Back to the Moon

by Travis S. Taylor

  “I’m hanging!” Chow shouted back—welcoming the pause in the nerve-wracking launch vibrations.

  “Going for second-stage ignition,” Stetson radioed to mission control. The liquid engines of the second stage of the Ares I rocket fired, again forcing both Stetson and Chow back into their chairs at well over three gravities. There was very little piloting to be done in this phase of the flight. The computer controlled everything. Stetson monitored all the instruments just in case he disagreed with the computer and had to take over control. He was prepared, thanks to countless hours of training. But such an event was extremely unlikely. Bill kept an eye out anyway.

  “Roger that, Mercy I. Telemetry shows second-stage ignition is good,” mission control replied. Mercy I was the name given to the mission in the hours before launch. Rescuing the trapped Chinese would someday be considered to be the most technologically complex act of mercy in human history. It was likely the most risky and failure prone as well.

  “What an incredible view,” Chow exclaimed as he peered out the window to his right.

  “I know it’s a great view, Tony, but you will have time for sightseeing later. Let’s keep an eye on the control panels. You and I are covering for Charles and Helen, and we’ve got to make sure we don’t miss anything,” Bill scolded the rookie astronaut. Though they were thoroughly cross-trained in the years prior to the flight, neither had really expected to be flying to the Moon performing the duties of their missing colleagues in addition to their own.

  “Roger that” was all Chow could muster in response. Bill made a mental note to keep an eye over Tony’s shoulder for the time being until he was certain he was going to be good to go. Just another precautionary measure.

  The second stage of the Ares I lifted the Orion capsule into a circular orbit just above two hundred and fifty miles high. At that point, the second-stage separation pyrotechnics fired, blasting the liquid hydrogen and oxygen tanks away and allowing them to fall back to Earth and burn up on reentry. All that was left of the Ares I was the Orion spaceship and its two occupants. Thanks to the successful launch of the Ares V rocket, they were on track to rendezvous with the Earth Departure Stage carrying the lunar lander. After that, they would be on their way out of Earth orbit and moving toward the Moon.

  Stetson had practiced the rendezvous with the lander several times in the last few days and thousands of times over the last few months. In about four orbits it would be showtime. Ignoring his own admonition, Stetson peered out the window to gaze on the beautiful blue planet beneath him. Scanning the surface to find a recognizable reference point, he quickly realized they were approaching the east coast of Africa and the Indian Ocean.

  I never get tired of this, he thought to himself as he snapped out of his reverie and back into the reality of flying a spacecraft traveling at five miles each second. At these speeds, errors could be fatal and unforgiving. And he could not forget the error that had occurred in this stage of the mission during the test flight.

  Four orbits passed a lot faster than Bill had expected. It seemed only moments ago that they were on the launchpad and now the LIDAR was beeping away at the Altair lander recently launched by the mighty Ares V rocket. NASA had come a long way from launching rockets separated in time by at least a month or more to doing it with only hours or days in between. Designing for relative simplicity had helped a lot.

  “Houston, we have LIDAR confirmation that the range to target is twenty-five hundred meters and closing,” Bill reported. “I am disengaging the automated rendezvous and docking system now.”

  “Mercy I, please repeat,” said the monotone voice of the mission controller in faraway Houston, Texas.

  “I said, I am disengaging the AR and D system and proceeding with a manual docking.” Though choosing to turn off the automated rendezvous and docking system was within his purview as commander and pilot of the flight, it was still unusual to do so in the absence of any sort of in-flight anomaly or failure. To Stetson, the failure that had caused him to assume command of the rendezvous during the test flight was reason enough to take control now. Besides, what were they going to do about it? Abort and ask him to come home? Not likely.

  “Roger that, Mercy I. We understand that you are proceeding with a manual docking. There are some curious folks down here who want to know why. I’m sure you’ll fill them in.”

  “Will do, Houston,” Stetson confirmed.

  “All right, Bill, show me how a real astronaut flies a spaceship.” Chow smiled, not at all worried that his colleague and friend might screw up as they moved around the Earth every ninety minutes or so, waiting to collide—dock—with the rest of their lunar-exploration vehicle.

  “Just hold on, Tony. Help me keep an eye on that delta-vee,” Bill replied matter-of-factly. “Two thousand meters to target,” Bill said.

  “Relative velocity one hundred meters per second,” Chow told his pilot.

  Stetson fired the forward thrusters to reduce the relative velocity between the vehicles. Stetson’s actions were just like in the robotic mission weeks earlier, but this time there was no obvious failure. He had done it then, and, in his mind at least, he was sure to do it again. This was what Bill was born to do.

  Stetson again fired the thrusters to slow the Orion. Like the previous firings, inside the capsule they heard the BANG BANG of the thrusters. The sound was loud and annoying, but also comforting. For Stetson, it was the sound of him being in control. And he liked being in control.

  “One hundred and fifty meters to target,” Chow said.

  “One hundred meters.”

  “Twenty-five meters.”

  They both felt the bump as the Orion successfully mated with the Altair, making Mercy I a complete spacecraft. To Stetson, the resulting silence was deafening. His adrenaline was still pumping. Beads of perspiration were evident on his brow, and his ground-based physician was certainly monitoring his now-declining heart rate.

  “Houston, this is Mercy I. We’re docked and beginning the Earth departure checklist.” Stetson was not about to take a break or relax while lives on the Moon were depending upon him.

  “Tony, pull up the Earth departure checklist and let’s get started.”

  “Roger that.” Chow smiled, himself not completely relaxed, and replied in his most professional voice for the benefit of all those listening to the exchange back on Earth.

  Chapter 22

  A few orbits later, Stetson and Chow, with support from mission control in Houston, determined that all systems on Mercy I were operational and ready for Trans-Lunar Injection, or TLI. It was at this point that the liquid-fueled engines of the Ares V Earth Departure Stage, or EDS, would reignite and give them the kick they needed to get to the Moon. Using essentially the same engines that powered the second stage of the Ares I, the Ares V EDS had fired first to place the vehicle and its payload into Earth orbit. Now that the rest of the spaceship had arrived and docked, they were ready to be reignited.

  As with all phases of the mission so far, with the exception of the docking maneuver, the TLI was controlled by the onboard computer. Stetson and Chow watched with excitement and trepidation as the clock counted down to engine start. They were excited about their journey to the Moon but simultaneously worried at what they might find there. The Chinese crew was now experiencing the very cold lunar night, and no one could be sure there would be anyone left to rescue once Mercy I arrived.

  With only a few minutes to go before the engines were to ignite, Chow reached up and turned off the radio transmitter so as to keep cabin conversation from being broadcast home.

  “Bill, have you thought about what we are going to do if we don’t find anyone alive up there?”

  “I try not to think about it. The Chinese ambassador requested that we bring the bodies home. But I’m not sure that would be the right thing to do. I think, if they are dead, that we should bury them on the Moon. They knew the risks, and if it were me, I would want to have the Moon be my final resting place. I’m n
ot sure my wife would agree, but then again, she might. You?”

  “I don’t know. It’s a shame we didn’t have time to really plan for that contingency. I mean, if we bury them there, shouldn’t they have some sort of marker or something?”

  “Tony, these people are going to make it. We’re going to get there, and we’re going to get them home. No more of this dead and dying shit. We’ve got a rescue mission to make happen!”

  “Right. I guess that’s the only way to think about it until we get different data,” Tony replied. “You got it.” With that, he turned the cabin’s transmitter back on.

  The TLI burn was anticlimactic. Compared with launch and even the orbital-insertion burn, the boost that put them on a path to the Moon was fairly mild. The engines fired, changing the spacecraft’s roughly circular orbit around the Earth to an elliptical one with its highest point at the radius of the Moon’s orbit. If one were to look at the point in space at which the spacecraft would reach the Moon’s orbit at that very moment, then all that would be found would be empty space. The Moon would not yet have arrived there in its own orbit about the Earth. The boost was timed so that the spaceship would arrive at a point in space at precisely the same time that the Moon would arrive, allowing them to rendezvous and then land. Orbital mechanics was all about where to arrive and when.

  For the next few hours, Stetson and Chow performed various maintenance and preparatory jobs, finished their evening meal, and settled into their wall-mounted sleeping bags for a well-deserved night’s rest. Neither felt the least little bit of space sickness. Stetson had experienced it on his previous flights, with less severity on each subsequent flight. For this flight, he hardly noticed it. Chow appeared to be one of those rare people who was unaffected by space sickness.

  Chow struggled into his sleeping bag, taking comfort that the recirculating fans were humming in the background. He didn’t want to fall asleep, have the fans fail, and suffocate on his own exhaled carbon dioxide. With no external forces or wind, it might be easy for an astronaut to suffocate during sleep, with a cloud of stationary carbon dioxide accumulating around his head. This, like many other “gotchas,” was well understood by spacecraft designers. Chow did manage to get this thought out of his mind as he fell into a fitful sleep.

  Gazing out onto the gray lunar surface, Chow was stranded in the lunar lander, waiting to die. He was alone. In his thoughts he was asking, Where is Stetson? Why isn’t he here? He knew that Bill had come to the Moon with him on the rescue mission, but he was nowhere to be found. His panic began to increase until it finally reached a boiling point as he spoke to his wife, telling her goodbye from the Moon, when the alarm sounded and jolted him awake.

  Momentarily disoriented, Chow looked around, trying to figure out where he was. For a moment he thought he was, like in his dream, on the Moon. He then concluded that he must be at home in his bed—no, that wasn’t right, either. Now fully awake, hearing the blaring of the klaxon, he realized he was on the Orion spacecraft on his way to the Moon. He looked quickly over at Bill Stetson, who was also being jolted awake.

  “Bill, what’s going on?” he asked nervously.

  “I have no idea.” Stetson quickly unzipped his bag and didn’t even bother to cover himself as he floated forward to check the status boards and find out why the alarm was sounding.

  Chow unzipped and joined Stetson. Just as they arrived, the radio came to life.

  “Mercy I, this is Houston. We’re seeing a problem with one of your solar arrays. Are you seeing it as well?”

  “Uh, checking it,” Stetson relied. “Copy that, Houston—we see it. One appears to have stopped tracking the sun.”

  “That’s what telemetry is showing us, over.”

  The solar arrays, mounted on the Orion near its base, provided most of the power required to run its systems. They were mounted on gimbals that allowed them to continuously track the sun so as to maintain the ability to generate a consistent amount of power. Since the Orion was moving toward the Moon while it was still orbiting the Earth, albeit on an ever-increasing altitude orbit, and since the whole spacecraft was slowly spinning to equalize the heat input from the sun in its so-called barbeque roll, the solar arrays were constantly moving to keep the sun in view.

  “Batteries are kicking in,” noted Chow as he looked at the status board. With the array not pointing at the Sun, the power generated would drop, requiring the onboard batteries to come online in order to maintain the ship’s systems, including life support.

  “Houston, one of the arrays appears to have seized and is not moving,” Stetson said. He looked at Chow and then back at the status screen.

  Chow could see that Stetson was concerned. Without maximum power from the arrays, the ship would have to rely on batteries to make up the difference. There was enough power from the batteries to allow the craft to swing by the Moon and return to Earth—this was one of the contingencies that the Disaster Team had noted and required them to train for. The Disaster Team were the guys who looked at all the possible failures and then wrote training scenarios for the astronauts to practice and learn from. This was one of them.

  The problem with letting this real-life problem be resolved as it was during training was that they would not have enough power to go into lunar orbit and land. Without landing they could not rescue the stranded Chinese taikonauts. If they followed the book, the mission would be over. They would survive, and all the Chinese would die.

  Chow momentarily imagined himself as one of the Chinese taikonauts, stranded, cold, and waiting to die. It was too much like his dream, and he quickly shook himself away from the daydream and said, “Bill, we can’t let this happen. We can’t let those people die.”

  “Damn right we can’t. But right now I sure don’t know what we can do about it. While I come up with something, let’s run the drill.”

  “Makes sense to me,” Tony agreed.

  “Houston. We’re going to power down the array-control system and restart. I’m pulling up the reboot procedure now. Do you concur?”

  “We concur. Reboot will take approximately twenty minutes. We’ll be running the simulations in parallel. If we come up with something you need to know, we’ll be in touch.”

  “Roger that. Mercy I out.” With that, Stetson began reviewing the manual restart procedure for the solar-array pointing system.

  Chow hadn’t trained for this, so he decided it would be best to step back—float back, as it were—and let Bill do his job. He went to the window and looked out into space. As the Orion spun, he caught sight of the Earth, which was still, by far, the largest object in view, and only fleeting glimpses of the Moon. He took a deep breath and waited.

  Twenty minutes later, Chow watched Stetson complete the sequence that would completely power down the solar-array pointing system and then restart it. Anyone familiar with computers would have been in agreement with what he was trying to do—reboot.

  Chow heard nothing to indicate that the reboot sequence was complete. He only heard his own breathing, some mumbled curses from Stetson, and a few status requests from the radio. He halfway expected to hear the sound of a large machine grinding to a halt and then restarting. Instead, there was just the silence of the crew compartment and the recirculating fans.

  “Damn it!” Stetson said, pounding his fist against the console. The reacting force started him spinning in the opposite direction. He quickly stabilized himself with his other hand and planted a foot against his couch to hold him still. “Houston, the reboot is complete. No change. The array is not moving.”

  No sooner had those words left Stetson’s lips than Chow’s heart sank.

  “We show the same on our boards down here, Bill. We’re still looking at options.”

  Stetson pushed back from the console and floated to where Chow was perched.

  “Tony, I have an idea. What if the gimbal just needs a good kick to get it moving again?”

  “EVA?”

  “Yes. I think I’m going to
suit up, go out, and give it a kick. We’ve got to get it moving.”

  Stetson had that look that Tony recognized so well. It was that look that intimidated almost everyone who came into his presence. It was the get out of my way, I have something important to do look. And Chow didn’t feel like getting in his way. He replied to his commander and friend, “I’ll get the procedure pulled up, and then we’ll get in our suits.” Both men had to wear their suits, because the Orion didn’t have an airlock. When the door opened to the vacuum of space, all the air in the crew cabin would vent. That meant that everyone in the cabin had to wear their spacesuits for an EVA, even if they weren’t the ones going outside.

  Chow learned in his very early training that getting into his spacesuit wasn’t like putting on a business suit. Each suit was specially designed or modified for a particular astronaut. Chow had his suit; Stetson had his own. The suits were kept aft and were at least readily accessible. Having only two people in a crew cabin designed to accommodate four was a plus—they had room to move around while they were getting their suits on.

  Mission control had readily agreed with Stetson’s EVA plan, though they didn’t give the plan much chance of success. Some engineer quoted a thirty-five percent probability of success during the discussion, and Chow had to wonder how in the world they had come up with such a number. He thought to himself, Why isn’t it thirty percent? Or forty percent? Why thirty-five? And then he concluded that they really didn’t know. The engineer was just quoting some computer model that he probably didn’t really understand anyway.

  Forty minutes later, Stetson and Chow were suited up and ready to begin the EVA. Both men had checked and rechecked each other’s suits, all according to procedure, and had “safed” any loose materials within the Orion. Once the atmosphere was removed from the Orion, Stetson would be able to open the door and begin his EVA. The last thing they wanted was for some vital piece of hardware to float out the door with him.