Launch on Need

by Daniel Guiteras

  If she didn’t before, she had the group’s attention now. Senca stepped forward.

  “Here’s what we know on this problem,” he said, knowing a recap of a problem was how Pollard liked to start. “Okay, so as Julie said we have limited time to both devise a workaround and execute it. Columbia’s EVA hatch worked fine all morning, no complaints of it catching, no reports of it being hard to operate. Last report was that it has seized altogether and the actuator arm won’t move at all. At this moment, Columbia’s commander and pilot are breathing suit air inside Columbia’s airlock. They’re still working the actuator arm in the hopes it will free itself.”

  Senca motioned to Carl Gaines, his EVA expert, for his input. Senca liked to make sure Gaines was sitting next to the CapCom during complicated Space Station EVAs. Whenever a problem arose, whenever a tool didn’t fit, a part froze, or something unplanned happened, Gaines could spoon-feed the CapCom instructions for the astronauts.

  “We’ve had problems with hatch mechanisms in the past,” Gaines said. “STS-80, November ’96 I think—Columbia, too, by the way. Anyway, they had a stuck hatch, had to abort both EVAs. Never did get it open in flight. Turns out a latching mechanism screw had come loose and jammed the ratchet. If that’s what we have here, that hatch isn’t going to open, period.”

  “What about a thermal jam?” Senca asked.

  “You mean is it jammed because the mechanism got too cold while in the shade?”

  Senca nodded.

  “Could be. One idea would be to rotate Columbia right side up relative to Earth, to get the sun on the airlock for a while, let it heat and see if that frees it up.”

  Pollard was starting to get restless, but had begun dutifully writing a list of pros and cons for the group.

  “But that’ll take forever,” said Eric Howell, an EVA logistics expert. “We’ll have to wait for them to repress Columbia’s airlock, doff their suits, then fly Columbia away from Atlantis. And that doesn’t even count the time they’d spend sunning the airlock. If it turns out not to work, then we’re out at least an hour and a half.”

  “Well, we can’t just leave them up there. We’ve got to try to free the EVA hatch,” Gaines said.

  “Easy guys, we’re nowhere near leaving Columbia’s commander and pilot in space,” Senca said.

  Pollard checked her watch with an impatient movement of her wrist. She erased the “6:48” she had written, and updated it to “7:00.” Then she reached up, grabbed the white board along its side bezel, and held her hand there.

  Senca felt something coming from Pollard; he’d seen it before, how her constructs could be rushed into production. It was the way her mind worked a problem from all directions, unbridled by the constraints others faced. She was unburdened by self-doubt or worry, and seldom if ever focused on the downside of an idea. She was so damn smart, so quick with figures and concepts. He’d guessed these guys were already frustrating her. Senca had worked with Pollard for so long, the give and take between them felt more like the relationship of an old married couple than that of colleagues; they often finished each other’s sentences, or sensed what the other was thinking. And this was one of those times. Pollard looked ready to detonate, ready to flip her trump card.

  Pollard kept silent while the group toyed with a few other obviously weak ideas to solve the airlock problem. Eventually they too fell silent and looked to her for redirection. Her hand tightened on the white board, readied itself. She looked at Senca with a thin, almost nervous smile. Senca responded with a slight nod. Pollard then flipped over the board to reveal what she’d written before the team had entered the room. The group read what she’d written, then looked off in all directions, working the implications, juggling the angles.

  Senca smiled, shook his head. She’s done it again.

  “You’re thinking we blow the sidehatch?” Gaines finally asked, incredulous. “Is that even possible?”

  “You know it’s possible, that can’t be your question,” Pollard shot back.

  “I guess what I mean is,” Gaines said, “is it a good idea?”

  “That’s why we’re here. To table all ideas and solutions. Find the best way to move forward.”

  Everyone in the group understood what Pollard was proposing, and what Gaines was questioning. They knew that blowing the sidehatch could very well be the way the airlock problem would ultimately get solved, but they also knew there were a mind-boggling number of items to be considered before any action could be taken.

  The option to jettison the sidehatch of any orbiter was not intentionally designed; it resulted from the need to save the crew of a doomed vehicle. For the first four shuttle flights, when crew size was only two astronauts, ejection seats had provided a means of emergency escape. As crew size increased, the ejection seats were removed. The next 22 flights, including Challenger’s final flight, provided no means of escape. During the two-and-a-half-year post-Challenger accident stand-down, the remaining orbiter fleet—comprised of Columbia, Atlantis and Discovery—were retrofitted with a crew escape system. This system was designed to be used during reentry, below 30,000 feet, and was intended for use only in the event that the orbiter couldn’t make the runway.

  Each crew member was equipped with an altitude-protection suit that provided emergency oxygen and included automatically operated pilot, drogue and main parachutes, with manual backup. Supplemental equipment included a seawater-activated life raft and flotation devices. Survival gear, carried in lower leg pockets, consisted of a PRC112 radio, signal mirror, chem lights, pen gun and pen gun flares, Scop/Dex motion-sickness pills, mittens, strobe light, day/night signal flare and crew member color-coded ID. The suit and related gear together weighed approximately seventy pounds.

  If during reentry ditching were to become necessary, the crew first would depressurize the cabin, and then the orbiter sidehatch would be jettisoned. The astronaut designated as the jump master would deploy a two-section escape pole through the open hatchway. Before jumping from the open hatch, each astronaut would connect a lanyard hook assembly to the pole. The curved, 3.5-inch diameter pole would extend nearly 10 feet below the sidehatch opening and would guide each crew member down and below the orbiter’s left wing. NASA predicted that a seven-person crew could escape in 90 seconds, jumping at 12-second intervals, and that all would be out before the orbiter dropped to 10,000 feet.

  Pollard was already cleaning her white board. “Okay,” she said, turning around to face the group of engineers. She readied her marker. “I want to hear all of your concerns for crew extraction via the sidehatch. We need to think of everything. I want to hear anything that comes to mind.”

  “In the interest of time, shouldn’t we build a procedure list as we go, handle problems as they come up?” Gaines asked.

  “We can do it that way if you like,” Pollard said. “I’ll write the steps on the board so we can all follow and review, but I think we should also create a text document as we go. It’ll speed things up in terms of distribution when we’re finished.”

  “I’ve got it,” Tim Levy said, pulling out a chair and opening his laptop.

  “Thanks, Tim,” Pollard said.

  Senca felt his cell phone vibrate. He motioned to Pollard that he’d take it out in the hallway, be right back.

  Pollard nodded to Senca. “Give us step one,” she said, motioning to Levy.

  Levy had been picked for this impromptu tiger team because of his expertise in human performance in space. He was known to act like a doting parent as he watched crew vital signs during spacewalks, exercise sessions and sleep cycles. He logged what crew members ate, and nagged them to drink adequate amounts of water.

  “Okay,” Levy said. “I’m not sure if this is step one, since it seems like a lot of things will need to be done in parallel. Anyway, assuming the sidehatch is the only way out, my first concern is for Mullen and Garrett. Before we blow Columbia’s sidehatch, we need to have Mullen and Garrett in a safe place. I don’t want them hanging out in
Columbia’s payload bay during the fireworks.”

  “Why not?” Gaines asked.

  “Well, it’s not really my area,” Levy replied. “But I’m assuming Columbia’s gonna move as a result of the sidehatch being jettisoned. I just wonder how safe that will be for Mullen and Garrett.”

  “Ah,” Gaines stumbled, surprised he hadn’t considered the jettison effect on Columbia. “Good point, maybe we better look at what that force will be before we move on. We have no experience with jettisoning the sidehatch in microgravity—or jettisoning the sidehatch ever, for that matter. But, we can easily calculate the effect it will have on Columbia.”

  Pollard resembled Dizzy Gillespie as she filled her cheeks with the full volume of a frustrated sigh. The pace was killing her. Unable to contain herself and hoping to move things along, she blurted out, “Mass times velocity equals mass times velocity. Levy is right, Columbia might move enough for it to be of concern.”

  Pollard knew that no one in the room questioned her ability to do the calculations in her head, but she sensed the group wanted a little more than just her “because I said so” approach.

  “Alright. Gaines, what does the sidehatch door weigh?” Pollard asked.

  “Ah, it’s in the high two-hundred-pound range.”

  “Alright, let’s say it’s three-hundred pounds. How fast does it get jettisoned?”

  “Fifty feet per second.”

  “Fine. Levy, what does Columbia weigh empty?”

  “Ninety tons.”

  Pollard wrote the following on the board:

  Levy marveled at how a simple equation could represent such a charged situation. A simple proportion, just plug in the numbers and…

  Pollard rewrote the equation with numbers this time and crossed out a bunch of zeros. “So that’s what?” she said, leaning back. “Point-oh-eight, followed by a bunch of threes.”

  “Only slightly slower than the orbiter final docking velocity at the Space Station,” Gaines said.

  “Right, so point-oh-eight feet per second,” Pollard said. “That means in sixty seconds she’ll have moved almost five feet.”

  Levy rushed a hand to his mouth to make sure it wasn’t gaping open. He’d never been a numbers guy, never would be, but his fascination with those who were never faltered. “Okay, so Columbia’s not going to rocket across the sky, but I still want Mullen and Garrett way the hell away from Columbia when the sidehatch blows.”

  “They can wait in Atlantis’s airlock,” Pollard said.

  “How far away from Columbia does Atlantis need to be when Columbia’s sidehatch is blown?” Gaines asked. “I mean, if we knew for certain that the sidehatch would come straight out from the orbiter, we wouldn’t need to move Atlantis at all. But we can’t take that chance. The pyrotechnics may malfunction and send the hatch off with a dangerous trajectory.”

  Levy raised a finger, looked at Pollard. Something was still bugging him.

  Pollard nodded.

  She’d said she wanted to hear all ideas and concerns. Levy thought he had one, so he continued. “Since Columbia’s c of g is well aft of the centerpoint, and the sidehatch is so far forward, won’t that moment arm rotate Columbia clockwise in the Y plane? I mean, won’t we see more rotation than linear translation?”

  “Yes, Tim,” Pollard said. “And since we have to bring Atlantis back to Columbia after jettisoning the sidehatch, the rotation is more worrisome than if it were linear motion.”

  “Well, then, before we blow the sidehatch,” Howell said, “we’ll need to have Columbia’s commander and pilot restore local control of Columbia, take it back from Mission Control. The interior of Columbia will instantly be exposed to extreme temperatures. Who knows how long the electronics will continue to function. As soon as the sidehatch blows, we’re gonna want the commander on the hand controller to null out any residual velocities.”

  “Right, good point Eric,” Pollard said. “We’ll reestablish local control of Columbia as a precaution.”

  “I’m afraid we might be getting ahead of ourselves here,” Gaines said. “Do we know for sure that the commander and pilot can manipulate everything they need to manipulate inside Columbia while wearing EVA suits?”

  “Go on,” Pollard said, interested.

  “I think they’ll be able to get out of the airlock and back into the mid-deck without too much trouble. And they should be able to pull the cabin depress and the sidehatch jett T-handles okay. But is it reasonable to expect one of them could fit through the interdeck passageway, get up to the flight deck, and manipulate the hand controller to stop Columbia’s rotation?”

  “Good question,” Pollard admitted, although she wasn’t convinced it was a deal breaker.

  Senca reentered the room and caught the last of Gaines’s concerns, something about the astronauts slowing Columbia’s rotation. Senca’s face twisted up.

  “Everything okay?” Pollard asked, wondering whether his expression was a result of something he’d heard on the phone or something he’d heard in here.

  “What are you guys talking about?” Senca asked, ignoring her for the moment.

  “The effect blowing the sidehatch will have on Columbia,” Gaines said.

  “What effect?”

  “We calculated what motion would be imparted to Columbia with sidehatch jettison,” Gaines said, slightly smug.

  Senca’s face contorted some more. He thought a second, then finally understood how they’d gotten so far off course. “Columbia does not shoot the sidehatch off. If it did, your calculations might be relevant. However, the thrusters that move the sidehatch away from Columbia are on the sidehatch itself.” Senca looked at Pollard. “There will be so little effect on Columbia with jettison that I’m willing to say it will be zero.”

  Pollard’s face registered nothing. After all, she wasn’t the systems expert. Her job was to arrive at a solution. And now with help, they were closer to that objective. She didn’t care who was right or wrong.

  “Levy, you have Internet access in here?” Pollard asked.

  “Sure,” he replied. “What do you want?”

  “Get us exact dimensions on the interdeck passageway, EVA suit, airlock, et cetera. We’ll come back to this.”

  Pollard took a beat. “Alright, so we have Commander Avery move Atlantis down and back from Columbia by a hundred feet or so. Then, after the sidehatch is blown, Avery flies Atlantis back to a clocked position twenty or thirty feet from Columbia. We’ll have Columbia’s commander and pilot wait in the doorway for extraction. Now Howell, how do you want to do the extraction?”

  “Not with ropes that’s for sure,” Howell said. “I want Mullen to use SAFER from Atlantis to Columbia, take them one at a time that way, leave Garrett in Atlantis’s payload bay for airlock assist.”

  “You sure you want to go with jetpacks on this?” Gaines asked.

  “Sounds hairy, I know,” Howell said. “But remember, there are no exterior handholds anywhere near Columbia’s sidehatch. The only handhold is just inside the sidehatch doorway, high on the left side, uh, sorry, low and on the right side—Columbia’s upside down. Anyway, we’ll have the commander and pilot tether off inside using that grab bar and wait for Mullen to pull up to the doorway. We can discuss the best way for them to hold onto Mullen for the transfer.”

  “We’ll keep Atlantis lower than we did for the transfer of the other five crewmembers,” Pollard said. “That’ll give Mullen a little more room to work with, fly out any errors in his jetpack. I guess we’ve ruled out that Mullen won’t have to chase down Columbia’s sidehatch opening due to rotation, so that makes the final rescue less complicated.” Pollard glanced at Senca, communicated a thank you. “It’s definitely doable.”

  She looked around at the group of engineers. “Anything else?” The engineers shook their heads, said nothing. “Alright then, Tim, get your list ready for review. We’ll look at those dimensions, add details and half-steps to the transfer procedure as we read back through it. I’ll go out an
d tell Warner our preliminary plan.”

  Gaines waited until Pollard had left the room. “High-tech jetpack saves the final two Columbia astronauts, story at eleven,” he said, shaking his head and laughing lightly. “Man, I’d give a hundred bucks to see Mullen’s face when Control tells him he gets to use SAFER to transfer the last two crew members.”

  Chapter 71

  Johnson Space Center, Houston

  Mission Control Center

  POLLARD HEARD WARNER working with his engineers as she approached. They’re still trying to open that airlock, she thought. She glanced at her watch. She and her tiger team had spent 18 minutes on their plan.

  “Pollard, please tell me you have something,” Warner said, catching sight of her as she entered Mission Control. “Please tell me you have a solution.”

  “Allan,” she said in a tone that riveted his attention.

  “What? What have you got? We’re running out of time here, Julie.”

  “We’re going to have them jett the sidehatch,” she said. Again, her voice was calm and confident.

  “The sidehatch? Shit.” Warner turned away, looked out to the huge monitors at the front of Mission Control Center. Pollard watched his eyes first scan a monitor showing a live feed from Atlantis where the celebrating had already begun, then move to another monitor carrying the feed from Columbia, where a camera in the mid-deck shooting aft caught space suits moving inside the airlock. Unlike Pollard, Warner had had enough of this mission. He was worn down, drained. He didn’t know if he could stomach the risk that came with yet another unrehearsed space walk. His eyes followed a slow path back to Pollard. “You’re sure that’s the best way?”

  “You want them out today, don’t you?”

  “I wanted them out an hour ago!”

  “Then they need to come out via the sidehatch.”