by Allen Steele
Which, of course, was just one of the many reasons why the space program was in such sorry shape. The agency had become so used to kowtowing to a fickle press, it had forgotten that its primary purpose was to launch rockets. But, just for once, Parnell wanted to put the fear of God into one of these leeches. He could see that he had succeeded when she blinked.
“Got it,” she finally whispered. “I understand.”
Parnell nodded. “Good. Then let’s go … we’ve got a launch window to meet.” He turned and led her toward the elevator.
If the rest of the mission went so easily, he would have nothing to worry about for the next ten days.
The elevator creaks as it gradually rises through the tower’s central shaft. No one in the cage says anything during the long ascent; through its wire-mesh walls, they can see the flat landscape of Merritt Island spread out before them, the giant white cube of the Vehicle Assembly Building dominating the scenery from three miles away, the Florida mainland a green line across the distant western horizon.
Constellation’s sleek fuselage looms next to the launch tower. They rise past the vast wings of the first-stage booster, past the ropy coils of fuel cables, past the gently tapering second stage, where a thin skein of frozen condensation from the supercooled fuels within the rocket’s fuel tanks has affixed itself to the hull like hoarfrost, until they reach the top of the tower. They catch a brief glimpse of the orbiter’s vertical stabilizer before it vanishes behind its sharp delta wings as the elevator slows and comes to a clanking halt.
A technician in a white jumpsuit and helmet opens the cage door and leads them across the open platform to the crew access arm. A chill morning breeze, tinged with salt, moans through the skeletal girders and sings past the wires of the emergency cable car leading from the tower to the ground far below; their last view of Earth is from this aerie above the marshy coast, so near and yet so far.
Parnell is the first person to walk onto the access arm. He feels a gentle vibration through the soles of his shoes as he strides down the enclosed bridge, a tactile sense of restrained power that trembles against his palms as he touches the handrails. Constellation is a monster beginning to awaken from its slumber.
At the end of the access arm is the whiteroom. Here, there is no wind, no salt air, no sound, only a small sterile chamber nestled up against the rocket’s fuselage. One technician hands Parnell his helmet, helps him fit it over his head and attach the dangling line to the communications carrier on his waist. Another technician guides him to an open circular hatch and gives him the customary backslap as he climbs into the belly of the beast.
Parnell climbs up a narrow ladder past rows of swivel-mounted acceleration couches until he reaches the top of the passenger compartment. He clambers into his couch on the starboard side and begins to fasten the lap- and shoulder-harnesses around his body. Through the open hatch above him he can see the narrow confines of the cockpit; Kingsolver and Trombly, the pilot and co-pilot, glance briefly over their shoulders as they continue running through the pre-launch checklist, repeating each item as they gaze at the myriad dials and digital indicators on their wraparound consoles, their gloved hands snapping toggles and depressing buttons.
“Primary BFS check …”
“BFS transferred, check. GPC on Mode Five, green light.”
“Control, GPC and BFS checks complete, over.”
“Select three-plus-one on screen three.”
“Roger that …”
Sunlight lances down, as if through a narrow skylight, from the cockpit windows. Below him, Parnell can hear the rest of his crew as they climb the ladder into the cockpit. A few moments later, Cris Ryer hoists herself into the couch on the port side of the vessel, just across the aisle from him. He can barely make out her face inside the open visor of her helmet, yet she looks pensive as she snaps the worn buckles of her harness and tightens the webbed straps.
“Remember to extinguish all smoking materials,” he says.
“Right,” she murmurs. The joke was old and tired before she was out of diapers, and she pays no attention to it.
“I sort of meant the look in your eyes,” he adds.
Ryer casts him a look which somehow manages to be both hot and cold at the same time, yet she doesn’t say anything. “If there’s something you want to discuss …” he continues.
“No, Commander, there isn’t,” she says, looking away again. “In fact, I’d just as soon not talk about anything right now, thank you.”
The ferry pilots have paused in their metronomic recitation of the checklist. Although neither of them are looking their way, it’s obvious that they’re eavesdropping on the conversation. After a moment, they resume their work.
“Go for OMS pressurization.”
“Third stage OMS pressurization beginning. Switch is armed, check …”
“We’ll talk about it later,” Parnell says. He hesitates, then adds, “And we will have a discussion, Captain.”
Ryer’s expression is glacial. “Yes, sir, Commander.”
Parnell sighs and shuts his eyes for a moment. He feels a headache coming on; whose swell idea was it to allow women aboard spaceships in the first place, for Christ’s sake? He gropes through his jumpsuit pockets for the Tylenol stashed in there somewhere as his eyes land on the digital chronometer above the cockpit hatch.
T-minus eighteen minutes, thirty-four seconds, and counting. They’ve come off the obligatory nine-minute hold in the countdown; unless the boys in the firing room find a reason to call another hold or even abort the launch, they’ll be on their way in less than twenty minutes. That’s eighteen and a half minutes too long for him.
“Mission, this is Constellation, conducting voice check, over … voice check, one, two, three.”
“Load OPS-1 flight plan.”
“Loading OPS-1, roger. ERR log switch set to reset. Enter Spec nine-niner, check on screens one and two.”
“Roger that, Mission, we copy. Voice check over. Constellation out.”
He finds the Tylenol tin, opens it, pulls out two tablets, and pops them into the back of his mouth, tasting their blandness on his tongue for a moment before he swallows them without the benefit of water. From somewhere behind and beneath him, he can hear muted conversation as one of the whiteroom techs struggles to help Dooley into his couch. Judging from the strident sound of the young man’s voice, he seems to be having a last-minute panic attack, manifesting itself as general inability to fasten himself into his couch.
Parnell shuts his eyes again, trying to let the painkillers do their work. What did he do to deserve this? A final trip to the Moon with a hostile lesbian for a first officer and two media vultures and a computer geek for passengers. The only sane person in his crew is Lewitt; if it weren’t for Jay, he’d be off this ancient tub already, taking the elevator to the nearest phone, where he’d call Goldin and tell him where he could shove this mission and exactly how….
“Go for MPS pressurization.”
“Initiating MPS cycle, roger.”
This ancient tub. Funny how that thought just came to him. Opening his eyes again, Parnell gazes around the narrow passenger compartment. He can remember when the first Atlas-C was delivered by ocean barge from the North American Rockwell plant in Palmdale, California: brand-new, high-tech, seemingly the last word in astronautical engineering. Now, looking at it with fresh eyes, Constellation’s interior looks as antique as that of a B-52 bomber. The multipaned Plexiglas of the portal next to him is friction-scarred, the view of the blue sky overhead dimmed with age. The riveted seams of the beige-painted steel show the first signs of rust; the fabric of the acceleration couch is shiny with age, with a corner of his seat beginning to fray, white tufts of lining peeking out from between the stretched threads. There’s a small square patch almost directly above his head, not old but not very recent either, where a nameless hangar worker once replaced a section that had suffered metal fatigue, and the bolt-holes around the service panels below the ladder a
re scratched and eroded from hundreds of business meetings with torqueless screwdrivers.
Parnell feels a cold shiver run down his spine. He remembers what he told Judith just last night, that Constellation is a reliable old bird. Now he’s not quite so certain. The seats of the first Atlas-A orbiters had been equipped with evacuation capsules, much like enclosed ejection seats; if there was an emergency during launch, in theory the passengers could hit a couple of switches that would close the capsules and jettison them from the craft. But there were so many problems with the capsules—including a misfire that had killed a crewman—that they were removed from the ferries.
No one talks about it, but the Atlas-C’s are flying coffins during the first three minutes of flight. If something goes during launch, the only possible recourse is for the pilot to fire the third-stage rocket and attempt an abort-to-ground landing. At least, that was the theory; he’d hate to be aboard the first spacecraft to actually attempt such a high-speed maneuver.
“Ground crew signals secure and all clear.”
“Roger. Go for lock-down of main hatch …”
He hears the sound of the belly hatch slamming shut. Trombly unbuckles himself from his couch and quickly climbs down the ladder to dog it tight from the inside. Although he can’t see the access arm from his porthole because of the starboard wing, Parnell knows that the bridge must be swinging away from the hull. The pad should be vacant now, save for a handful of technicians double-timing it to a waiting van; cabin lights flicker for a moment, a clue that Constellation has switched to internal power.
Placing his palms on the armrests, Parnell can feel the vibration of the ferry’s fuel tanks pressurizing to maximum capacity. He doesn’t have to look at the chronometer to know that the stately minuet of clocks and computers is entering its final movement.
“Abort advisory check satisfactory.”
“Check, AAC is satisfactory. Channel two is clear.”
“Roger, Launch Control, channel two is clear. Cabin pressurization is nominal, proceeding with hydraulic pressure check …”
And so it goes, on down the checklist, until in the final sixty seconds of countdown, somewhere between the closure of the first-stage vents and auxiliary power unit shutdown, Parnell finds himself murmuring a prayer under his breath. He has never considered himself a particularly religious man, especially not when it comes to leaving the ground. A bird is a bird, regardless of whether it’s his Beechcraft or a three-stage rocket, and intellectually he knows that his fate rests more in the eyes, ears, and hands of the distant launch controllers and the thousands of people who prepped Constellation for flight than those of a mythic deity whose very existence he has always doubted.
God doesn’t work for NASA, he tells himself. Yet, when he casts a stray glance in Ryer’s direction, he’s vaguely surprised to see that her own mouth is moving silently, and he doesn’t have to be a lip-reader to know what she’s saying: Our Father, who art in heaven, hallowed be thy name …
“Roger, Launch Control, we’ve got APU green-for-go, over.”
“Main engine gimbal complete, all systems configured for launch.”
“Roger that …”
Then Ryer’s eyes move in his direction, and when she finds him looking at her, the words stop as her face blanches. Before she can look away again, though, Parnell smiles and gives her a sly wink as he silently completes the verse: Thy kingdom come. Thy will he done in earth, as it is in heaven….
She reluctantly returns the smile.
“Main engine start on three.”
“Five …”
“Four …”
The countdown reaches T-minus three seconds, and five thousand two hundred and fifty tons of hydrazine and nitric acid ignite beneath them in a deafening roar which shakes the vessel as if an earthquake had erupted directly beneath the pad. For an instant, the ferry sways back and forth within its cradle as the monster struggles against the invisible bars of its prison.
“Main engine start.”
“Two …”
“One …”
And then the countdown reaches zero, the cradle opens wide, and Constellation slowly begins to rise.
Editorial from The Manchester Union-Leader, Manchester, New Hampshire; August 28, 1968
A “Lunatic” Idea
If one needs any further reason to question the fitness of Democratic Presidential candidate Robert F. Kennedy, it’s his campaign promise to dismantle the U.S. Space Force and replace it with a civilian space agency.
During a campaign speech delivered last Wednesday at the McDonnell Douglas Corporation’s manufacturing facility in St. Louis, Senator Kennedy told aerospace workers that as President of the United States he would phase out the USSF, and in its place, substitute a new Federal space organization which would concentrate on “peaceful and scientific” uses of outer space instead of “strictly military goals.”
Unfortunately, Little Bobby the Boy Senator has considerable support for his proposal from the liberals in Congress, who have begun to question the Pentagon’s oft-stated intent to use the Moon as a base for scientific research as well as in the pursuit of national security. It should also be noted that Little Bobby’s cohorts in the so-called Youth International Party have seconded the notion. “If we can go to the Moon for some other reason than making war,” says Jerry Rubin, “then that’s fine with me.”
Of course Red Jerry would agree! He and his gang of hippie radicals have already made headlines by protesting at the front gates of Cape Canaveral, including the “sit-ins” which have prevented military personnel from reporting to duty. If Kennedy got his way, he would probably appoint Abbie Hoffmann to be the director of the space program. That way they could have a “love-in” with “Hanoi Jane” Fonda on the Moon!
What the Senator and his de facto Communist friends don’t mention is that this idea has been floated already. In 1959, Little Bobby’s older brother, Little Johnny, proposed much the same thing with his Space Act, which was supported by Little Johnny’s former Democratic running mate, Senator Lyndon B. “Claim-Jumpin’” Johnson of Texas. This was only one of the reasons why the Kennedy/Johnson ticket was soundly defeated in the 1960 presidential election; the American people recognized the fact that we need a strong military presence in space in order to offset the international Communist conspiracy.
Now, eight years later, we’ve got old whine poured into new bottles. It’s clear that Little Bobby wants to vindicate Little Johnny’s political reputation, although Boston’s mayor could care less since he’s busy destroying the city’s schools with his desegregation program. It doesn’t seem to matter to Senator Kennedy and his running mate, Senator Eugene “Pot-head” McCarthy, that the very reason why America has Space Station One in the first place, and will be sending the first reconnaissance mission to the Moon next December, is its commitment to preserving the ideals of liberty and freedom.
During this past decade, President Nixon has held the public trust by insisting upon a military space program. Conducting scientific research on the Moon is a great idea, but a civilian space agency cannot possibly fulfill the objectives of the U.S. Space Force. As a ranking member of the Senate Armed Forces Committee, Little Bobby must know this … which makes us question why he would propose something as ludicrous as a civilian space program.
Could it be that Senator Kennedy’s fellow travelers have received instructions from the Kremlin to stop Project Luna?
—William F. Loeb,
editor and publisher
SIX
2/16/95 • 1232 GMT
CONSTELLATION LEFT EARTH ATOP a dense column of fire, the twenty-nine motors in its first-stage booster consuming more than a thousand tons of liquid propellant in less than ninety seconds.
The rocket’s ascent could be seen from hundreds of miles away. On Florida’s Gulf Coast, the vessel was a tapering contrail rising at a sharp angle from the eastern horizon, while on Cocoa Beach the sand itself seemed to vibrate as early-morning beachcom
bers paused in collecting shells to watch as the enormous rocket ripped upward into the deep blue sky. Within a minute and a half, Constellation had climbed almost twenty-five miles into the sky and was a little more than thirty-one miles downrange from the Cape. Traveling 5,256 miles per hour, it left in its wake a sonic boom that rattled the windows of houses far behind.
At this point, the pilots throttled the engines back to 70 percent. Constellation began to gradually fall, its nose dipping slightly toward the horizon. Left on its own, the rocket would have continued its shallow dive until it finally crashed at hypersonic speed into the Atlantic Ocean, but the throttle-back was only the prelude to its primary staging maneuver.
The first-stage engines expired, its fuel tanks drained, and a couple of moments later explosive bolts at the juncture of the first and second stages ignited. The winged booster cleaved away from the second stage; as it began to fall toward the ocean, a ring-shaped parafoil made of whisker-fine mesh steel blossomed out from beneath the wings, braking its descent until it splashed-down in the Atlantic nearly two hundred miles from the Cape, where it would be recovered by a NASA freighter and towed back to Merritt Island.
Long before this occurred, though, eight engines in the second stage fired at full-throttle as 155 tons of fuel kicked Constellation farther into the upper atmosphere. For two more minutes, the ferry fought its way up the gravity well, penetrating the topmost regions of the atmosphere until, at an altitude of nearly forty miles and more than 330 miles downrange, the second stage was jettisoned, whereupon it followed its mate on a parafoiled glide into the drink.
By now Constellation had lost most of its take-off mass and was accelerating at more than fourteen thousand miles per hour. Behind the orbiter’s delta wings and vertical stabilizer, its single engine throttled up as the spacecraft accelerated to nearly 18,500 miles per hour … until, sixty-three miles above the Atlantic and a little more than seven hundred miles downrange from the Cape, the third-stage engine shut down and the winged craft coasted into low orbit.