Printing Orion

Tears don't fall in space.

No, they gather in a pool around the eyeball, sometimes crossing the bridge of the nose to soak the other eye, other times conglomerating on the cheek or the eyelid. The ball of liquid then becomes bigger and bigger as more tears spill out, until it finally breaks free of the eye area and floats around like a bubble.

Sage May knew all this in theory but she was in for a few surprises anyway when she experienced it for herself.

For one thing, the globule of tears stung her eyes. Tears by their very nature should soothe, not hurt. But deep space was unpredictable that way — what seemed like scientific fact on Earth did not always hold true in this cold, unforgiving environment.

For another, as soon as the liquid ball broke free of her eye, it was picked up by the dehumidifier in her EMU space suit, to be recycled into drinking water. There was little chance she'd literally drown in her own tears after all.

So tears didn't fall — and existed for only a fraction of time — in space. But that didn't make her reasons for shedding them any less valid.

"This is Commander Sage May of the Orion MPCV Exploration Mission 11. The mission has failed. I repeat, the mission has failed..."

She spoke shakily into the microphone inside her helmet, detailing the events of the catastrophe. How the spacecraft's propulsion system and service module were blown off by a micro-meteorite that had punctured and explosively depressurized the cabin. How all three crew members were lost. How Sage, the sole survivor, had 19 hours to live.

A blue light blinked in the upper-right quadrant of her helmet, indicating her oxygen levels. No, make that 18.

Fresh balls of tears gathered in the corners of her eyes as she listed down the names of the Orion-11 mission crew members, paying tribute and thanking them for their service to the country and to humanity. By the time Earth received her message, they would all have been dead for nine years.

"...and please tell Annie I love her, in case I haven't said it enough," she continued. "It's been an honor and a privilege working with you, Houston, and my only regret is that I couldn't complete this mission for you. This is Commander May, signing off."

Sage pressed a button on the chest of her suit, switching off her communications link. She looked around the crew module, their living quarters, which was disconcertingly devoid of activity. Four green sleeping bags were tethered to the sleep cabins and an assortment of pipes, wires and equipment jutted out and ran all along the white walls. Without the ion thrusters propelling it and the service module regulating its life-support system, what was once the hub of the spacecraft was now nothing more than deep space junk.

Sage's space suit was the only thing keeping her alive, and even that would give out soon.

What could she do in 18 hours with half a spacecraft? Not much, she reckoned. She floated over to the far end of the module and switched on a monitor affixed to the wall. At least the lights and the computers still worked. Maybe she could while the hours away watching her favorite childhood movies, the ones that inspired her to become an astronaut and aerospace engineer... the same ones, then, that inevitably led to this tragedy. She frowned. Perhaps she should just sleep. 

She laid back down in her suit, resolving to meet death as calmly as she could. She took in the silence and the ever-curious sensation of weightlessness, something she'd never really gotten used to despite having spent most of her adult life in zero-G.

She was about to drift off when out of the corner of her eye, she saw something move. Her heart jumped in her chest.

It was the GE laser-powered 3D printer, which the Orion crew used to print tools. It was enclosed in an airtight fiberglass box half a meter in length and bolted to a panel in the wall above her, and its laser print head was moving rapidly in a circular motion. A few inches beneath the print head, on the surface of the print bed, a trail of spark created and fused layer upon layer of a yet flat-looking object. Direct Laser Metal Melting, they called it.