by Jeff Pollard
“We're not evolved for zero-gravity,” Caroline finishes his thought.
“It's not zero-gravity, but yeah.”
“We're not in zero-gravity?” Caroline asks.
“No, see, gravity is still pulling on us all the time, it's just that the spacecraft is also in free-fall around the Earth.”
“Can we get out now, why are we still in here?”
“Alright, now we're at pressure,” K says. Caroline removes her helmet and takes deep breaths. “Since there's no surface for us to push against, we don't experience weight. But of course we still have mass,” and with that Caroline vomits all over the place. Little globules of BBQ brisket from lunch float away in all directions. “Isn't space romantic?” K asks. “You actually moved away from the vomit, momentum was conserved. For a moment you just became a barbecue powered rocket. The specific impulse leaves something to be desired though.”
“Stop talking.”
“I thought you liked when I talked nerd to you.”
“You just never know when to shut up.”
“Again, I thought you liked that about me,” K says.
As soon as possible, Caroline leaves the airlock and Caroline heads to the Unity module to retrieve a drink. On the US side, all drinks come in packages similar to a Capri Sun. In fact, NASA gets the pouches from the exact same supplier, but use a plastic nozzle that accepts a standardized space straw instead of the Capri Sun stabbing technique of liquid extraction. K remains behind in the airlock to clean up Caroline's mess. It's made relatively easy as most free-floating materials will accumulate against the air vents. Lose something? Check the air vent. In this case, it's five month old brisket.
That night, Caroline and Kingsley held each other in the Cupola, staring mesmerized at the Earth below. Even the dark night side of the planet was endlessly interesting. You might think of the space station as being so far away that the view of the Earth would be detached, like looking at a globe from a classroom. But in fact, the view from the ISS is much clearer than that. On 9/11, astronauts on the ISS took pictures of lower Manhattan, clearly showing the plume of smoke and ash trailing out to sea. Cities appeared as a dirty-yellow cobweb of lights. As unlikely as it might seem, small campfires could be seen like the flames of distant candles. If you find it hard to believe that astronauts can pick out your campfire with the naked eye, you should turn your gaze skyward. You can see the ISS in the night sky. In fact, other than the Moon, the ISS is the brightest object in the night sky. It's only visible briefly around dusk and dawn. During the day the sky is far too bright to pick out the station, and in the dead of night the station is in the Earth's shadow. But when you are in dark and the station overhead is in direct light, like before sunrise or after sunset, you can clearly see the station as a bright point of light moving across the sky in a matter of minutes.
Kingsley holds Caroline from behind, with his chin on top of her head and arms wrapped around her.
“Do you want to come sleep in my...pod?” Caroline asks. “What do they call those? Sleeping pods?”
“Masturbation station,” K replies. He can't see them, but he can sense Caroline's eyes going wide with realization.
“Sound proof booths with laptop holders, my god, that is what they're for.”
“And there ain't no janitor to clean up the place when you leave,” K adds.
“So are you going to ask, or are you going to just try to make it happen?” Caroline asks.
“Ask what?”
“To, you know...bone,” Caroline says.
“Ever the sophisticated duchess,” K says.
“Well, I know you wanna be the first, might as well get it over with,” Caroline says.
“How romantic,” K replies. “I think you need to sweet talk me first.”
“Since when are you romantic?” Caroline asks.
“Since I took you on a walk in fucking space and told you I want to have your babies,” K replies. “Besides, we're not gonna be the first. A married couple came up on the shuttle together once. But I mean, unless you at least try to seduce me, you ain't getting any tonight.”
Caroline pulls free from K's grasp, turning around to face him. She lets her hair down, and it floats away in every direction. She shakes it up and puts on a seductive smile. And with that, Kingsley has become her puppet. Although, anatomically speaking, the act they were about to engage in might be mistaken for her being the puppet, but make no mistake about who was really in control here.
When they finished with their weightless rendezvous and hard-docking maneuver they had became the first human beings to ever have make-up sex in space. Try looking that one up on Wikipedia.
Catching their breath, inside Kingsley's sleeping bag tethered to the inside of the Cupola, Caroline broke a long pause by saying simply, “well done Iron Man.”
“Can I admit something,” K says.
“What?” Caroline asks, worried.
“I don't really get Iron Man.”
“Oh, okay dear,” Caroline says, knowing she can safely tune him out as he rambles on about comic book films for a few minutes.
“I mean, he's a guy in an armored suit, but it's also like rocket powered, but it's an electric rocket? What the hell is an electric rocket. Like the premise is he invented some kind of power source, but with all the electricity in the world you're not building much of a rocket suit. And besides, he crashes into things all the time, like falls out of the sky and hits the ground at like sixty miles per hour, but he's fine because the suit protects him. Which makes sense because if you're in a car that hits a brick wall at sixty miles per hour, you'll be fine because the car protects you. Makes perfect sense.”
“Whatever you say dear.”
“And Iron Man 3, at the end he calls for backup from the like hundred Iron Man suits that are all autonomous right? But earlier in the film when he tells a terrorist his address and dares him to get him, and then he nearly dies and spends the rest of the film on the run trying to fix his busted ass suit, he never uses his like hundreds of body guards. I mean, why didn't he just have his body guards protecting the house? That doesn't make any sense. Plus, like, why would he need to be Iron Man if he builds hundreds of autonomous fighting suits he controls? It's just so non-sensical.”
“You know I don't care right?” Caroline asks.
“I'm just saying, if you want to call me the name of a movie character, it shouldn't be Iron Man or Tony Stark.”
“Fine, then who are you, Dr. Strangelove?”
“Will Hunting,” K replies.
“You think you're Good Will Hunting?”
“Think about it. Genius with unlimited potential but with a avoidance disorders because of his orphaned background. Just replaces South Boston with South Africa and math with engineering.”
“Okay, fair enough I suppose,” Caroline replies.
“How do you like them apples?”
On the eleventh day of Griffin 7, with three days left, ULA was poised to launch the first manned CST-100 capsule, imaginatively named CST-100-CT1 (CT for Crew Transfer as opposed to CR for Cargo Resupply). CST-100-CT1 was to carry a crew of two up to the same orbit as the ISS. After a few maneuvers, a phantom rendezvous, they might be cleared to rendezvous within one kilometer of the ISS. The crew consisted of Commander Peter Vickers, a NASA veteran, as well as Dexter Houston as Pilot.
Kingsley watched the launch on a laptop, following the Atlas V rocket as it disappears downrange and out sight. The ISS crew watched the stream and then raced to the Cupola to find out if they could spot the launching Atlas V. They could actually pick out the launches that came to the ISS because the launch would occur while they were nearby in their orbital track, and a rocket paints a stark white line through the sky that can be quite easily visible with the right conditions.
On day 13, the CST rendezvoused with the ISS. All aboard watched monitors or strained to see the capsule out the Cupola windows as it approached. The CST parked at one kilometer and held steady, flyin
g in formation, for over an hour. Then a call came up from mission control that the CST was to back away, reapproach the ISS from the top rather from the Earth-facing side, and approach to a distance of 250 meters.
Two hours later, the CST was parked at 250 meters. Michael Hopkins controlled the CanadaArm2, pointing its camera at the CST floating silently along with them.
K watched alongside Michael with child-like wonder, looking over every detail of the CST that he could make out. The CST-100 looked a lot like the Apollo capsule, a blunt cone with a cylindrical service module mounted beneath the heat shield. The CST-100 service module was much shorter however and lacked a large engine capable of sending the capsule beyond low Earth orbit, instead sporting 4 small engines. It also had deployable air-bags to cushion a landing on terra firma.
Then an unexpected call came up from mission control.
“Charlie One, Houston,” the call came up. Charlie 1 was the callsign for the CST, standing in for Charlie-Sierra-Tango.
“Houston, this is Houston,” Dexter Houston says, a joke that everyone tired of except for him.
“Go ahead and approach zenith-port, park at ten meters.”
“Roger.”
“Ten meters?” K asks Michael. “Are they docking?”
“Sounds like it,” Michael replies, getting ready to grapple the CST and berth it to the ISS.
“They made us wait until our second mission to dock,” K protests. “You know, I should have seen this coming. Fool me once, shame on you, fool me forty-six times, shame on me.”
“Figures,” Tim Bowe adds.
“Can I sabotage this somehow?” K wonders aloud.
“You're not serious right?” Michael asks.
“Relax,” Tim says, “he's only like half serious.”
“What if the CanadaArm suddenly got a case of butterfingers and can't grapple them,” K says.
“Well that's not going to happen,” Michael replies.
“I'll pay you a million dollars,” K says.
“That's a joke,” Tim assures Michael. But K's poker face doesn't reveal the true nature of his comment.
Kingsley didn't attempt any sabotage, and the CST-100 was successfully berthed to the to the docking port directly opposite from the port where Griffin 7 was still docked.
About an hour after docking, it was time to open up the docking ports and welcome two new arrivals to the ISS as well as offload cargo. Even the Griffin 7 crew were excited about fresh food after less than two weeks in space, so you can imagine how excited the ISS crew were.
Once again they would open airlocks and have a ceremonial handshake through the port. This time it was Micahel Hopkins and Peter Vickers, former NASA colleagues. Peter floated down into the ISS and shook hands with all aboard. Dexter was right behind him and Kingsley wasn't sure how this exchange would go. He hadn't seen Dexter since his defection. But when put face-to-face with his former friend, the past squabble seemed to dissolve away, and they shook hands earnestly. In a way, they had done it. There they were, Kingsley and Dexter, hanging out on the International Space Station, not quite exactly the way they'd imagined it eight years ago when K hired Dexter to head up the SpacEx astronaut program. But they had still made it there somehow. The now ten person crew of the ISS worked as a team to unload and stow the cargo from the CST capsule.
The ISS crew led Peter and Dexter on a tour of the station. Peter had actually been up in 2010 on a shuttle mission, and thus the station had not changed much. Dexter had not been to the ISS at all, his shuttle missions had not been to the ISS.
While they disappeared through the connected modules, their voices trailing off until Kingsley seemed to be alone at one far end of the station. K floated up into the CST. He thoroughly inspected the inside of the capsule for any information he might find. This was no bare-bones approach. The internal volume was less than that of the Griffin as the conical walls of the capsule were angled more aggressively inward. It was shorter, but wider. He was surprised at how bulky the glass cockpit was, taking up a lot of volume.
“Should you be snooping in there?” Caroline asks from the docking port.
“I do feel like I'm a cold war spy a little bit,” K says. “Just look at the avionics in this thing, the glass cockpit, it's supposedly designed for up to ten re-uses. How much do you think it costs?”
“I have no idea,” Caroline replies, floating in.
“And it's supposedly storable in space for 210 days. I just can't imagine they're building these things for less than thirty million each. You don't think they could possibly be turning a profit on this could you? I mean, the cargo mission isn't going to be much cheaper, but they said they could do it for under a hundred million. I just don't see it, do you?” K asks.
“Well, all the cost figures we have are based on when they've not been in any competition, so maybe those are inflated numbers.”
“That's the thing. Maybe they've gotten the Atlas V down to fifty million dollars just like we've done with the Eagle 9. But they could charge 200 for it so they kept claiming it costs that much. Maybe I was wrong,” K says.
“Well I don't think you're gonna find a price-tag floating around in here, let's go eat dinner, those strawberries we unloaded are calling my name,” Caroline says.
“Alright, I'll catch up,” K says. Caroline heads off, flying effortlessly forward through two docking hatches. Kingsley remains behind in the quiet CST-100, watching Caroline glide away gracefully. He nods his head, silently making a decision. Kingsley pulls a small utility knife from his pocket and etches “K was here” on the side of a circuit breaker panel.
The next day, Arnold, Richard, Caroline, Tim, and Kingsley woke up at 8 am to “Before Your Very Eyes...” by Atoms For Peace, Thom Yorke's musical side-project to Radiohead. The first real date K and Caroline went on was to see Atoms for Peace perform for a much smaller crowd than the usual Radiohead concert. The wake-up song planted the harmony of “Before Your Very Eyes” into K and Caroline's brains, causing them to hum the tune all day.
After breakfast with the whole crew together, the crew of Griffin 7 said their goodbyes to their temporary space-roommates and headed to their spaceship at about 9 am. The ISS is kept on Greenwich Mean Time, so it was still 3 am in California, their destination.
In the Griffin, the crew helped each other dress back into their flight suits. Then they retrieved their helmets, which also held their gloves, from beneath their seats. With gloves on and helmets attached, the hatch was sealed and their visit to the ISS was over. It was 10 am by the time the hatch was closed. It took a solid two hours to go through the checklist to power up the Griffin and checkout all the systems before they could leave the ISS. This was work for Kingsley and Tim, though it came easy as they had done these procedures thousands of times before. The passengers tried to squeeze every last bit of entertainment out of weightlessness, playing with small floating objects, such as a prop from the film Total Recall, the tracking device which Arnold pulled out of his nose, which was one of the few personal objects he brought on the trip.
With all systems working, the CandadaArm2 grappled the Griffin and pulled it away from the space station, placing it ten meters below the station and letting go. Only then did Commander Tim Bowe activate the thrusters for a short burst that propelled them down and away from the ISS at a mere half meter per second. The Griffin 7 floated down and away from the station for several minutes, until they were at a safe distance from the receding station. Then Tim oriented the ship with small bursts from the thrusters, then performed a short retrograde burn that lowered their orbit on the far side of the planet to a mere 200 km, from their current circular orbit at just over 400 km. 45 minutes later, at their periapsis of 200 km, they performed another retrograde burn, lowering their apoapsis to 200 km, circularizing their orbit. From their new lowered orbit they were ready to return to Earth, it was just a matter of performing the deorbit burn at the correct time to send them diving into the atmosphere at the desired location. It was
after 2 pm as they waited to do their deorbit burn.
The two most dangerous parts of a space mission are launch and landing. In fact, no astronauts had ever died in space. People had died on the ground during tests such as on Apollo 1 due to the use of 100% oxygen atmosphere at pressure. People died during launch on Challenger due to the failure of an SRB O-ring in cold conditions combined with the shuttle's lack of abort capability. People died during re-entry on Columbia due to the failure of the heat shield caused by foam shedding from the External Tank as well as on Soyuz 11 due to a loss of cabin pressure during re-entry, which was only fatal because three cosmonauts couldn't fit in the Soyuz Descent Module unless they weren't wearing pressure suits. One person died on landing on Soyuz 1 due to failure of the main parachute, causing the capsule to hit the ground at 89 mph.
The Griffin capsule should be able to sustain any of those failures without killing its crew. They didn't use a pure oxygen environment like Apollo 1. The Griffin had a launch-escape system built in that could save the crew from an exploding rocket (which had saved the crew of Soyuz T-10a in 1983). If the Griffin were to lose cabin pressure, as the Soyuz 11 had done, the crew were in pressure suits and would not be effected. If the Griffin's parachutes failed, the capsule could use its onboard engines to make a powered landing, which was the planned primary mode of landing, with parachutes as a backup. The only failure that the Griffin couldn't withstand was a failure of the heat-shield. There was no backup. If the shield failed as it did for Columbia, the capsule would be destroyed. However, the Griffin's heat shield spent almost the entire mission sandwiched between the bottom of the capsule and the top of the Griffin Trunk. The shuttle's heat shield was exposed to the elements during launch and vulnerable to the foam insulation on the External Tank.
All in all, the Griffin should be safer than any previous spaceship, at least on paper.