He reached the tail section and went around it, panning the camera on Lightning’s main engines.
“Damn! You guys seeing this?”
Kessler held his breath for a moment as he realized just how close they had come to total destruction. Number-one SSME was destroyed, along with most of the exhaust section, including the protective tiles around it. The orbiter looked like it had come with only two SSMEs and the two smaller OMS engines above.
“Houston, are you there?” asked Jones.
“Ah, roger. We’re still here.”
“Any comments?”
“Not yet. Could you pan in closer?”
Kessler saw Jones disappear behind Lightning. He shifted his gaze back to the screen. The camera panned in on the area where number-one SSME had been. Now there was only a mangled mess of pipes and loose cables.
“That’s as close as I can get.”
“Hold position.”
“Hot damn, Houston! Looks like one of the turbopumps was blown to hell.”
“Yes, we can see that. Can you tell if it was the liquid hydrogen or the liquid oxygen turbopump?”
“I can’t remember which is the smaller of the two, but the one blown here’s the larger one. The other pump’s in one piece.”
“That’s the liquid hydrogen pump.”
“Well, the pumps are pretty delicate pieces of equipment. I guess a failure was bound to happen sooner or later.”
Kessler frowned. Jones was correct.
“Houston, Lightning here. You guys have any ideas?” Kessler asked.
“Lightning, we’ve just pulled out the maintenance records of the SSME, and it shows that all three engines successfully fire-tested for a full one thousand seconds each prior to installation on the orbiter. The report from the twenty-second Flight Readiness Firing last week shows nothing out of the ordinary. Based on the way the engine blew, our only guess at this point is that perhaps the turbopump somehow overheated, or maybe the blades simply came apart under the stress. Again, those are guesses. We won’t know for sure what caused it until we perform a thorough inspection.”
Kessler exhaled.
“Jones, please pan onto the left OMS engine next.”
Kessler saw the image moving over to the left Orbital Maneuvering System engine. It looked nominal.
“Can’t see anything wrong here.”
“Pan closer.”
Jones placed himself between the OMS exhaust and the vertical fin. “Sorry, boys, but there’s no apparent damage here.”
Kessler got to within inches of the screen. It looked normal. The thermal tiles surrounding the OMS engine appeared intact.
“Well, Houston?” asked Jones.
“We’ll have to continue running diagnostics. Give us a look underneath.”
“All right…oh, shit!”
Kessler watched the image on the screen rotating. Something had gone wrong. “CJ, what’s your situation? CJ?”
“Oh, man. Can’t control this thing!”
Kessler did not have a visual on Jones since he was behind Lightning. He could only see the image on the screen, which showed Lightning rotating along its center line and moving farther away, apparently out of control. Kessler finally saw him, above the tail and spinning along all three axes.
“Close your eyes. Relax!”
“Don’t fucking tell me to relax, man! This thing’s got a mind of its own. My hands aren’t even on the damned controls and the jets are firing like crazy. What in the hell’s going on?”
“Jones, Houston here. Shut the MME down. Shut it down!”
Kessler saw what he feared he would see. Jones, still spinning, was coming straight back toward Lightning. Jesus! He’s gonna crash against the orbiter!
“CJ! Shut it off! God, please, shut it off!”
“Dammit! I’m trying, I’m trying!”
Kessler watched Jones’s left hand striking the section of the MMU above his right shoulder in a desperate attempt to throw the switch off before he disappeared from Kessler’s field of view. Kessler shifted his gaze toward the screen. The image of the left OMS nozzle grew larger and larger.
“Oh, God. Nooo!” Jones screamed.
The screen went blank.
“CJ? CJ? CJ! Oh, Sweet Jesus!”
“Lightning, what’s going on? Our screen just went blank. Do you have a visual on Jones?”
“He just crashed into the left OMS engine nozzle. The MMU’s still active. He’s spinning and moving away from the orbiter!” Kessler watched jones continue to rotate in all directions as he began to move away from Lightning again.
“Fucking MMU!” Kessler removed his headset, dove for the mid-crew compartment, pressurized the airlock, and floated inside it. He moved quickly, closing the interior hatch, stripping in seconds, and donning the suit liner. He reached for the lower torso section of the pressure suit and pulled it up to his waist. He then dove into the upper section and joined it to the lower section with the connecting ring.
“Lightning? What’s going on? What’s the status of Jones? Is he moving?”
Kessler, his senses clouded by the sudden rush of adrenaline, barely heard Hunter’s voice coming through the speakers. Every second counted. Every damned second. He’d let Jones down years before in Iraq. Kessler was determined not to do it again. As mission commander, Kessler was responsible for the spacecraft and its crew. Jones was his crew.
Kessler backed himself into the PLSS backpack unit and strapped it on, also securing the control and display unit on his chest. Gloves, gloves… He scanned the shelf to his left.
There!
He snapped the gloves into the ring locks and put on the skull cap and communications gear. He activated the backpack unit and before he read the displays, he reached for the helmet and lowered it into place. He locked it and eyed the display on his chest. The backpack system was nominal. Kessler lowered the visor assembly over his helmet.
“Lightning, Houston here. Please acknowledge. Lightning? Lightning? Dammit, Michael. Answer me!”
“I’m here, Chief,” he responded through his voice-activated headset. “I’m going after him.”
“Not yet. You haven’t fully pre-breathed yet.”
“I know, Chief, but I don’t have a choice. He’s getting away!”
“Then be very careful. Try to relax as much as possible. Don’t breathe any faster than you have to or you might throw up inside your suit.”
“Roger.” He depressurized the airlock, pushed the exterior hatch open, and floated into the payload bay.
Kessler quickly forced his mind to overcome the spatial disorientation so typical for first-time spacewalkers. For a brief moment it seemed that the hundreds of hours he had spent training in the 1.3-million-gallon Neutral Buoyancy Simulator tank at the Marshall Space Flight Center in Huntsville, Alabama, and at the Johnson Space Center’s WET-F pool had been insufficient. Well, almost insufficient, he admitted, as his senses finally adjusted to the orbiter’s upside-down flight profile. A large portion of the South American continent appeared to hang overhead as Kessler looked up through the gold-coated visor of his space suit and past the opened doors of the payload bay.
Kessler shifted his gaze to the left, above the orbiter’s vertical fin tip. He narrowed his eyes and inhaled deeply as his heartbeat increased.
“Don’t get nervous, Michael. Take your time breathing that oxygen. Let your body adjust slowly. Hold it in as much as possible and exhale slowly,” said Hunter.
“Trying, Chief. Starting EVA,” Kessler said over the radio as he took a shallow breath and held it in. He briefly inspected the second MMU on the right side of the payload bay, checking for nominal propellant and battery levels before backing himself into it. He strapped himself in and threw the power switch located over his right shoulder. The MMU’s flashing locator lights came on. Before placing his hands
on the thruster controls, Kessler went through the brief checklist he had committed to memory. Satisfied that all was in operating condition, he skillfully fired the MMU’s thruster jets for one second. The twin tanks in the back of the MMU provided compressed nitrogen gas to the thrusters, which puffed out the gas in one direction and pushed him gently in the other. Kessler reached the rear section of the payload bay and affixed a “Stinger” to the arms of the MMU. The Stinger was a device designed to latch on to broken satellites. With that, Kessler headed out of the payload bay into free space. He activated the TV camera for the benefit of Houston.
Kessler used the hand control to move away from the payload bay. He looked around him but didn’t see Jones. Puzzled, he propelled himself roughly two hundred feet above and to the right of the orbiter. Still no sign of him. He piloted the MMU to within a hundred or so feet below Lightning. There! A white figure. Still rotating out of control. Kessler applied a three-second burst on the thrusters. Compressed nitrogen propelled him beneath Lightning into a sea of darkness. The missing tiles on Lightning’s underside distracted him momentarily, but his logical mind quickly put things into perspective. First get to Jones, then worry about the missing tiles.
He released the MMU’s controls and continued moving in the same direction. Jones’s limp figure grew progressively larger. Kessler knew he was moving much farther away from Lightning than he should, but all of that was secondary. Who knew what kind of injury Jones had suffered in his collision with the orbiter? Jones appeared to be unconscious, since he didn’t move his arms or legs.
Kessler approached within ten feet of Jones and slowed down, trying to achieve a similar translational velocity. He did so as he came to within five feet of him. Kessler noticed that Jones’s MMU seemed dead, the compressed nitrogen supply probably exhausted. No obvious damage to the EMU suit. Still pressurized. Visor intact, so no damage to the helmet underneath. Kessler breathed easier. Hope filled him.
Kessler fired the reverse thrusters for one second and reduced his speed. Additional lateral thrusts allowed him to align the Stinger with the back of Jones’s MMU.
Slowly, almost painstakingly, Kessler approached his rotating friend.
“Two feet and closing…one foot…contact, oh shit!” Kessler managed to place the Stinger’s latching mechanism in contact with Jones’s MMU, but he lacked enough force to snap the latch. His approach had been too slow. The Stinger and Jones’s MMU momentarily transferred their respective translational and rotational energies and then separated. Kessler’s forward motion caused Jones to wobble. In turn, Jones’s rotating motion caused Kessler to rotate clockwise. In an instant, the Earth, space, orbiter, and Jones flashed through his field of view, changing positions as he tumbled away unpredictably on all three axes.
Kessler felt dizzy and disoriented. He tried to concentrate and remember the hours he’d spent in the multiaxis simulators. His hands fumbled for the MMU’s controls, but spatial disorientation quickly set in, making it harder for Kessler’s confused brain to decide in which direction to reach for the hand controls of the propulsion unit. His breathing increased. He tried to control his rising nausea.
“Close your eyes! Close them and hold your breath. Remember your training,” Kessler heard Hunter say over the radio, but he began to panic. The orbiter seemed to float farther and farther away.
“Dammit, Michael! I gave you a direct order. Close your eyes and relax. You have plenty of compressed nitrogen to make it back from miles away. Breathe slowly, hold it for several seconds, and let it out slow. Concentrate!”
Hunter’s voice was reassuring. Although designed to be used within three hundred feet of the orbiter, the MMU could get back from farther away than that. As mixed images of Earth and space flickered in front of his eyes, Kessler managed to draw strength from his strict NASA training and forced his eyes to do something his natural instincts refused to let them do: He closed them. In a flash it all went away, as if someone had abruptly dropped a heavy gate in front of him, isolating him from the sudden madness that had engulfed him. Peace. His eyes stopped registering motion; his brain regained control; his body relaxed. Kessler’s breathing steadied.
“Eyes closed.”
“Good, Michael,” said Hunter. “Now listen carefully. I’ve got you in plain view from one of Lightning’s payload bay cameras. You’re rotating clockwise about once every ten seconds. Counter with a two-second lateral thrust.”
Kessler almost opened his eyes to reach for the controls but caught himself. Instead, he felt his way down the MMU’s arms, placed his hands on the controls, and fired the right-side jets. One-thousand-one…one-thousand-two. He released the trigger.
“Good, Michael. Now, you’re also rotating backward at a slower rate…hmmm, about once per minute. A one-second forward thrust should do.”
“Roger,” Kessler responded as his confidence began to build up again. He complied with Hunter’s order and fired the jet. “All right, now what?”
“Open your eyes.”
Kessler did so. “Jesus!” was all he could say when he realized how much he had drifted away in such a little time. Lightning appeared to be a small white object no larger than a couple of inches in length. Jones floated roughly fifty feet away, rotating faster than before.
Kessler decided to take a different approach. He released the Stinger from the MMU’s arms and then approached Jones. He stopped when he estimated he was five feet away from his rotating friend. Kessler removed the ten-foot-long webbed line hanging from the side of his MMU. It had tether clips on both ends. He clipped one end to the side of his own MMU and carefully tried to snag the other end to anything on Jones’s space suit or MMU. He got within three feet. Jones’s rotation turned him clockwise about once every five seconds. Kessler reached for the center of Jones’s suit, the point of zero rotation, and managed to clip the end of one of the straps securing Jones to the MMU.
He slowly turned around and started to haul Jones back toward Lightning. The webbed line neutralized Jones’s rotational movement.
Kessler eyed Lightning. He estimated they were at least a thousand feet away, over three times the recommended distance for MMU EVA work, but Kessler knew that was just a precautionary specification. In actuality, as long as compressed nitrogen remained in his tanks, the MMU could take him as far away as he pleased.
He opted for a four-second thrust. The first second would put tension on the line and give him a hard tug, the other three seconds would be to compensate for Jones’s mass and to propel them both toward the orbiter.
With both hands on the controls, Kessler thrust himself forward. As expected, the tug came and jerked him back, but he kept his hands on the hand controls, commanding the MMU to give him more forward motion. Slowly, it happened. Kessler began to drag Jones back to the orbiter.
A few minutes later they got to within one hundred feet. Kessler knew slowing down would be trickier than accelerating. The moment he slowed down, Jones would close the ten-foot gap and either crash against him or fly by him and pull him along. Without slowing down, Kessler glanced at the aft section of Lightning’s empty payload bay. He estimated his velocity at no more than two or three feet per second.
Kessler directed thrusters to propel him and his “cargo” toward the payload bay. He waited. Fifty feet separated them from the bay. Forty feet. Kessler readied himself to perform a maneuver he’d never done before. Thirty feet…twenty-five…now!
He slowed down a little. The webbed line lost its tension as Jones continued moving at the same speed and in the same direction. Kessler jetted himself upward, barely missing Jones, who flew past him a few feet below. He waited for the tug. It came. Hard. Jones pulled him toward the payload bay. Ten feet. Kessler fired the thrusters and managed to slow Jones and himself down to less than a half foot per second. Jones softly impacted the inside wall of Lightning’s aft payload bay. Kessler managed to stop a few feet from him.
Almost home. Kessler unstrapped Jones’s MMU and secured it to the side of the cargo bay.
With Jones’s bulky MMU out of the way, Kessler placed Jones in between the arms of his own and gently jetted toward the front, toward the still-open hatch that led to the air lock. They reached it in less than twenty seconds.
Kessler quickly unstrapped himself, temporarily secured the MMU, and dragged Jones into the air lock.
He closed the hatch and repressurized the compartment. Kessler unlocked his gloves and removed his visor and helmet, letting them float inside the compartment as he unstrapped the backpack and display unit. He unlocked the joining ring, kicked off the lower torso pressure suit, and twisted his way out of the upper torso section. Now he wore only the liquid cooling and vent garment.
He removed Jones’s gloves and helmet, and powered down the backpack unit. Jones’s eyes were closed. Kessler put a finger to Jones’s nose. He was breathing. Kessler noticed a cut on Jones’s forehead. He must have hit the inside of his helmet on impact and knocked himself out.
He finished undressing Jones and spotted bruises on his ribs. Damn! Broken ribs. Kessler frowned, but was not surprised. Jones had crashed against the orbiter at great speed. He was lucky just to be alive. Kessler put on the comfortable blue, one-piece cotton flight suit and then carefully dressed Jones. He pushed the inside hatch open and gently dragged Jones to the mid-deck compartment, closing the hatch behind them.
“Houston, Lightning here. Do you copy?”
“What’s your situation, Michael? How’s Jones?”
“He’s got a head wound and I think some broken ribs. His breathing’s steady and his pulse is strong. I’m going to strap him in and keep him still.”
“Copy, Lightning. Careful with the broken ribs. Could puncture a lung.”
“Roger that. Also, I noticed several black tiles missing on the underside. They must have shaken loose during the explosion. That’s bad news.”
“Exactly how many tiles are we talking about?”
“Uh, I guess about a dozen.”
“We’ll have to check if your tile repair kit can handle that much exposed area.”
Siege of Lightning Page 16
