Mars Quake
Construction Work Resumes Reporting by Patric Trembly
Despite last month’s minor quake, beneath Delta Dome, structural engineers have given the okay to tunnelling teams to go ahead with excavation work being done on the primary access tunnel from Charlie Dome through to the newly refurbished Delta Dome. As readers already know, the buildings in Delta’s ‘Desert’ city are made from fused sand, a cheap and plentiful building material up here, on Mars. And just as well, as many of Delta’s residential home units were cracked and damaged after the seismic disturbance.
Peter Lao, the unofficial worker’s chairman of Charlie Dome’s China Town, says he is please that work has been restarted and hopes that work can be finished in time for the up coming Luna New Year celebrations, next month.
Engineer, Lars Sorrenson, was quoted as saying while it was all well and good that the tunnelling was going ahead, he was angry that erstwhile Governor, Lily Kwan, had not followed through on his recommendations on reinforcing the polycarb structure of the topside access tube between Charlie and Delta, and that another substantial quake could damage it irreparably. And, he implied, maybe the Delta structure itself, which went unscathed in last month’s rattle.
Sorrenson, however, was loathe to go on record to that effect as he, personally, hadn’t been on the survey team during the refurbishment of Delta, just the topside access tube. He did, however, confirm, his team were now concentrating on surveying the ‘H’ wing hydroponics gardens' structure for signs of damage.
Meanwhile, scut talk about the access tubes, in general, is all but unanimous on the vIP channels, saying Kwan herself is siding with the Government spokesperson for UN Secretary Heiko Maas of Martian Affairs, on the removal of the so-called expensive to maintain access tubes, in favour of going underground.
That said, will we all be going underground, or will some of us find ourselves still stuck, topside, battling the inevitable dust storms and quakes, I wonder?
Be sure to check out the Editor’s Op-Ed piece on this and so much more, in the coming weeks.
#climate #environment #topstories