Blue Gemini

by Mike Jenne

  “Yep,” said Ourecky, tapping him back. “We’re here all right.”

  Carson’s tone changed almost immediately from childlike exuberance to icy seriousness. “Let’s punch through the Insertion Checklist. I don’t want to fall behind the curve.”

  “Okay. I know I’m early, but I’m coming out of these gloves,” said Ourecky, unlocking the ring on his left forearm. Letting go of the glove, he let it hover in front of him momentarily. The sight was both surreal and natural at the same time; they really were in orbit.

  “Go ahead,” replied Carson, shedding his own gloves before wedging them under his calves. “Make yourself comfortable.”

  “Ouch!” said Ourecky, flipping up his helmet visor. “Man, it’s hot in here. You could bake bread in this oven. I sure hope it eventually cools off, or this is going to be a miserable flight.”

  “Hopefully it will cool down soon. Okay, let’s finish this checklist. Retro Rocket Squib to Safe,” said Carson, throwing a series of switches. “Boost Insert Squib to Safe. Main Batteries one, two, three and four Off.” He pressed the JETS FAIRING switch on the sequencing panel. “Jettison fairings.” A protective fairing, which covered the radar dish in the nose of the spacecraft, was ejected, as were the horizon scanner covers on either side of the nose. Over the course of the next few minutes, they worked through the initial set of tasks that had to be accomplished immediately after achieving orbit. Among other things, they ejected the protective covers that guarded their windows during launch and aligned the inertial navigation platform.

  Within moments of gravity falling away, a small cloud of debris had floated up into the cabin. The detritus consisted primarily of dust, lint and some larger items, including a inch-square piece of Velcro, a small shard of clear plastic, two rubber bands, a miniscule “wheat grain” light bulb, two washers, and a scrap of paper bearing a woman’s name and phone number. It took them a few minutes to gather up most of the clutter.

  Carson reached out, grabbed the loose note, and examined it. “Hmm . . . Janet. I think I’ll tuck this away just in case I’m ever in St. Louis. I guess that someone’s loss is my gain.”

  “You’re incorrigible, Drew. Would you really call some woman without knowing the slightest thing about her?” asked Ourecky, picking one of the washers out of the air and stowing it in a leg pocket. “Don’t you think that’s living just a little dangerously?”

  “Living dangerously? Mr. Ourecky, do I have to remind you that you’re travelling over seventeen thousand miles per hour in a flimsy metal can built by the lowest bidder?”

  On orbit

  10:02 a.m. Eastern (Rev 1 / Ground Elapsed Time: 1:02)

  Six feet behind Carson and Ourecky, within the magnesium casing of a large battery, trouble was literally brewing. The Gemini-I spacecraft, like its NASA predecessors, consisted of three main parts, stacked one atop another like layers in a cone-shaped cake. At the apex was the reentry module that housed the flight crew within a pressure vessel. A retrograde section, directly behind the reentry module, contained the four retro rockets that would bring them out of orbit. The bottom layer was the adapter equipment section. Shaped like a truncated Dixie cup, it was home to virtually all the life support systems necessary to sustain an extended flight.

  On most NASA Gemini missions, the adapter housed two fuel cells that produced electricity and water essential for long duration space missions. Because the Blue Gemini missions were of such short duration, the Air Force planners elected not to rely on the often cantankerous fuel cells. Instead, the Gemini-I was powered by more conventional but trustworthy batteries. In fact, of the ten manned NASA Gemini spacecraft flown, the first two missions—Gemini 3 and 4—also relied entirely on batteries rather than fuel cells.

  Besides the batteries mounted in the adapter equipment section, all Gemini spacecraft carried four silver-zinc main batteries and three squib batteries. These were mounted in an equipment bay immediately to Ourecky’s right. In the unlikely event of a total failure of the adapter section batteries, the seven batteries would still get the crew out of orbit and back home. Consequently, because of their unique fallback role, they were kept disconnected from the main electrical bus and dormant throughout the majority of the mission.

  In contrast to the six 400-amp silver-zinc batteries carried on Gemini 4, the Gemini-I was endowed with one rack of three batteries and a second rack of five. Each battery was about the size and shape of a large picnic cooler. Besides redundancy, the extra two batteries were required to power the enhanced radar mounted in the Gemini-I’s enlarged nose. Adapted from technology carried aboard fighter aircraft, the powerful new radar was necessary for the Gemini-I to locate and intercept target satellites that did not emit a friendly transponder signal.

  So now, even as Carson and Ourecky plotted their next move in the intercept sequence, one of those big batteries was overheating. As its core simmered and internal pressure mounted, a relief valve surrendered just as it was designed to do, and a dense but rapidly dissipating cloud of electrolyte vapors erupted silently into the vacuum of space. And in an instant, although its heft was now meaningless in the weightless environment of space, the ailing battery was rendered into one hundred and eighteen pounds of useless scrap metal.

  On Orbit

  10:15 a.m. Eastern (Rev 1 / GET: 1:15)

  “Drew, we have a problem here,” announced Ourecky, frantically tapping the instrument panel.

  “What’s up? Are we running out of peanut butter already? I warned you to go easy on it.”

  “No, Drew. This is serious. It looks like we have a major failure back in the adapter batteries. We’re losing a lot of juice off the main bus. Battery 1C had failed completely. If that wasn’t enough, 1D conked out while I was still watching 1C. That’s two of eight, Drew.”

  “Oh, babe, not good,” muttered Carson. “How about the main batteries? How do they look?”

  “The mains and squib batteries look healthy, so we should still be able to get home.” He paused a moment, studied the power system read-outs, and then solemnly reported, “1B’s dead now also. So now we’re down to the three batteries on rack two, plus 1A and 1E in the adapter. Uh, Drew, disregard what I just told you. 1A just sputtered out, too.”

  Clenching his fists, Carson grimaced and then whistled quietly. “Damn. Well, there’s no sense trying to delay the inevitable. We need to report this immediately.”

  Ourecky focused his attention on the remaining array of healthy batteries in the adapter. Although there were no more fluctuations on the ammeter or voltmeter needles, he agonized over the outcome that was sure to ensue. According to their sacrosanct mission rules, the situation was not severe enough for them to immediately abort the mission, but the power deficit almost certainly meant that they couldn’t continue with the intercept as planned. Disheartened, he lamented, “I guess you know that they’ll probably terminate us early.”

  “Yeah, Scott, I know that. It sure looks bleak. They’ll probably scrub us prior to our next maneuver burn, and that’s about an hour away. Sorry I brought you up here for nothing.”

  Mission Control Facility, Aerospace Support Project

  10:32 a.m. Eastern, Friday, June 13, 1969 (GET: 1:32)

  Blue Gemini’s Mission Control Facility was similar in layout to NASA’s much-celebrated nerve center at Houston, but on a much-reduced scale. It occupied a room approximately half the size of a standard tennis court, which previously had been a lecture hall when the building was used as an academic training facility in the early fifties. The mission controllers’ consoles were arranged in stair-step banks, with a floor gradually sloping down to a wall occupied by a large world map and several television monitors. In the far back corner, a glass-enclosed cubicle overlooked the room. It was the exclusive sanctuary of Wolcott and Tew, a quiet place where they could observe the proceedings without interfering with the process.

  Wolcott was bone-tired. Concerned that they could have another disaster like February’s, he hadn’t sl
ept in two days, and even though things appeared to moving on track, he was still very much on edge. Glancing through the windows, he observed a commotion out on the floor; something had the controllers riled up, and he hoped that the news wouldn’t be too awful.

  Heydrich tapped on the glass door, and Wolcott waved him in. “Virgil,” Heydrich said. “We have a problem. Got a minute?”

  “Always, Gunter. What is it?”

  “Virg, your crew reported a failure of five primary batteries in the adapter section.”

  “Okay, pard. Now, from what I know about the batteries, this situation ain’t good, but there’s apparently nothin’ we can do about it from here and our boys obviously can’t do anything about it up there. Do you have any idea what might have happened?”

  “Well, Virg, it’s anyone’s guess, but if I had to speculate, I would bet on a cold plate failure. Anything that generates heat, including the batteries in the adapter section, is mounted on a cold plate. Refrigerant fluid is constantly cycled through the plates to bleed away excess heat.”

  Heydrich continued. “Since it looks like we suffered a failure of all five batteries in Rack One, I’m guessing that the batteries overheated after the cold plates failed. Each battery has a valve that’s designed to vent if the internal pressure spikes greater than 40 psi. So my theory is that they overheated, built up too much pressure, and then all of them vented. Also, they’re mounted in there so tightly that probably one of them overheated initially, which then probably triggered a cascading heat effect with the adjacent batteries. That correlates with what your crew just reported, that the five batteries failed sequentially, starting with 1C in the middle slot.”

  Wolcott closed his eyes and reflected on the physical layout of the adapter section. Although five adapter batteries were out of commission, three remained functional. “So, Gunter, what’s the possibility that our three intact batteries are also vulnerable to this cascadin’ heat effect? Could they also get knocked out?”

  “I don’t think so, but that doesn’t necessarily mean that we’re entirely out of the woods,” stated Heydrich. “Assuming that they vented, those batteries spewed a lot of corrosive electrolytes into the surrounding spaces. I don’t think that this has ever been modeled, so there’s no telling what impact it might have if it seeps into the other systems back there.”

  “But this probably happened about thirty minutes ago,” said Wolcott. “If we were going to have any fallout from this glitch, we probably would have already seen it. Right?”

  “Ja. Right,” said Heydrich. “Or they’ll report the bad news to us on the next comms window. They’ll pick up Atlantic Sentry Three in approximately twenty-five minutes. That’s an EC-135E ARIA, on station over the North Atlantic, flying in an orbit pattern just south of Greenland.”

  “Okay. What’s your call on the situation, Gunter?”

  Heydrich removed his black-framed glasses. “Well, there’s good news and bad news. Assuming that there’s no damage to the adjacent systems in the adapter section, the crew is safe. They can remain up there for the duration of the mission. Even if the other batteries in the adapter section fail, we can still get them home safely. We might not get them back to United States, but we should get them back to Earth in one piece. But we’ve lost our option to loiter, because I wouldn’t feel comfortable with them cycling through a power-down and power-up.”

  “Doggone, Gunter, if that’s the good news, then what’s the bad news?”

  “The bad news is that they’ve lost the extra power required to run the radar, so there’s no chance of them completing the intercept. If the interception is the ultimate goal and it’s clearly obvious that they can’t achieve it, then we’re just placing them at risk by leaving them up there. Sure, they can stay up for the duration, but there’s no point.”

  Wolcott nodded. “So your verdict is?”

  “Bring them home as soon as practical,” counseled Heydrich grimly. “If we scramble, we have sufficient time to pass instructions to Atlantic Sentry Three to relay to the crew.”

  “And then we bring them straight home, right?” asked Wolcott.

  Heydrich shook his head. He carried a rolled map under his arm, which he unfurled and spread out on the table. “Not quite that simple, Virg. We have plenty of Contingency Recovery Zones, but if we stick to your guidance, we want to strictly avoid landing anywhere but on US soil, unless we absolutely have no other options. Ja?”

  “Yup.”

  Referring to the map, tracing an orbital path with his finger, Heydrich said, “Well, Virgil, the problem is that since we launched your boys directly into an orbit with sixty-two degrees inclination to chase a Russian satellite. That inclination wreaks havoc on our recovery planning, because they’re just not going to be lined up to land on US soil very often.

  Tapping his finger on a spot near El Paso, Texas, Heydrich stated, “Our current plan has them coming back to White Sands, New Mexico on their sixteenth rev, just shy of twenty-four hours into the mission. The earliest window that I can bring them back to US soil is on their fifth rev. That will put them into Eielson Air Force Base, Alaska in about five hours. We can also put them into Patrick Air Force Base in Florida fifteen minutes later, landing local time at 5:00 p.m.”

  Wolcott shook his head. “That ain’t good, pard. It’ll still be broad daylight.”

  “We don’t have any choice,” replied Heydrich. “At least they’re relatively stable up there, provided they don’t lose any more batteries or if something else doesn’t go wrong, so we’re not pressed to reenter immediately. We have enough wiggle room to decide on Eielson or Patrick or another location later, but we need to direct them to stop maneuvering for rendezvous.”

  “So, Gunter, there ain’t any chance of them executing an interception without the radar functionin’ at a hundred percent?”

  “Not a chance, Virgil,” asserted Heydrich. “Not even in the realm of possibilities.”

  “Then call them home, Gunter,” decreed Wolcott. “Post haste, pard.”

  38

  ON TO BREMEN

  On Orbit

  10:40 a.m. Eastern, Friday, June 13, 1969 (Rev 2 / GET: 1:40)

  Unexpectedly granted the luxury of a few spare seconds, Ourecky unscrewed the cap from a container that resembled a toothpaste tube. With the red plastic cap hovering in front of his face, he squeezed the tube and savored a gooey mixture of peanut butter and honey. He re-stowed the tube in his pantry, then washed down the snack with a quick squirt of water. He smiled, reflecting on how even grabbing a quick bite could be a major endeavor up here.

  The confined cockpit was much noisier than he would have ever anticipated. The experience was a far cry from his childhood dreams of swooping silently through space in the magnificent spaceships. His headset was plagued by a persistent but barely audible hum. One of the cockpit fans squealed incessantly when it ran. As he worked calculations, his thoughts were interrupted by the periodic pops of the OAMS thrusters whenever Carson bumped the maneuver controller to make minor corrections. There was a distracting cacophony of smaller sounds as well: pumps running, solenoids clicking, valves opening and closing. There were also distinct odors; most noticeable was a slightly noxious hint of lithium hydroxide, a compound used to scrub carbon dioxide from their exhaled air.

  Sighing as he longed for a quieter chariot with a smidge more elbow room, he checked the computer. It was still loaded with data for the major burn that would begin the transition to align their orbit with the Soviet satellite they were targeting. As they anxiously awaited further instructions from the ground, Ourecky was reluctant to wipe the maneuver fix even though it was highly unlikely that it would be executed.

  In an obvious funk, Carson numbly stared at his panel while Ourecky prepared the cryptographic equipment for the next comms window. Without exchanging a word, both knew that Tew and Wolcott would have had plenty of time to formulate their decision, so it was a foregone conclusion that they would be ordered to reenter as expeditiousl
y as possible. Finally, Carson turned to Ourecky and broke the silence. “Scott, what are the chances . . .”

  “That we could still make it happen?”

  “Yeah. Other than the batteries, we’re solid. We have a stable platform and ample PQIs,” said Carson, verifying the Propellant Quantity Indicated numbers for their remaining OAMS fuel. “The big question is whether we can nail the rendezvous without the radar. What’s your take?”

  “Funny you should ask. I’ve sifted the numbers in my head and I think we can still pull it off.” Squinting in the bright sunlight streaming into the cockpit, Ourecky wedged his flight plan into his small window. “It’s no more than maneuvering to a theoretical spot in space, just like we’ve practiced over and over. I sure wish we had the radar, but it’s not nearly as essential as it’s cracked up to be. Besides, we might be able to use it anyway, at least to a limited extent.”

  “How so?”

  “Well, the radar normally requires forty-five seconds to warm up from a full resting state,” said Ourecky authoritatively. “And it takes roughly thirty seconds to safely cool down after use. Based on our current power consumption rates, if we scrimp and scrounge everywhere we can, we can probably wring a minimum of five one-minute active shots out of the radar.”

  “You think we could squeeze five shots?”

  “Maybe more, but we’ll have to use them very sparingly,” replied Ourecky.

  “What if we were even more frugal and limited the shots to thirty seconds or thereabouts?”

  Ourecky stifled a sneeze and then answered, “No good, Drew. First, it takes thirty seconds to do a full sweep with the radar after it’s warmed up. Assuming we achieve a solid lock on the target, if we’re very lucky, the computer still needs to accept the radar data for processing. That’s a minimum of thirty seconds. If we don’t factor in loading the radar data to the computer, we’re just wasting our time powering it up, and we might as well go strictly visual.”