Prologue: The Present
Jaipal Joshi, the Prime Minister of India, now officially known as Bharat, was concentrating on piloting the spacecraft in Moon’s orbit. He was constantly in touch with the control tower at New Sriharikota, on the Moon. He was deftly adjusting the altitude, attitude and speed as per instructions from the control tower. His mission was to place a one meter diameter Super magnet in a carefully predetermined elliptical orbit around Moon. This magnet was to be the “seed” of the “Magnetic Core” of 2000 meters diameter to be formed eventually. The idea was to keep on adding similar magnets of diameter of 10 centimeters until a huge ball of 2000 meters diameter was formed. To prevent these magnets from being be “welded” together because of vacuum of the space, they were given a thin coat PVC. This 2 kilometer Core was to be enveloped in two hemispheres of “Miracle Superconducting Resin”; to form a sphere of 2020 meters. Prime Minister Jaipal’s co-pilot was his son Jagdeep. He was a strapping young man in early twenties. He had inherited his mother’s skin color and fine chiseled features. He was a qualified Electrical and Mechanical engineer as well as a trained Astronaut.
Jaipal Joshi was in the process of laying the “foundation Magnet” as it were, in capacity of the Prime Minister of India. Since it was his project he chose to actually place the Magnet in orbit instead of pressing a button ceremoniously from Earth. His wife Dr. Srividya, the daughter of a African beauty Queen and an Indian Diplomat, was also present there in the same craft. Dr. Srividya was looking at the two men in her life with pride.
The countdown to launch had started then. Jagdeep pulled a lever down which swung the top open fully as the countdown reached “Zero”, Jaipal dropped the craft a few meters and reduced the speed. Immediately the station on the Moon started tracking the Magnet and relayed to Jaipal a successful separation. Jaipal then handed over the controls to Santosh Vishwakarma, who was the designer of the craft “Chandrayaan” and his co-pilot young Captain Angad Singh, son of Surjeet Singh. Jaipal and Jagdeep together with Srividya then retired to their state room. They had more than 24 hours to kill before the 12 similar crafts carrying the 10 centimeter Super Magnets arrived from Earth.
Jagdeep asked his father “Baba, We have successfully placed the magnet in orbit. How do we proceed from here, what are the next steps?”
Jaipal replied “When the 12 crafts from the earth arrive with the smaller magnets they will deposit a layer of small magnets evenly on the Magnet which we have placed in the orbit. Then they will repeat the process until they make a huge magnet with a diameter of 2000 meters. Several dozen trips would have to be undertaken to accomplish the job.”
“OK say we now have a huuuuge 2000 meter magnet. What next?” persisted Jagdeep.
“Not so ‘huuuuge’ on a cosmic scheme of things. It would appear ‘huuuuge’ to you but in Cosmos it would be less than a mere speck of dust is for us.” Jaipal replied patiently “Here on, we enter uncharted territory. We have broad plans but we will have to fine tune them as we go along. At present several scientists are working on them at Saptarshi HQ in Saptarshi Valley.”
“So what are the broad plans?” Jagdeep’s youth did want to know everything NOW.
“The theory is that the ‘Magnet Core’ being spherical in shape and in the Space, will start rotating on its axis. From the rotation we will know the ‘Equator’ and the ‘Poles’ of the sphere. We have plans to envelop the entire core with two hemispheres made out of Superconducting Miracle Resin joining each other at the ‘Equator’, this will form the outer sphere of the Core. With coil winding embedded in the hemispheres the rotating Core will act as ‘Rotor’ to the ‘Stator’ of the hemispheres and the whole will be then a huge ‘Dynamo’, generating electricity. The electricity thus generated can be used for various applications and activities on the surface.
To this Outer sphere there are plans of attaching 600 kilometers long, 30 meters diameter, 4 pipes intersecting each other at 90° angle, along the ‘Equator’
The space on both sides of these pipes is to be filled by dirt, stones and boulders obtained from crushing the asteroids which are to be towed in, from the asteroid belt.
An asteroid of suitable size is to be selected, landed upon, holes drilled and Agasti Rocket engines attached. The remote controlled Rockets would then bring the asteroids into the vicinity of the Moon. Then they are to be landed very softly on the surface of the Moon, crushed and sorted, for valuable ores. The remaining debris will be used to add layer by layer on the outside of the superconducting envelope of the core. This addition of layers to be continued until a 450 Kilometer thick substrate was formed.
After this terraforming will be done, along the ‘Equator’ about 500 Kilometer wide ‘land’ will be ‘made’ by adding additional layers of dirt from Earth, Moon & Asteroid debris. At both the ‘poles’ about 400 Kilometer on all sides it is planned to have a depression of about 10 to 20 Kilometer deeper than the ‘land’ at ‘Equator’. To this depression ice mined from the Asteroids, comets & Moon is to be dumped to form the ‘sea’ or ‘ocean’ so that about 100 Kilometer is to be left sloping between the ‘land and the ‘seas’ on both sides of the ‘Equator’ to allow high tides which will form due to the combined gravitational effect of the Earth and the Moon. The land along the Equator is to be divided into several zones such as habitat, forests, agricultural, industrial etc.
Remember the length of the 30 meter diameter ‘pipes’ ? It was 600 Kilometer, so 100 odd Kilometer of ‘pipe’ length or height would be remaining. The plan is to envelop the whole body made till now with geodesic sphere made of toughest material at a height of 80 Kilometer. At the tip of every ‘pipe’ will be placed ‘Ajit Shield’, which would provide double layer of force field, capable of stopping anything such as small and medium sized asteroids, enemy missiles etc.”
“Wait a minute, what is Ajit Shield? How, when it was invented and by whom?” Jagdeep interrupted
“‘Ajit Shield’ meaning Invincible Shield was coincidentally invented by a man named Ajit Singh. It is a long story as regards How and when part of your question, it’s a long story and I would not know where to start from.”
“The Beginning is usually considered right point to start from.” Srividya observed philosophically with a smile on her face.
“Yes, Baba; I would like to know everything from the beginning, and as it is we have more than 24 hours in which your story can be completed.”
Jaipal reclined his chair’s backrest, closed his eyes and started talking “I clearly remember the day, it was 2 October about thirty years ago. I can visualize each and every event since that day. It was the day that changed mine, Ashutosh’s and Dakshesh’s life dramatically. You see, 2 October being a holiday, the three of us had gone for a short trip……..”
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