Isso soa como o romance de Outward Bound de Juanita Coulson, o segundo de sua série Children of the Stars, cuja série pode ter sido perguntada aqui antes em:
(Veja essa resposta para uma foto da capa do primeiro livro.)
Veja uma breve sinopse da revisão do goodreads.com :
Quol-Bez, alien ambassador on Earth, was offering planets, other stars to man - if man could reach them! Oh, the aliens had faster-than-light travel. But if men wanted that they must find it for themselves. And without it, the nearest such world lay a lifetime or more away.
Brenna Saunder's aunt and uncle had died in an experimental ship, seeking for that way. And now Brenna was devoting her life and her share of the vast Saunder family fortune and prestige to solving the problem of such faster-than-light travel.
She had lost her lover to a hiber-ship, one in which those who dared would spend the years of travel in hibernation. Now she watched another of her group try and end in disaster.
Finally there was time and means for only one more attempt - one more chance for man to find his destiny among the stars!
Grimly, Brenna buckled herself into the pilot's seat of the final experimental ship and reached for the ready button!
[Minhas desculpas por identificar erroneamente qual livro da série em minha resposta original.]
Aqui estão algumas citações que podem refrescar sua memória. Da página 177 no capítulo 10, discutindo Morgan (aquele queimado no acidente):
Morgan was lying on his stera-gel chair-bed, listening to a ComLink broadcast. He had graduated from the tank of glop some time ago, but he still required stera-gel to guard against infection and support his syntha skin in Mars' gravity.
e na página seguinte, a menção específica de metalurgia:
"That was an interesting readout you got on number five graviton baffle. The peak stresses obviously hit there first," Morgan said. "The field instability links right up with the hull material flaw. It's all going to tie together."
That was practically an oration for Morgan. Brenna started with pleased surprise. "You think so? I do, too. But you're better at metallurgy analyses. Yuri agrees. George and Hector and the kids are halfway convinced the trouble's in the power plant. Even Tumaini said we could solve everything if we just 'borrowed' Quol-Bez's ship and took her engines..."