by T I WADE
“That comes to 180 panels,” stated VIN doing the numbers.
“Correct, twenty-three flights into outer space, eight panels at a time,” replied Ryan. “Then we will complete three flights with the 40-foot oval cylinders you saw, then three flights of liquid gas supplies and liquid-gas production equipment from Hangars Ten, Eleven, and Twelve. Next, three flights will carry loads with 4.1 tons of distilled water. The next four flights after the water will transport 16.4 tons of soil, seeds, and animal stocks; everything needed to sustain life up there. The large aluminum corridor and accommodation cylinders will again be carried up for over twenty flights after that. Then we will carry up as many supplies as we can, with one of the final flights being a passenger flight with the remaining scientists and their families. These flights can change schedules as we need to, so each flight’s cargo can be brought forward at any time. You pilots will know each cargo list before you fly.
“To produce gravity similar to earth’s, we have to build corridors stretching out 400 feet from these cubes on three of the four sides. Imagine our first phase to be the square hub of a wheel. We need to build three straight 400-foot corridors on each of the three sides away from the cubes, each with ten 40-foot round cylinder panels standing out from the hub. Then we rotate the station two revolutions per minute, which will produce a gravitational pull much like we have here on Earth.”
“Those cylinders we saw in Hangar One or Two?” asked Maggie.
“Correct. The oval corridor cylinders are in six different sizes. All six cylinders fit into a nested set, a single cargo load, exactly as our spacecraft fit into each other. All six cylinders are tall enough to be used as sleeping units and or corridors, or useful for other needs like storage. The inner soft walls of the cylinders, identical to the cubes will be packed into the inner open area of the smallest cylinder for transport up there, where they will be bonded to the inner cylinder walls. Once an area is totally sealed, air and air pressure will be pumped in for human habitation. The total weight of each cylinder load without added cargo is 3.8 tons. Please understand that this whole space project took a decade of design by my design team of scientists.”
“By this time, with two shuttles working non-stop, we will attempt six flights per month, each shuttle taking up six cylinders with inner walls and other cargo. The largest two outer cylinders, 12 feet high and 15 and 14 feet wide will become our crew quarters. Their inner dividing walls, walkways, furniture, and items needed to kit out these units will be the added cargo inside the cylinders. This section of our mission will need a total of 33 flights, or five and a half months.
At any stage of this part of the mission, the government, or Air Force or whoever is counting our missions, will become very curious. This is where we need to do everything in our power to continue. The last flights are as important as the first flight to sustain life up there on the border of outer space. No questions please. I have already told you as much as I would like to at this time.”
Chapter 14
Final Testing
At dawn the next morning, the C-5 was towed out of Hangar Three for the first time in a couple of weeks.
Aboard were all the pilots, Captain Pitt the flight engineer, and Ryan, Suzi, Penny and VIN. The cockpit of the C-5 was tight with bodies.
With Jonesy at the controls and Maggie as co-pilot, the massive jet was warmed up and engines screamed as her pilot trundled one of the biggest aircraft in the world down the long runway to the eastern end, the end VIN had now run around a couple of dozen times.
Ryan looked outside the left side cockpit windows at the remaining men of the work force, now down from 1,500 to less than 50 laying pipes. They would have the entire system working in two more weeks, and their exit would signal the start of a lot more flying.
It was a cold morning in November, the desert at a chilly 36 degrees; the workers were all wearing warm clothing and white clouds of vapor appeared as they exhaled. The underground tanks and Dewars were in, as were the aboveground tanks. All that remained were the underground piping connections to the various hangars. The underground pipes had been installed before the large apron had been cemented, so it was now up to the workers to lay the last several hundred feet of pipes to the apron connections, test that everything was sealed, fill in the holes and leave.
When the giant aircraft reached the end of the runway, Jonesy expertly turned her around, dialed in load weight, outside temperature and other needed information for the onboard computers to set up takeoff, and then sat there for a few minutes until everything was rechecked. Slowly, he pushed the four throttles situated between the pilots forward, and everyone held on for takeoff.
A couple of thousand feet short of the runway’s end, the aircraft rose into the air and the ground disappeared below them.
The flight schedule would be the same for every liftoff for the next year or more; it gave the C-5 a private and restricted perimeter around the airport to gain altitude in wide circles. For her first flight, Jonesy cleared their altitude climb with the local air traffic controllers at several airports within 300 miles of them. In accordance with FAA regulations, the first test flight plan had been phoned in a day earlier, which prompted the civilian air traffic control system to declare Ryan’s new airfield “Restricted Territory” for all civilian flights twenty miles from the center of the airfield. Ryan now had his own private airspace all to himself.
The C-5 climbed in spirals gaining altitude while her two pilots monitored every necessary detail. At 25,000 feet, Ryan and Captain Pitt pulled on Air Force-issue mobile oxygen tanks and masks, and went back into the large, empty cargo hold. The lighting in there was eerie; the temperature, as expected, was nearly as cold as outside, minus 12 degrees, and an oxygen monitor showed little to no breathable air; not right for any pressurized aircraft. The air being pumped into the hold was disappearing; something twenty million taxpayer dollars hadn’t fixed.
Jonesy let the aircraft climb slowly. There was no rush and it took an hour to reach 43,000 feet. He increased engine power, as the air was thin and the four powerful engines had to work harder. At 49,000 feet he had the engines close to maximum power to hold the aircraft in level flight at this height. He then asked everybody to strap in and flew the aircraft to the southern edge of their private air space.
After warning the others, he took over manual control from the autopilot and pushed her into a steep dive with the engines on a reduced power setting.
The aircraft’s forward speed increased; VIN watched until the speed reached a red line on one of the readouts; it started blinking at 504 knots as the aircraft dropped through 39,000 feet. Jonesy slowly pulled back on the controls, shouted to Maggie to give him full thrust and, with three or four G's on their bodies, they leveled out at 510 knots and began a second, steeper climb.
VIN realized what Jonesy was doing. He was going to climb up as far as he could get the aircraft to go, under full throttles. VIN hoped that the builders, whoever they were, hadn’t forgotten any nuts or bolts in her manufacture, as Jonesy was making sure she needed every one.
With VIN’s body feeling three or four times heavier than normal, the nose of the aircraft rose into a steep angled climb and her engines could be heard behind, screaming out all they could into the atmosphere around them.
VIN watched the dials and then Maggie’s face, looking for a clue as to what was going through her mind. He watched as her face tried to flatten itself below her mouth, then went white looking at the forward speed and, he saw her left hand tighten into pure white on the four throttles she had at full power.
“Ryan, we are now at the 75 degree climb angle as you asked for,” stated Jonesy calmly into his mouthpiece.
“Jonesy must sure be putting this poor bird through its paces!” he thought as his eyes watched the altimeter readout climb through 44,000 feet…45…46…47…48……49.……50…………51, and ever so slowly 52,000 feet. As the aircraft climbed, the speed dropped off significantly, and was alread
y down to 430 knots.
“Release shuttle now!” shouted Jonesy at 52,500 feet and with the jets still screaming, he continued shouting out the reduction in forward speed as it reduced even further. “Down to 420 knots………… 410……… 400……… 395……390……385……380. Banking aircraft to the right. She’s going over now sliding out of the way of the shuttle. We are out of the shuttle’s launch path. Five seconds, shuttle should be igniting! Three hundred seventy knots, shuttle passing mother unit! Pilot pulling nose up. Co-pilot, throttle back to 80 percent now. Turning aircraft into straight and level flight.”
Jonesy continued to verbalize his timing if they were doing a real shuttle ejection; he even pushed the controls in the newly installed system in the cargo area to facilitate release at the right time. “Nose level, speed now 490 knots! Going into a sharp climb………speed 360 knots, pushing nose down to go for weightlessness,” Jonesy continued.
For the first time in his life, VIN felt weightlessness. VIN’s body wanted to leave his seat and float in the air. It lasted a whole ten seconds before suddenly the aircraft wanted to head down and leave his body floating in space. His straps pulled on his shoulders while the aircraft went down like a roller coaster.
“Speed 490 knots; slowly pulling her out of the dive…speed 440 knots, she is flying herself out of the dive….465 knots, aircraft is straight and level at 37,000 feet,” continued Jonesy, as calm as if he was a passenger in VIN’s car.
There was silence as the passengers just sat there and contemplated what had just happened. Jonesy, flying the biggest aircraft in the world, had taken it out of its maximum flying restrictions; Ryan was sure that the altimeter had been stuck on 52,100 feet while his body had wanted to float off into space.
“Want to try it again?”
Everybody looked at Jonesy as if he was their father offering another ride on the roller coaster. They unanimously agreed, and repeated the flight scenario twice more, reaching the exact altitude every time. Jonesy was certainly good at his trade.
An hour later the C-5 came into land with Captain Pitt now flying it under instruction from Jonesy in the right seat. The aircraft was taxied to its stationary point facing Hangar Three and, as the engine turbines slowed, everybody aboard just sat there in shock. Ryan was the first to speak after he removed his head gear.
“Mr. Jones, a great flight! What altitude and speed changes might happen on that climb if there is a 250 ton payload in the cargo hold?”
Jonesy looked at Maggie, thought about the changes for a few seconds and replied, “I think the change from the dive to the 75 degree climb will need to be more gentle and slower. There will be a lot more strain on the upper wing structure, but what we lose in speed in the curve, should equal out with the 250-ton load pushing us back uphill. Think of it like a car towing a heavy boat. The weight of the boat pushes the car down a hill, and then the boat’s forward energy pushes the car up part of the next hill, until it loses its forward momentum, and then becomes a negative force on the car pulling it uphill.
“I will assume Colonel Sinclair will be doing the flying with either Captain Sullivan or Captain Pitt, or the new incoming team. If memory serves, I believe that the aircraft can reach 53,000 feet and hang up there a second or two longer as the weight stops pushing her uphill, the shuttle rolls out the back, the C-5 is rolled over to the right, the shuttle’s rockets ignite, and it speeds past the C-5; and then the C-5’s nose is brought back before, or after, any possible stall. We had at least three to four seconds before the aircraft’s right wing would have taken us into a semi-uncontrollable spin, and then another three seconds before we would have gone into an uncontrollable spin, which few pilots could bring her out of. So the pilot team has about six seconds from the large aircraft’s rollover to build up speed, straighten up and level out. What I need to do with all the pilots right now is to check every single rivet on the skin of this aircraft to see how many are missing. That will tell us how much more room we have to maneuver.”
Over dinner that night, Jonesy happily told VIN that every single one of the hundreds of thousands of rivets were still in place, which meant that they hadn’t over-flown the aircraft yet.
A month later, the first of the two space shuttles, now aptly named Silver Bullet I, SB-1 for short, or Sierra Bravo I as a radio call sign was taken out of her plastic sterile area, and the four shuttle pilots, with Suzi and Ryan in attendance, gathered around to view her.
Three new pilots—two former Air Force lady pilots, and Jonesy’s former test pilot friend, a man in his early sixties, and who hadn’t flown for several years—finally arrived.
Once their paperwork was completed, Jonesy took up the new pilots and spent hours teaching the new crew how to use his “sling-shot” method to release the shuttle into space.
His old buddy Bob Mathews, a retired Air Force general, and his crew of lady pilots had it down pat within hours; they hit 53,000 feet and brought her out of the anticipated stall beautifully. Maggie, Penny and Michael Pitt went along for the rides. They had been promoted to shuttle pilots and needed to commit to memory what the new team would be doing while they were in the shuttles, blasting off.
By now Jonesy and Maggie had both completed 140 hours each in the shuttle simulator. Penny Sullivan, at 100 hours, looked to be a far better shuttle pilot than flying the C-5 and, Michael Pitt at 95 hours, was confident he could fly a shuttle into space. All four of them spent dozens of hours in the shuttle simulator training on liftoff and re-entry procedures.
Emergency re-entry programs had been developed for rapid re-entry and lower-orbit slow re-entry configurations, and the pilots had to practice each one time and time again. The re-entry heat would be solved with the underside of each shuttle sealed with heat-resistant tiles, just like the old NASA space shuttles twice her size. The most modern heat resistant tiles were only half the thickness and weight of the older ones used in the shuttle program, and each tile was inspected by the pilots.
Still, to Jonesy, the smaller shuttle, with her small flaps, would be like flying a brick with wings, just like her larger NASA predecessors, and now they were going to test his flying-brick theory.
“We have three days of systems testing, and then we will load Silver Bullet I into the C-5 for her first test flight from 50,000 feet. Her radio call sign will be Sierra Bravo I. Mr. Jones will be the chief shuttle pilot, and Ms. Sinclair his co-pilot for the first test. Mr. Mathews and his new team will fly the C-5.”
“Our first flight into lower orbit will be soon after our first flight test. Mr. Jones and Mr. Noble, you will be the pilot and crew for Mission One. This is the time we will explode the device and “destroy” our first attempt. Mr. Jones, you and Mr. Noble will connect to the Russian Space Station in its low orbit and stay hidden for thirty days.”
“By that time, our second shuttle, Silver Bullet II will be ready and tested by the ladies, and our flight to Europe will have been completed. Ms. Sinclair and Ms. Sullivan will pilot Mission Two to the Russian Satellite with the special cargo, plus supplies to be stored in the satellite. Mr. Noble, you will unpack the cargo, connect the special cargo outside, spacewalk the supplies into the space station. All four of you will return in the first shuttle. Suzi will now be going up with Mr. Rose in Mission Two, with food, water, xenon and hydrogen gas supplies, plus dozens of biological tests they want to start up there. They will begin their work, and will return with Mission Three.
“Life up there will be boring, but several days up there Mr. Jones, Mr. Noble will help you acclimate to space living in preparation for your first mining mission. The good news is that our Russian scientists did say that there is one exercise bike, a few ancient Russian movies, and maybe a bottle or two of now vintage vodka up there. Thanks to our modern electronics department, you will be each issued with a laptop computer, a new Microsoft Surface to read books, view dozens of our latest movies, listen to music, and play computer games. Many who helped build the “beer can” are here, working f
or me, and they will go over the necessary satellite startup procedures with you.”
“In your first cargo, you will be taking up a small two-foot by three-foot nuclear battery with one pound of Plutonium-238, generously loaned to us by the U.S. Government. This nuclear battery has enough power to light, heat and control the Russian station, even if you are up there for its entire half-life of 87.7 years. So both of you will be long dead, but warm, and with the lights on, if all else fails down here, and we don’t get back up there.”
My first plan to buy us time will be to use the shuttle’s engines like tug boats and guide the old station into a higher orbit, a 22,500 mile altitude geostationary orbit where we want to build our new platform. Both NASA and the Russian government will be relieved if we succeed in this mission. We can use the Russian station to live in and at the same time preclude possible re-entry damage. This plan should make them sigh with relief, and give us some latitude.” Ryan smiled at his team.
For the next couple of hours the two most senior pilots sat in the shuttle’s flight seats and went over flight drills.
VIN could see that Ryan was getting excited. It was getting close to the time they would go to space, and he was just as excited as everyone else.
A whole month in space; VIN wondered what that would be like? For poor Jonesy, he hoped there was a slug or two of vodka for them up there.
November brought the disastrous news to Ryan that a new president would be running the country the next year; this meant that the project had lost its best, and only friend in government. From now on, Ryan told the team, life would only get harder for his mission.
Several days later the C-5 was loaded. Its rear doors had been fully removed, and for the first time, the shuttle motors and exhausts protruded underneath the tail of the massive C-5 Galaxy aircraft.