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Who would be a good person or persons to talk to?

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Flippant answer: Robert Heinlien.

Better answer: I don't know who to talk to, but I'm in the process of teaching myself space technology; here's a brief list of books I found useful:

• Handbook for Space Colonists, G. Harry Stine
• Third Industrial Revolution, G. Harry Stine
• Confrontation in Space, G. Harry Stine
• Entering Space, Robert Zubrin
• Indishtinguishable (sp?) From Magic, Robert Forward
• Space Travel, Ben Bova
• Starflight Handbook, Mallove and Matloff (sp?)
  

Books I am trying to find used, but haven't read yet:

• Welcome to Moonbase, Ben Bova
• How do you go to the Bathroom in Space?, (author?)
• Living in Space, G. Harry Stine
• The Case for Mars, Robert Zubrin
• The High Frontier, Gerald O'Niel
  

This used to be the most awesome site on the web, but now I get "You are not authorized to view this page:"
http://sec353.jpl.nasa.gov/apc/index.html

This book had good stuff about the space station, etc., but the author is condescending and the drawings dark purple on light purple paper:
Designs on Space, Wagner

The most important books any SF writer needs:

• Your college physics book
• Your high school algebra book
• Your college calculus book
  

I've also read a number of books on planetary science, interstellar travel, etc. The interested reader should email me.

What I mean is if, at some point in the story, the hero has to get through the airlock because someone's life depends on it (maybe to get away from the bad guy, or to rescue someone on the other side of the airlock), then how quickly he can do it will matter. Waiting while the airlock cycle takes as long as it takes could increase the suspense of the scene, in other words.

If the time it takes to cycle through the airlock has NO bearing on the outcome of the story, on the other hand, then I submit that you don't have to worry about how long it takes. Just say he went through the airlock.

Only put in the story the details that are going to make a difference in how the story works out.

If, after you've written your first draft and worked out all those important details, you feel that you want to add a few more to make the story more believable, don't spend a lot of time on those additional details or you may make the reader think they are crucial to the story and thereby confuse the reader when they don't make any difference.

It must be one Hell of a Calculus book.

Maybe you could use it once in a while, but I can hardly imagine that anything in a calc book would make it "one of the most valuable for any SF writer."

Personally, I enjoyed PIONEERING THE SPACE FRONTEIR: The Report by The National Comission on Space. First published in 1986, it gives a very serious and realistic description of near-term space objectives and the technology to achieve them.

In answer to Cameragod's question, I recently went to my local NASA base and spoke to some scientists and engineers there about SCRAM propulsion for my book. (I also met a Cosmonaut there, but he could not help me with my writing because I do not speak Russian). Generally NASA people are delighted to talk about space technology to anyone willing to listen.

Also consider local Universities. Remember, 30 years ago half the brainpower in America was working on the Apollo project. As recently as ten years ago almost every college physics, math, computer or engineering department still had one or two Apollo veterans teaching classes. Ask around and I am sure you can find someone who would love to tell you everything they know about space travel.

As for airocks in particular, the parameters on their operation are fairly broad. Cycle time would be functions of the volume of the airlock, the cross sectional area of the inlet/outlet ducts, the pressure differential between the airlock and the air storage tanks, and the viscosity of the air. Take a fluid dynamics class and your could calculate this with great precision.

Slow airlocks are easy, since there is no lower limit to the parameters. If your story needs a fast airlock, either make it small or give it enormous ducts.

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Please tell me that you are kidding, Chad. While you write science fiction, you refer to you CALCULUS textbook?????

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At the background and outline stage only.

Example:

I wish this spaceship to accelerate at 2.3 gravities to 92% of lightspeed. How long does this take from Earth's Einsteinian reference frame? How long does it take from the spaceship's reference frame? How much kinetic energy is required? How big must its antimatter storage tanks be? etc.

Those are all easily answered by using calculus to write a simple computer program to run a numerical analysis and solve Einstein's special relativity equations.

Although the only bit of information explicitly in the story would be, "How long does it take from the spaceship's reference frame?"

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Those are all easily answered by using calculus to write a simple computer program to run a numerical analysis and solve Einstein's special relativity equations.

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Um, easily? I mean, the programming part I can do in a New York minute, but the calculus part is subject to some limitations for those of us who perhaps took calculus our first year of college from a teacher who droned on and on like a sewing machine, mixed in from being sleep-deprived on account of having a really interesting social life for the first time our previously very limited little lives . . . well anyway, the point is that those sorts of people may need some pre-developed references for these sorts of things, or else may have to develop the story in such a way that it is not dependent on those details. A sad limitation, I'm the first to say.

Naturally, a properly designed hatch will resist being opened until the pressure equalizes, but the application of sufficient force in the right place (again in an emergency or by a reckless and impatient individual) can easily overcome such difficulty.

Therefore (by which I mean the possibility of a reckless and impatient individual), a properly designed airlock will normally cycle within the limits of human endurance of delay. In this respect airlocks belong to the family of technologies that actually must make life easier in order to stay in use, like this nifty little scooter that has been invented by some chap. You will notice that the specification calls for it to be capable of moving at 12 mph (in other words, a five minute mile) and going for up to 15 miles on a single charge. Since this is better than the average human is easily capable of, the thing has a certain degree of utility. If it had a maximum speed of, say, 6 mph or could only go 5 miles between charges, it would be of limited utility to any healthy adult human, since they could get off an walk faster and further with modest effort.

Many technologies, on the other hand, do things that we cannot. Lanterns, for example, provide light, whereas humans lack any organ for this purpose. Therefore people were willing to deal with the vagaries of flint and steel, and noxious smelling fumes, and burned hands (and sometimes entire cities), and so on, because there was simply no alternative until the development of electric lighting.