“We have you, Flight. Real sweet ride inbound. We’re right and tight here. Had a few alarms and FLT’s, though. Showing Mach 10 point 5 out of 165K,” drawled the AC.
“Copy that, Endeavor. Understand a few Funny Little Things on the way home. Confirm your TACAN acquisition. And you’re Go for speed brakes at Mach 10.”
“We have the TACAN beacon here, Flight. At Mach 9, we have auto roll reversal. Backin’ her up with CSS.”
“Roger, Endeavor. Control Stick Steering. Your stick inputs look real crisp from down here.”
“Real tight, Flight.”
“We see it, Endeavor. You’re on track out of 154,000, making Mach 9 point 8.”
“Copy, Flight. Trajectory Two is running. Out of 152,000 feet, Mach 8 point 8. Range-to-go-is 211.”
“Roger, Endeavor. Confirm body flap enabled.”
“This is the AC. Body flap is flappin’. Out of 151,000, at Mach 8 point 4.”
Beneath Shuttle’s tail, the single thick body flap automatically flexed up and down under the three, lifeless shuttle main engines. The four primary flight computers cycled the body flap to ease the crushing burden of the descent upon the wings and to adjust the ship’s center of gravity for precision steering homeward.
“Endeavor: You’re still full of Go from down here. Anticipate the coastline at Mach 6 point 6 out of 138,000 feet.”
“And we have it! Big and beautiful, Flight. Amazing visual today!”
“Copy that, Shuttle. Standby to configure CSS.”
“Roger, Flight. We’re 200 miles out, 130K up, and makin’ Mach 6 point 4.”
“Copy, Endeavor. Telemetry modulation via Buckhorn is clean and clear. APU Number Two is still running hot and we’re watching it. We see you 177 miles out, at Mach 6 even, descending through 124,000 feet.”
“Okay, buddy. We see Mach 5 point 5 out of 119,000 . . . Flash evaporators off and ammonia boilers on. Now Mach 5 point 3 out of 115,000. Range-to-go: 148. And we have the San Joaquin Valley at 12 o’clock low!”
Inside Shuttle’s long body, two freon coolant loops are the ship’s sweat glands, absorbing heat from crew, air supplies, and warm black boxes. During the fiery descent above feet into the sky, heat from the circulating freon coolant is dissipated overboard by the flash evaporators: complex pumps which turn heat into water steam for venting overboard. Below 120,000 feet, two ammonia boilers vaporize the freon circulation’s heat.
“Roger, Endeavor. We show you 23 minutes since entry interface at Mach 5, out of 120,000 feet.”
“Endeavor copies,” the tall mission commander drawled. “I have manual roll reversal left. Your basic, standard rate turn at 3 degrees per second. Real crisp response from our glass lady this mornin’. We see Mach 4 point 5 out of 108,000. Range-to-go: 122 . . . Now 102,000 with 96 miles to go . . . Roll reversal damping out nicely out of 100,000 and Mach 3 point 6 . . . Rudder effective now at Mach 3 point 5. Very slight side slip here. No sweat.”
Like any airliner, the ship’s tall tail now coordinated the fly-ing machine’s turns left or right. Great jaws running the length of the tail’s, 26-foot-long vertical rudder can open on each side of the tail fin. Opened, the rudder grabs the air stream to slow the vessel’s forward speed. These are the speed brakes and they have the effect of the pilots hanging their feet out the door to drag in the dirt.
“Roger, Endeavor. Out of Mach 3 point 5, we see your Air Data Probes deployed. Digitals look good. At Mach 3, you’re right down the slot coming through 90,000 feet.”
On each side of Shuttle’s nose, the iron finger of an Air Data Probe braved the vicious slipstream. The computerized probes send airspeed, drag, and angle of attack information to the ship’s computers.
“Thanks, California. At Mach 2 point 8 out of 89,000 feet, we’re watchin’ the final auto roll reversal right with 73 miles to home.”
“Copy, Endeavor,” the voice from Earth called.
“Out of 82,000 making Mach 2 point 5. Alpha 13 point 5 degrees up bubble on the nose. We have vertical situation displays running on the CRTs. Goin’ back to Autoland now.”
The center Cathode Ray Tube, CRT, winked its green television graphics to the two airmen. With a tiny shuttle bug riding the vertical line of the television, the pilots marked their instrument approach at two and one half times the speed of sound to Edwards Air Force Base, California.
“Roger, right seat. You’re Go from the ground.”
“And at 51 minutes since deorbit burn, we are in TAEM out of Mach 2 point 4.”
“Roger, AC. Terminal Area Energy Management. You’re in the home stretch.”
“Roger. We have Mach 2 point 2 now. Payload bay vents open . . . Now Mach 1 point 8 out of 70,000. Range: 42 miles Now 68K high, Mach 1 point 5. Range: 39 . . . Now, Mach 1 point 3 out of 54,000.”
“You’re right down the pike, Endeavor.”
“Thanks, Flight.”
“SM Alert, Flight !” Enright called from the right seat.
“We see it from here, right seat.”
“Okay. We’ve popped the breaker on radar altimeter Number One, Main Bus A, panel 0-14. I’ve tagged it, and radar altimeter Two is on line and flying.”
“Number One does it again for us, Flight,” the AC smiled.
“Endeavor, we have you out of 53,000 at Mach 1 point 2. You’re 270 seconds to mains on the ground. Confirm state vector transfer.”
“Okay, Flight. We have state vectors loaded into the BFS,” the command pilot called with his right hand upon the Rotational Hand Controller between his knees.
“Copy, Endeavor. Backup Flight System and Computer Five loaded.”
“Endeavor is showing Mach One even, at 51,000 feet, 28 miles out.” The voice from the ground filled the pilot’s headsets.
“Copy, Flight. We’re feelin’ a bit of transonic buffet in the cockpit. Go at Mach point 8, at 22 miles out. We have alpha angle eight degrees. Manual control now. Aft RCS jets off out of 45,000 feet.”
“Copy, Endeavor. You’re 210 seconds from touchdown. We’re seeing your speed brakes now. Expect HAC intercept at 320 knots passing 37,000.”
“Roger, Flight. We have Leuhman Ridge dead ahead. Turning left base, 33 degrees of bank here makin’ 265 knots. Body flap is full manual and we’re 16 degrees nose down. Pullin’ 1.3G. Nose Wheel Steering to direct, panel Left-2.”
“Copy, Shuttle. Your EAS is a tad high at 290 knots. You’re in the Heading Alignment Circle now.”
“We have it, Flight. Pulling 1.6G in the turn. Have Saddle-back Mountain ahead now.” The pilot in the right seat briefly squinted outside into the early-morning sun before turning his attention to the instrument panels at his face and Endeavor’s touchdown only ninety seconds away.
“Okay, California. We have MLS out of 18,000 feet; TACAN inhibit. Fifteen miles out. Anti-Skid is on, panel Left-2.”
“Copy, Endeavor. We see you on Microwave Landing System. You’re right down the slot for Runway 23. Wind is out of 240 at 05 knots, altimeter 29 point niner-five. We see you out of 15,000 feet and making 280 knots. Your attitude is nominal at minus 20 degrees. Now nine miles out at 13,000.”
“Gotcha, Flight. We’re comin’ around to final out of 12K, six and a half uprange. H-dot is 200 down.”
“Copy, Endeavor, descending at 200 feet per second. You’re seventy-four seconds to wheels-on.”
“And, Endeavor, Chase Two is with you,” called a gleaming T-38 jet beside Shuttle’s left wingtip. “We’re at your nine o’clock and see your vent doors open in payload bay.”
“Thanks, Chase,” Colonel Parker acknowledged. “Out of 3,500, making 285 knots over the fence—a tad hot. Speed brakes deployed 80 percent.”
Completing his turn to final approach and aligning his 100-ton glider with the runway centerline, the command pilot squinted through a six-inch square frame set into the forward windshield. Inside the black frame of his Kaiser Electronics Heads-Up Display, Will Parker could see the runway coming up quickly. The see-through HUD is clear glass
like the windshield all around it. But on its glass face were numbers and symbols. Shuttle electronics and her humming black boxes projected critical flight information onto the small clear screen.
Along the left side of the HUD video image, a vertical column of numbers told the pilot his air speed. Another column of numbers on the right edge of the HUD face showed distance to the ground. And in the center of the glass screen, a white video “X” moved left or right of the centerline of the real runway below and half a minute away. By looking outside through the HUD frame on their windshields, both airmen could see exactly how their approach numbers looked without dropping their weary eyes inside the cockpit to the instruments above their knees. HUD keeps a pilot’s eyeballs where they belong. The device first flew in space on Shuttle Six in April 1983. Will Parker flew it now.
“Endeavor: Chase One sees your speed brakes open wide.”
“Thanks, Chase,” the pilot in command called. “Flight: we’re full manual CSS out here. Into the preflare at 1750 feet. Nose up bubble one point five degrees on inner glide slope . . . Two miles out. Landing gear armed. We’re sittin’ fat.”
“Copy, Endeavor. You’re twenty-eight seconds out. Right down the pike.”
“Thanks, Flight . . . Let me hear it, Number One!”
“Steady as you go, Skipper,” Enright called. “Landing gear hydraulics valves One, Two, and Three, set GPC. Out of 250 feet at 270 knots. Three in motion . . . Three down and locked!”
The centerline of Runway 23 rose swiftly to stop Endeavor’s descent. From their cozy office, the pilots could see the runway center line coming closer. But they could not see their ship’s wings nor her down-and-locked wheels far behind them. They flew their flightseats toward the dry lakebed of Edwards Air Force Base.
“Chase Two confirming three gears down and six wheels in position. One hundred feet, eleven seconds out,” the small chase plane called from beside the powerless glider.
“Okay, Skipper: 100 feet at 190 knots . . . 50 feet at 185 . . . 30, 20 . . . 10 at 170 . . . 5. Mains contact!”
“We’re on the center line, Flight! Nose Wheel Steering ready. Nose wheel at 10 feet . . . 5 feet . . . 3 . . . and Flop! Speed brakes 100 percent. Looked like 160 knots at touchdown . . . And we’re rollin’ in the sunshine! Light braking here at 80 . . . 50 . . . 20 . . . And, all stop!”
“Roger, Endeavor. You’re home and beautiful job all the way!”
‘Yeh, Flight,” the sweating and exhausted Aircraft Commander sighed.
“Endeavor, we’re ready for closeout and safing procedures when you’re ready.”
“No thanks, Flight. We’ve been in this sweatbox for six hours. We blew up once on the pad, missed two OMS insertion targets, and bent our metal on two landings. And it smells like my old socks in here just now. You boys pull the plugs. Me and Number One are goin’ for the beer. And right now.”
When the Command Pilot yanked his microphone plug and laid his sweaty headset atop the forward glareshield, the second in command did likewise.
The Commander pushed his seat away from the instrument panel so he could lift his stiff, long legs over the low, center console between the two seats in the cockpit.
“Thought the Captain leaves last, Skip.”
“Not when the Captain has to make tracks for the head, Jack,” sighed William McKinley Parker.
The metal ladder swayed as Jacob Enright followed the commander out of the 60-million-dollar Shuttle Mission Simulator and into the cold fluorescent glare. In their sweat-soaked flightsuits, the two stooped airmen brushed past banks of computers and bleary-eyed technicians who conceive every possible failure, crisis, and catastrophic malfunction with which to torment the crew inside the lifelike simulator. Through the simulator’s computer-controlled windows, even the view of Earth and space is perfectly accurate.
“Nice crash in the drink there, Colonel Parker,” grinned a fat technician. The stoney glare from the flier’s face froze the trainer in midthought.
“That, my friend, is why those two guys are called The Icemen around here,” laughed another engineer after Parker and Enright grimly strode past them into the austere halls of the Lyndon B. Johnson Space Center in Houston.
The two exhausted pilots stood side by side facing the wall in the JSC men’s room, tending to business.
“Nine hours in that sweatbox, Jack!” the taller flier sighed.
“Yeah, Skipper. Least they can’t generate a wing falling off,” mumbled Jacob Enright.
“I’d call an FCS Saturation alarm and running clean out of elevon travel ten feet above the ground the next best thing, Jack.”
The two fliers zipped in unison, reflecting months of training together as a back-up crew who had yet to get a flight of their own. At least they were finally on the manifest for a military mission next year.
“And always bridesmaids, but never brides,” said the slow, down-home drawl of the taller, older man as he led his young copilot into the glare of the hallway.
“We’ll get ours, Will. It won’t be wasted. Not to worry.” Jack Enright consoled his captain as they shuffled down the glassy corridors to the astronauts’ office. They squinted against the cold glare of the hallway after spending half the night in the softly muted lights of the simulator’s flightdeck.
Side by side, backs stooped, hands deep in sweaty flightsuit pockets, the tall man and the short man made their way onward. Flaccid faces of technicians watched the crew pass. Over coffee, night-shift technocrats commented often that Jacob Enright walked and talked more like Colonel Parker every day.
Inside a large, chilly conference room, Parker and Enright sipped hot coffee at a large table topped with tacky plastic wood. Across the table sat the Launch Vehicle Test Conductor, at his side sat FIDO, the Flight Dynamics Officer, and beside him sat the only woman in the room, the Lead Shuttle Simulation Instructor. In front of the room-long blackboard secured to the wall, the Flight Director paced anxiously.
“I know it’s late,” the Flight Director began as he glanced out the window into the dark, cool December night. “But I want to nail down the simulation on the Return To Launch Site Abort protocol.” The director leaned over a pile of computer printouts and graphic time-lines spread upon the table.
“We had the Abort Region Determinator initiate the RTLS abort at 248 seconds into the launch. You carried trajectory lofting through 400,000 feet on two live main engines and one prematurely shutdown. No sweat there.” The tall flight director squinted through his pipe smoke. “But then, men, you boys were out to lunch. Anne?”
Parker and Enright studied their steaming coffee mugs.
The young woman set her round glasses upon a pretty face. She sifted through her own stack of mission profiles before she addressed the tension.
“It fell apart right from the powered turn-around,” she began dryly. “While burning the two remaining main engines after the center engine blew, you were late dumping 16,000 pounds of OMS pod fuel and 1,100 pounds of RCS propellant. You initiated powered pitch-around at 400,000 feet at five degrees per second, taking 32 seconds to reverse your track. That’s 16 seconds too long. By the time you turned around to initiate guidance back to the Cape, you were 275 miles up-range—50 miles too far from landing. Descending under power after the powered turn-around, you pulled 3 point 2 G’s—that’s one-tenth below crush level.”
The two pilots grimaced together as the speaker continued her litany of flaming disaster.
“You initiated powered pitch-down late completing the PPD in 17 seconds instead of 15. Then at Main Engine Cut Off: MECO was late with zero instead of two percent fuel remaining in the external tank. You separated from the ET okay at the nominal 200,000 feet; but you were 375 miles up-range instead of the 325-mile target. ET separation was at Mach 7. That’s okay. But your dynamic pressure on the vehicle was 12 pounds per square foot. That’s 3 pounds too high. Then, during Alpha recovery . . .”
“Mea culpa,” Enright whispered into his coffee as the mission comm
ander smiled weakly.
“Then, gentlemen,” the woman droned on, “you were too fast recovering your angle of attack during load relief. You pulled up in 8 seconds instead of 10 and you pulled 2.8 G’s instead of 2. And . . . you pulled up from 90,000 feet to 100K in six seconds instead of eight, at Mach 7 instead of Mach 6.7. You then overshot the target Alpha angle before your angle of attack stabilized at the 8-degree target. Finally,” she sighed, removing her glasses, “you arrived inbound at the glide slope 175 miles up-range instead of 150. Somehow you were at feet at Mach 4 instead of at Mach 5 out of 90K. And pulling 3.3 G’s.” She paused to catch her breath.
“And we broke her back and sixed in the drink four miles from the Cape runway,” Parker interrupted. “We were there. Remember?” Parker looked up from his coffee for the first time during the midnight briefing. “We got our feet wet one lousy time. And that is why you have four shuttles in your hangar instead of one!”
“Listen . . .” an angry Enright added. “We’ve logged six hundred hours of dry flying in that mother. And we’ve only come home bent twice. Pretty fair average, I’d say.” Jacob Enright was fuming, a sight which made Colonel Parker the only onlooker to smile.
“You threw everything but a biffy backing up in mid-deck at us today,” Enright raved softly. “And we hit the numbers every time today but once . . . Now I want to get some sleep. Fm whipped—and the skipper stinks.” The second in command grinned feebly as he labored to recover his iceman composure.
“What say we gather over the cold, stiff bones in the mornin’,” Colonel Parker offered sleepily. I’il tuck in this here young buck ifn ya’ll don’t mind,” the Colonel drawled in his finest, put-the-wagons-in-a-circle voice.
Sometimes, when hot, tired, and wrecked by ten hours of hangar-flying the simulator, Jacob Enright resented the Colonel’s paternal intervention. Not tonight.
“Obliged,” imitated the copilot.
“Not to mention it, Number One,” the weary senior pilot smiled.
“Okay,” the Flight Director sighed. “Tomorrow morning, say at 10 o’clock. You free, FIDO?”
“Ten’s fine, Hutch.”
The Glass Lady Page 2