“The tabloids were actually right!” Ms. Phillips laughed. “Oh my, that was insensitive of me. Is Mr., uh, Smith listening? Please tell him I didn't mean to make light of his loss. I'm sure it must have been very hard.”
“Yes,” Mr. Smith said. “I miss my wife.”
Oh no! He mustn't start thinking about his wife right now. He'll be of no help at all. I unplugged his connection to Ms. Phillips. “Mr. Smith,” I whispered, pointing at the display, “What does that light mean?”
He stared at the panel seen through Ms. Phillips’ helmet camera. “The LM fuel tank pressure is low. Must have a leak. Better take off soon.”
Good. He was back on track. I plugged him back in. I saw Ms. Pressa smiling at me.
The capcom was talking to Ms. Phillips, I supposed answering a question about how Mr. Smith had gotten involved in this rescue. “Mr. Smith heard about your situation on the news and contacted us to see if he could help. We had him fly a simulator and update the model for use in the autopilot. He's standing by to speak with you.”
“I can't believe this!” Ms. Phillips said. “I must be out of my mind or talking to a ghost.”
“I'm not a ghost,” Mr. Smith said. “And you won't be either, as long as you stay calm and follow directions.” He paused in thought. I kept my finger on the plug just in case he changed subjects. “Once you reach orbit,” Mr. Smith said, “You'll just coast right to where the command module can get you.”
“Command module?” Ms. Phillips repeated.
“He means the cargo ship,” the capcom said.
“Oh, of course. I understand,” Ms. Phillips said.
They went through some preflight checks of switch positions and reviewed the procedures. Mr. Smith seemed calm and in control, every bit the old Apollo astronaut.
The liftoff was right on time. Ms. Phillips yelped when the engine fired, but Mr. Smith soothingly told her that was nominal (a word he used instead of “normal"). “You'll go straight up for about ten seconds,” he reminded her. “Then you'll pitch over and move horizontally with respect to the lunar surface. You should have a great view out the window.”
The image of the cockpit on the TV jiggled up and down in response to the engine. No sound penetrated through the airless cockpit. The view out the window changed from black sky to lunar gray as the ship nosed down.
“Guidance, report,” the flight director demanded.
“Flight, cg shifted at pitch over.”
A second later we heard Ms. Phillips shout, “Dr. Canterbury!” The pitch over had thrown the injured man out of his harness. One arm smacked Ms. Phillips across her faceplate.
I involuntarily winced and sucked in a breath, though she was perfectly fine inside her helmet.
Mr. Smith spoke softly. “Ms. Phillips, grab his wrist. When the ascent engine shuts down, he'll float right to you.”
“Flight, engine shutdown.”
“Trajectory report,” the flight director ordered.
“The computer didn't fully compensate for the cg shift. We'll need a correction from the RCS.”
“Mr. Smith, stand by for remote ops.”
“Roger, Flight,” Mr. Smith said.
We saw Ms. Phillips pull on Dr. Canterbury's wrist, rotating him so that he was facing her. She reached to pull the harness around him.
Dr. Canterbury's eyes opened. He jerked and hit the hand controller. The two historians tumbled. Out the window, the gray lunar surface was replaced by darkness and then surface again in rapid succession. They're spinning!
Mr. Smith pulled the hand controller to one side and released it. After a short delay, I noted that the view rotated more slowly.
“Flight, Guidance. LM is in stable BBQ mode.”
“Nice flying, Mr. Smith,” the capcom said. “My guy in the simulator says you used about half the fuel he would have.”
“She's not out of the woods yet,” he said. “Look at the disk key.”
Huh? There were no woods on the Moon. And what kind of a disk had a key? Click. I yanked the plug from my laptop.
Mr. Smith continued talking. “Apo loon is . . .”
“Sorry, I think we've lost our link to the spacecraft,” I said, looking at Dr. Winkler. He in turn was looking at Ms. Pressa.
Ms. Pressa was texting quietly on her phone. “Communications restored,” she declared.
I took the hint and plugged Mr. Smith back in. A text message appeared on my laptop saying, “'Not out of the woods’ means ‘not out of trouble.’ ‘DSKY’ is a display in the LM.” None of that was nonsense? My face burned with embarrassment. I had a lot to learn.
The guidance team reported that they had the orbital correction calculated, including the additional jet firings. The flight director gave them the go to have the automatic system command the jets to make the necessary corrections. “Capcom, warn Ms. Phillips that there will be jet firings.”
Ms. Phillips got Dr. Canterbury secured in his harness and tightened her own. His eyes had closed again. Surgeon feared that the acceleration, though gentle compared to an Earth launch, might have acerbated his injuries.
After the maneuver, the trajectory plot showed that the LM and “Pac-Man” cargo ship would rendezvous on schedule. Capcom informed a relieved Ms. Phillips that all was well.
“Except she's going to crash,” Mr. Smith said.
What? I rested my fingers on the headset connection.
“Mr. Smith, Flight speaking. The trajectory looks good to us. Why do you think she is going to crash?”
“I told you, look at the DSKY. You only raised apolune from 40.1 to 40.6. That's too low for the CSM.”
A text appeared on my laptop saying, “Apolune is the highest point in a lunar orbit. CSM = command and service module.” I looked up at Ms. Pressa and nodded to let her know I understood. I pulled my hand away from the connection.
Mr. Smith continued. “You need forty-two nautical miles or the CSM can't get to her in time.”
“Nautical miles? What kind of dumb unit is that?” I blurted, and then covered my mouth. I hadn't meant to say that outloud for the whole team to hear! Ms. Pressa frowned, I assumed at my outburst, and texted furiously. Nothing showed up on my laptop, though.
“Break, break,” Capcom interrupted. “Lunar Ops reports the LM is out of range by about ten kilometers!”
Mr. Smith was right?
“Guidance, Flight, we've uncovered the problem. The LM software uses nautical miles and the corrections we made assumed statute miles. We're off by a factor of 1.15.”
Ms. Pressa rose from her seat and paced back and forth. Not out of the woods, indeed!
“Guidance, get me the right numbers for Mr. Smith to fly to. Capcom, inform Ms. Phillips we'll be doing another maneuver.”
* * * *
Precious time ticked by while the LM rapidly approached the point of no return. The trajectory map refreshed with a new image showing the LM arcing up but not quite reaching the intersect point with the cargo ship. Unless it changed course fast, the historians were doomed. If I hadn't cut off Mr. Smith's comments earlier, would they have discovered the problem sooner? Was this all my fault? Maybe I didn't have the right stuff to be a pilot after all.
Lunar Ops reported that she had moved the cargo ship to a slighter lower orbit that would help close the gap. But it also increased her speed. That seemed counterproductive to me until I saw on the plot that the intersection point was farther around the Moon than predicted earlier. Orbital mechanics was confusing!
Finally Guidance reported they had the commands ready. The flight director said to execute them. If anything went wrong, we would know in a few minutes. If so, we might need Mr. Smith to fly to the numbers manually.
Ms. Pressa approached and held up her phone. I heard the shutter sound of a camera snapping a photo.
“What do you think you're doing?” Mr. Smith shouted. Ms. Pressa looked puzzled. “Just taking your picture, Grandpa,” she explained.
Uh-oh. He didn't like to be calle
d that!
“Grandpa! You didn't think I was too old at the bar the other night!” He squinted at her badge. “P . . . R . . . E . . . S . . . S . . . You're a reporter! Get out!” He pushed her back with the heel of his big left hand. Her phone clattered across the floor, and she fell back into a chair.
The security guard from the door seemed to appear out of thin air, “Director, are you okay?” he asked, lifting her to her feet.
Director? Of what?
“I'm okay, Harry,” Ms. Pressa insisted, smoothing her suit jacket. “There's just been a misunderstanding.” Dr. Winkler handed her phone to Harry. “Escort me to the door, please.”
“Whatever you say, ma'am,” the big guy replied, glaring at Mr. Smith.
“Paparazzi,” Mr. Smith cursed.
Dr. Winkler poured Mr. Smith a glass of water from a pitcher on a nearby table. He handed it to him and assured him that everything was under control. I'd never seen the doctor so rattled. Having a patient almost flatten his great-granddaughter was rather upsetting!
The doctor met my eyes and then darted his glance to and from the water glass. I understood that he had added something to the water. Then he said, “Sir, I suggest that you rest your feet while we wait for communications to come back.”
“Are they in blackout?” Mr. Smith asked.
“Yes,” I agreed, holding the plugs to his headset and the speaker out of view. All of Mission Control had heard his outburst at Ms. Pressa. I hoped they didn't realize that she really was his great-granddaughter. Even though Pressa was probably her married name, some enterprising person could use it to figure out Mr. Smith's identity.
Mr. Smith gulped the water like he was taking a shot of scotch. He settled onto the stool, glancing down at his feet. “Man, I hate these stiff military shoes. When I retire, I'm only going to wear slippers!”
“Your mother won't like that,” I quipped.
He smiled. “No, she won't!” he agreed. “And that's another reason I'm going to wear slippers!” He laughed.
I was dying to know what was going on with Ms. Phillips. The trajectory display on the TV was blinking. In all the commotion, the maneuver had come and gone. He couldn't do any harm now.
“We're getting the signal back,” I said, and plugged Mr. Smith and the speaker back in. Guidance reported that he was waiting for Lunar Ops to confirm target acquisition.
Mr. Smith surprised me when he calmly said, “Ms. Phillips, quit worrying about the trajectory for a minute. Look out the window. You owe it to yourself.”
I wasn't sure if Mission Control had let this message through until Ms. Phillips said, “Seeing the Earth above the desolate Moon reminds me of just how precious life is. I'll never forget this moment.”
“Me either,” Mr. Smith said.
“Me either,” I whispered.
Lunar Ops reported target acquired! I sagged onto my stool, suddenly realizing how tired I was. Some fancy remote flying on the part of Lunar Ops completed the rendezvous. The cargo ship scooped the LM into its wide bay, and cheers erupted in Mission Control. I gave Mr. Smith a high five, and Dr. Winkler patted him firmly on the back. “Where are the cigars?” Mr. Smith asked.
“Sorry, but this is a no-smoking area,” Dr. Winkler said.
“Oh,” Mr. Smith said, obviously disappointed.
A text appeared on my laptop. “Good call on the nautical miles—you saved two lives. Sorry about the photo. Forgot blackmail incident still upsets him. I'll be in touch. Thanks again.” She signed it, “R. E. Pressa, Director of Knowledge Capture, Department of Homeland Security. Knowledge Capture?
After the cargo hold was pressurized, Ms. Phillips was able to take off her spacesuit and help Dr. Canterbury out of his. The flight surgeon did a remote exam. Turned out that Dr. Canterbury didn't have a concussion. His suit had been damaged and he was suffering from carbon-dioxide poisoning. If they hadn't done the direct ascent, he would have died. Ms. Phillips hooked him up to oxygen and settled in to wait for the Russian rescue ship to rendezvous with them. Mr. Smith's advice no longer needed, Mission Control cut our connection. We were now in listen-only mode.
Dr. Winkler escorted a sleepy Mr. Smith to the men's room while I moved the chairs back to their proper places in the lounge.
Just before I unplugged the speaker box, I heard Ms. Phillips thank the team in Houston for sending the cargo ship and especially for recruiting Mr. Smith to help her. “I have dedicated my life to preserving the history of space,” she said. “Yet today when I was faced with having to recreate that history, I realized just how little I actually know. I now have a new level of understanding and respect for the courage and skill of the Apollo astronauts. I hope that I'll have the opportunity to thank Mr. Smith in person when I get back.”
I knew that wasn't going to happen. By the time she got back, he'd already have forgotten all about this day.
But I wouldn't. I would remember for him. And tomorrow, I'd check out every e-book and disk I could find at the library and read all about the Apollo program and the amazing men who first walked on the Moon. We'd watch that Apollo movie with Tom Hanks, and fly simulations together. Though Mr. Smith might soon forget even his real name, and wouldn't remember Ms. Phillips next week, my memories of this time with him would be as long lasting as his footprints on the Moon.
Copypright © 2010 Marianne J. Dyson
Dedicated to the victims of Alzheimer's and their caregivers, with special remembrance of the first director of Johnson Space Center, Dr. Robert Gilruth, my father-in-law, Ralph Dyson, and my grandfather, George Canterbury.
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* * *
Reader's Department: THE ALTERNATE VIEW: BUBBLES OF BROKEN SYMMETRY
by John G. Cramer
Our universe is a system with broken symmetries. In the very early universe, the strong, weak, and electromagnetic forces were indistinguishable. At some point as things cooled off, the symmetry between these forces broke and the three forces went their separate ways to become the three very different forces that, along with gravity, operate in our universe.
Even today, at the microscopic scale standard symmetries are usually present between antimatter and matter (charge-conjugation invariance or “C-symmetry") and between the two directions of time (time-reversal invariance or “T-symmetry"). Matter and antimatter interactions are subject to the same forces and look the same. Fundamental interactions look the same when run forward or backwards in time.
However, we know that in the early universe some unknown processes broke the C-symmetry and slightly favored the production of matter over antimatter, leading to an excess of matter over antimatter of about one part per billion. As the universe evolved and cooled and after almost all of the matter-antimatter annihilation was over, we were left with the surviving matter residue: lots of protons and electrons and almost no antiprotons and positrons. That broken C-symmetry of the early universe has made possible our matter-based world, and indeed our very existence.
Further, despite the time-reversal invariance or T-symmetry of most of the fundamental interactions at the microscopic scale, our universe presents us with a built-in “arrow of time” that is quite obvious but has unknown origins. Think about a movie that can be run either forward or backwards showing some event. If the movie shows the collision and interactions of fundamental particles, in almost all cases (see below) there are no clues as to whether the movie was running forwards or backwards. But think of a movie showing some macroscopic event, an egg hitting the floor or a high dive into a swimming pool. The backward-running version would be quite obvious, and would seem unphysical and contrary to experience. Eggs do not gather their liquid parts, assemble a shell around them, and leap upward. Water waves do not converge in a swimming pool to propel a diver up in the air. The arrow of time, at the psychological level, is also obvious. We can remember the past but not the future. We can take actions that can change the future but not the past. The broken T-symmetry of the macroscopic world also
makes our existence possible. Evolution cannot happen in a time-symmetric world.
In addition to these symmetries applying to charge and time, there is a third symmetry, the symmetry of space. Just as T-symmetry is concerned with the reversal of the time direction, parity invariance or “P-symmetry” is concerned with phenomena that may change or appear different when the three space coordinate axes are reversed. When you view an object in a mirror, the image you see has a reversed coordinate axis in the direction perpendicular to the plane of the mirror. This is roughly equivalent to reversing all three spatial directions. In both cases the letters on a page are reversed, clockwise rotations become counterclockwise, and right-handed screw threads become left-handed screw threads.
Until the 1950s, all physicists assumed that parity was a good symmetry, that all physical processes looked the same in mirror image as they did when viewed directly. Then the first blow to symmetry preservation arrived. It was discovered that for the weak interaction, the physical force that can change neutrons to protons or vice versa in the radioactive beta-decay process, there was a massive violation of P-symmetry or parity invariance. Spin-oriented nuclei emitted electrons in a preferred direction. Neutrinos are always emitted with a left-handed (clockwise) spin if viewed from the front. One could watch a movie of a beta decay process and tell whether or not the images had been mirror-reversed. For the weak force, nature had an intrinsic “handedness.”
It was noted in studying violations of P-symmetry, however, that this lack of mirror symmetry was reversed for beta-decaying systems involving the emission of antimatter positrons instead of matter electrons. Antineutrinos are always emitted with a right-handed (counterclockwise) spin if viewed from the front. Therefore, it was assumed that even if P-symmetry was violated, CP-symmetry, involving simultaneously reversing the space axes and converting matter to antimatter, was preserved. There is a general theorem in theoretical physics that CPT-symmetry, invariance under simultaneous reversal of the space and time directions and the swapping of matter and antimatter, must always be preserved for very fundamental reasons. Therefore, breaking CP-symmetry is equivalent to breaking time reversal invariance or T-symmetry. For a time it was believed that this symmetry, at least, was preserved at the fundamental level.
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