Dusters, TWO (before)

Dinah’s father had been a long haul space mariner, so she didn’t know the man at all. When he died in a freak fuel leak that destroyed his ship and several million tons of cargo, she was 5. Her mother had left shortly after her birth, because she couldn’t cope with her husband’s absence or a baby.

She was left in the care of her Uncle Darrin. Right up until College, he was all she ever knew of “family”. Darrin raised Dinah with all of the hopes, freedoms and dreams a child should have. She grew up in a rural area on Earth; spending many days in the sparsely forested parks nearby. Her knowledge of the physical, natural and the educational world was well rounded. She still writes Darrin when possible and visits him when she can, back on Earth.

Dinah had excited her teachers and professors all through school. She was cute, perky and quirky. Insanely smart. One fellow student took to her in College, that was Chuck. He was not into her sexually; he already had several trophy bimbo girlfriends.

She came on the idea of cleaning up the debris in orbit around the Earth, completely out of the blue. It was sprung from a night time beach party in San Diego. The smog of the earlier centuries had been cleared and there were no fires that winter yet, so the sky was crystal clear. She traced dozens of near earth satellites that criss-crossed the sky above her. These were no longer allowed or needed, and they were all dead satellites. Just sitting there waiting to get sucked into the atmosphere and burn into nothing.

Later, after many hours of discussion with Chuck and others, Dinah was discouraged because of the interference with existing higher satellite networks that would inevitably occur during a cleanup. The magnetic field she proposed to make the cleanup viable didn’t exist. That mess would have to be left to a manual effort, nothing like what she had hoped. This very cleanup has not yet happened, to this day.

Her attention turned to the larger space used to travel between the worlds and her “Sweeper” concept was born.

In a nutshell, Dinah proposed to collect the remnants of space travel that litter our space with a giant magnet and then, as the “trash truck” slingshot around the Sun, drop the trash into the heart of the Solar System. No harm done and a free disposal service on the tail end. After reading her preliminary proposal, several Astronomy students took up the argument of this causing harm to the Sun, but after being escalated to senior Professors (and a few other schools), the arguments died. “No problem” the NSF said in the end, and NASA.

Dinah became obsessed with the concept and began thinking of every obstacle the plan might face technically. She considered Comets, Asteroids/Meteors and the 11 year Solar Wind cycle. She had options for each, but never considered the human obstacles; funding, marketing and sales.

Chuck left school and wound up marrying the daughter of a huge corporate CEO. He moved into a comfy life and disappeared from Dinah’s. She missed his companionship and friendship and endured several bad relationships without him.

Aidyn wandered into Dinah’s life, already established as a grad student and engaged to be married. He met Dinah though a Physics Professor they shared. The woman thought Aidyn’s business degree would mesh with Dinah’s dream, and it did beautifully. Only a bit of coaxing later, Dinah and Aidyn were out together marketing her concept to major space transport companies.

Aero-Gen bit first and provided funding for “exclusive” conceptual research, which was great. Working under a grant was way better than floating loans. The company lost interest after a year and the funding dried up, but not before Dinah had completed a simulation of how long it would take to clean the old lanes between the Earth and the Moon. She had made some friends in the super computer department who helped her out on the side.

The Moon cleanup would involve many sweeps, because the propulsion residue was not all in one place; it was always in orbit. The most productive way to clean things up was establishing a device in Earth orbit that continually faced the Moon and capturing the remnants that the sphere’s own gravitational pull didn’t already take care of. It was just short of the la-grange point between the two spheres that would best suit Dinah’s desires.

Even though the Moon doesn’t rotate because of the “tidal locking” effect, the debris and residue continue a bizarre dance in orbit around it, a strong enough magnet should be able to draw in the debris.

Aidyn made a few connections and hammered out a sales pitch for Dinah’s concept. He went into Welhaven, well recommended and supported by some friends of his family inside the company.

The pitch was hit out of the park and they had Welhaven on the hook. The company was well known for being on the leading edge of technology, leading them into huge financial success. This project was right up their alley and they pounced.

The design was all hers, but tweaked and approved by other Aerospace engineers at the Company. She couldn’t argue with them and actually learned a lot from their interactions that she had not considered before.

Since no one was going to the moon anymore, the moon orbit cleanup never happened. Welhaven had bigger ideas with bigger returns on their investment in mind for this concept, which they were now fully funding.