<div class="floatleft">(http://elliquiy.com/elluiki/images/f/fa/Mars_test.jpg)</div><table class="bbc_table"><tbody><tr><td><strong>Character name:</strong></td><td>Lt Colonel Louise Cotter</td></tr><tr><td><strong>Location:</strong> </td><td>Outside</td></tr><tr><td><strong>With:</strong> </td><td>Those on the surface</td></tr><tr><td><strong>Doing:</strong> </td><td>Taking suggestions and answering questions among other things.</td></tr></tbody></table><br/><hr/><br/>I was happily moving a stack of six mattresses all by myself - mindful of my own speech about weight and mass, but also thinking about princesses and peas - when someone cut in to the local command channel with a suggestion regarding which bundles would be a priority. My suit's on-board computer identified which of the white clad figures the signal had come from and my implant collated that data with the known personnel profiles.<br/><br/>"Point noted, Ms Houghton, although if we all end up smelling too bad, you might revise that opinion?" I giggled softly, and then added, "But the shuttle needs to be unloaded completely. You're computer's right? So you know a bit about maths... Answer me this: If one bag of personal belongings massing ten kilos is left on the ship when it lifts, how much extra fuel will it need to reach orbit?"<br/><br/>I pulled up my own implant's maths subroutine and gave it the program.<br/><br/><tt class="bbc_tt">The ship burns 0.552 Kg of fuel for every ten m/s of velocity gained. To reach escape velocity of 5,000 m/s it must therefore burn 2,760 Kg of fuel. The shuttle, with fuel load, masses a total of 6,762 Kg. Of that, 4,002kg is the shuttle itself, plus crew. That is 0.7 kg of fuel per kg of ship. Add ten kg and you add 7kg of fuel. But then you must add a further 5 Kg to lift the extra fuel, but then you must add a further 3.5 Kg. Then 2.45 Kg. Then 1.7 Kg, then 1.2, then 0.84, 0.58, 0.41 0.28, 0.2... The sequence is infinite but becomes insignificant soon after this. In real terms, an additional 25 Kg of fuel is required to reach orbit. As the shuttle's fuel tanks only hold 2800 Kg of fuel, some of which is required for taxiing and some for manoeuvring once in orbit, this makes reaching orbit unlikely if not impossible.</tt><br/><br/>I hoped that Houghton reached the same conclusion. The calculation took longer to read the conclusion of than it took my implant to work out. "However," I told her, because she was, up to a point, correct, "If you want to sling the personal bags to one side and we can get the important stuff into the base first and recover the less important stuff later." To make my point I dropped the stack of mattresses right in front of my lover and winked at her over them.<em>For later...</em>I sent via our private channel, overlaying that naughty pic of her onto the top of the stack and sending her the composite image.<br/><br/>But Laura, bless her little cotton socks, had more important things on her mind than her commander's libido.<br/><br/>"Latest weather reports have it hitting us in about six hours." I checked the time, 09:00. Half an hour gone already and the shuttle barely a third unloaded. "It's going to be tight, but we should get her turned around and out of here in time." I went back for another load.