Option 5, and dialing, Toll Free, 800 - 893 - 0903.  To talk to George Via Skype, use skypename, George97313.  Send George a text message at anytime by texting to area code 818-298-6521.  From the Gateway to the West, this is Coast to Coast AM, with George Noory.

George: Open lines with Captain Atkinson!  We'll start with Jeremy, Wilmington, Delaware, First Time Caller Line.  Jeremy, hello.

Caller: Hello George.  Captain, I heard you refer in the first hour to the mining ship as 'the mining ship', you know it has a name, don't you?

James: Uh, I haven't been informed of it's name as of yet.

Caller: Well, it's name is the Heavy Haulla.  Atch-Ee-Aa-Vee-Why Atch-Aa-You-El-El-Aa.  It's all over the internet, and when are you planning on naming your freighter?  Your log entries must be extremely boring reads.

George: Laughter

James: (Laughing) Well, they are kind of boring reads.  Thank you for the information, we do not have good internet access up here, we don't want to overload our communication system with the estimated 250 Billion Terabytes that the internet has exploded into lately.

James: As for naming the freighter, the plan all along was to not name the ship until it was converted into the picket ship.  There's an old sailor tradition regarding renaming a ship.  It's supposed to be a bad omen, as if it gave the ship two distinctly different souls that warred for control of itself.  A ship that fights with itself is an unlucky ship.  We chose to stay with that tradition and simply not give the ship a name until it was reconfigured and christened properly.

George: Emily, Denton, Texas, East of the Rockies.  Emily, Good Evening.

Caller: Good Evening George!  Captain, I have a seventeen year old son, who's decided that he wants to go up there with you as soon as he can.  I'm freaking out about that just a little bit, can you explain, maybe, just a day in your life?

James: Well first off, how is your son in Math and Science?

Caller: He's a straight A student.

James: Well, that's not exactly what I asked, but, if your son is really interested, have him take the ASVAB test, most schools will offer it, or he can go down to any recruitment office, and for a small fee, take the test, they may try to connive him into enlisting, but he does not have to enlist if he takes the test.  The ASVAB test will be a much better indicator as to whether he will be able to handle what's up here, than his grades.

Caller: Ok.

James: Now, as for a day in my life.  The station runs on Zulu time, which is Greenwich Mean Time for civilians.  It's 06:10 right now, which puts it, what, 1:10 AM in Denton?

George: Right.

James: My day typically starts just before 14:00.  I'll wake up, shower, shave, dress, and go over to the Mess Hall for Breakfast.  At just after 14:30 I'll return to my cabin, brush my teeth, update my PDA, if I haven't already, and head to the gym for an hour of light cardiovascular work and some light weightlifting.  Everyone on board does at least an hour of the cardio and lifting, some do more, but the hour is required just to keep our bodies from atrophying. Since the installation of the Grav Deck a couple of days ago the morning routines have become a lot easier.  Depending on what time my workout is complete, I will wander the station until 16:00 when I report to Ops to relieve Alpha Shift. My wandering is rarely ever random, I will usually be stopping at places that I need to check on from the duty logs from the day or week before, or just places I have not personally been lately.

George: Touring the Station, as it were.

James: Yes, there are just places that I need to be at, and usually never enough time during my shift to be at those places.  After I relieve Alpha Shift, and get their report on what occurred during their shift, I will duck into my office for an hour or so and deal with the paper work that piled up over the previous 24 hours.  Anything that just needs a signature, or just the paper itself is handled at that time.  Much of it will require more than just that, and that's where the fun part of my job comes in.  I prioritize what needs my personal presence, and start on those rounds, this will typically take me all around the station and will last most of my shift, periodically I will pop back into Ops to get an update from the watch officer, before going to another section.  Right now demands on my time are limited, but as the station grows, it is taking more and more of my time, and soon I'll need to start delegating some of these as, 'sorry, but you're getting my exec this time.'

James: (Deep Breath)  Now, that's a typical day, but the problem with that, is that while it is my most common day, only two or three days a week are actually typical days.  I don't have a department that I work in, so I get to miss out on all the departmental meetings, usually these happen once or twice a week, depending on the department, and their level of activities that week.  Occasionally I'll get asked to sit in on a department meeting, I usually try to sit in on one or two a week, rotating through the departments.  There's also the department head meetings that happen once a week.  At this meeting the various heads, the senior officers, go through their department's work for the previous week and we collaborate on what direction we want each department's work to go in for the next week.

James: Other things that we all have to do, Monthly Medical checks, Quarterly Medical exams, and of course the annual Complete Physical.  Health, both physical and mental, are very important to us up here, and we have spared no expense on the medical front up here.

George: I have to ask you to hold on to what ever you have left in that answer, we have to take a break.  Back in a moment!

[Lieutenant_Q]

Bumper Music: Born to be Wild, By Steppenwolf.

George: Finishing up now with Emily, James you wanted to discuss something else?

James: Yes, what I just went over was a day in the life kind of thing, but more important than that is the daily environment.  There is only one section of the station where there is anything close to resembling gravity.  The Gravity Deck is a two hundred and fifty meter diameter wheel that rotates around the station's axis.  It's 25 meters wide, so it gives us a lot of square footage.  12,500 square meters.  Take 1500 meters off of that for the corridors, other life support, and community support rooms, you still have room for 400 single occupancy cabins.  Once the Gravity Deck is completely finished we'll be able to support a crew of 800.  Although I imagine it will be quite some time before we get to that number.

George: When you say single occupancy?  What size are we talking about?

James: Six Meters by Five Meters.  Just over 300 square feet.  Not too much smaller than some 1-bedroom apartments on Earth.  Community Support facilities include the mess halls, the galley, medical facilities, there's also room just above the main floor for a recreational area, gravity is balanced to be at 1 Gee at the main floor, so the Recreational areas will be a little lighter, but not too terribly.

George: There's got to be a lot more room than that, can't you put something above the recreational areas?

James: We could, but as you get closer to the center you lose the benefit of the gravity, also you start feeling the Coriolis effect much more prominently.  We felt the central area was just better for miscellaneous stowage.  Food Stuffs, water.

George: Is it that big of a problem?  And is it that bad on the freighter?

James: It's a question of scale, the Gravity Deck on the freighter is less than a quarter this size, and spins much slower, so that it only generates about half of the gravity that the station's deck will generate. You still get the Coriolis effect, but its not as pronounced on the freighter.  And lets be clear about something else, this is the only place on the station where there is any semblance of gravity, everywhere else, it's magnetic boots, or free floating.

James: So Emily, I hope that gives you a little bit of insight into what your son wants to get into.

George: Something I wanted to ask you, when you said single occupancy, are all the cabins on the station, single occupancy, and are they all the same size?

James: They are all single occupancy, at the moment, at least all of them that are complete.  There's a lot of work getting the rooms built right now, only about a quarter of them are done, all currently configured for single occupancy.  We'll make a few double, and even family sized accommodations. And no, not all the rooms are the same size, some are larger, the smallest is 320 square feet, the largest single occupancy is 425 square feet.

George: If the Gravity Deck is constantly spinning, how do you get off the deck?

James: We have a specially designed elevator car that travels to the central spoke, and once it arrives at the station axis, it enters a hopper, where it turns the car parallel to the axis of the station and parks itself in one of the six spots for those cars.  There it holds until someone gets into it, or calls for it from the Grav Deck.  Then it will then re-enter the hopper, the hopper will accelerate the car to the rotation of the deck, align itself with the shaft it wants to enter, and then the lift will fall down into the shaft.  It's similar to the design we have on the freighter, except that the freighter only has two lifts into and out of the Grav Deck, as opposed to the six of the station.  It can take a few seconds to get into and out of the Grav Deck, and the Coriolis effect is a problem for any one moving, we recommend that anyone in the lift, try to stay as perfectly still as they can as the car is transiting from the Deck to the Axis.  Other wise you may wind up tossing what you had for your last meal all over the car.

George: All right, Bottom of the hour break, James, You've made it through 90 minutes, you good for thirty more?