by T I WADE
The men taping everything stated that they understood.
“We will complete our usual three-orbit test flight preparing for taking the radioactive waste out into space,” added Ryan while Jonesy got himself ready switching off the intercom to send and not receive from the rear two headsets. “You will be able to tape the entire communications between pilots, the C-5 and ground control. On these future flights we will go higher, higher than the International Space Station, but we have not yet reached the higher altitude for testing. We hope to next month, when NASA gives us their first transporter to test.”
“Beginning our descent,” stated Bob Mathews over the intercom, and the inside of the cockpit became quiet. Nobody talked. Only the camera was silently running.
“49,000…..47,000………..41,0000 feet, 505 knots, pulling her up….520 knots level….beginning the climb…..43,000…..46,000…….51,000 releasing shuttle….52,000. Good flying, Colonel Jones….you are out at 53,200 feet, 405 knots…..banking to starboard now….fly safe ‘60 Minutes’…you are in good hands!”
“Ignition, co-pilot…I have wings and tail extended……we have first stage ignition….55,000 feet, 450 knots……61,000 feet, 570 knots…..72,000 feet, 660 knots….turning her over… I have the sun behind me…. 81,000, 910 knots. Ground control we look perfect.”
“Roger that, you are half a degree out, lean her to port half a degree, altitude good, speed good,” replied ground control over the intercom.
“Wow! The push in your back is really something!” remarked Scott into the recorder as they rose into the upper atmosphere. “It hurts the pressure is so great. Compared to the bumping around we all saw on film in the Apollo days, this ride is as smooth as silk. The painful push on my back is steady and continuous. I’m sure there will be a difference once we change onto the second-stage hydrogen rockets. I’m attempting to look out of my portal, but to raise my head is the hardest thing I have ever tried to do. It is stuck firmly to the head section of my soft seat. What I can see, and I hope the camera is getting it, is the changing of the blue outside to dark blue, and now it looks grey out there.”
For half a minute there was silence in the cockpit.
“109,000 feet…..112,000 feet…..twenty seconds to second stage,” stated Jonesy over the intercom.
“‘60 Minutes’ is about to go into space,” stated the interviewer.
“Second-stage ignition, 142,000 feet. Gentlemen welcome to the boundaries of space. Now you are higher than that Austrian dude who jumped out of the balloon…actually 30,000 feet higher….152,000 feet.”
“The pain in my back has reduced somewhat,” stated Scott. “I’ve turned my head, and I can see the cameraman lifting his camera to view outside the portal. The pressure is now virtually gone.”
“Altitude 70 miles. Gentlemen, we are now beginning our first orbit. We are over the Atlantic and Europe will show up in about 90 seconds. I assume that all your back pain has gone. Mr. Richmond, our passengers are now free to float around the cabin for the next three minutes. Let them enjoy themselves. Guys, just don’t kick me in the head.”
It is surprising how fast grown men turn back into little boys. Jonesy smiled as the shouts of excitement came over the intercom. He was sure that this footage would be gluing the program watchers to their screens once it aired. He wouldn’t see the program as he would be in space again. Jonesy made sure that he had a private intercom before talking to the space shuttle.
“Sierra Bravo I to incoming spacecraft can you hear me? Over.”
“Roger that, Herr Sierra Bravo I,” he heard the always happy voice of Suzi. “We are reading you and have you on radar. We are 100 miles above your altitude and 3,100 miles behind you. We are slowing rapidly on full forward thrusters. Tell your co-pilot that the second cargo of plants has all survived the move into Ivan and we will be placing this cargo into the first cylinder for transfer into the cube in a few days. Estimated connect time with you is thirty-five minutes. Your partner has a question, Herr Shuttle Pilot.” Jonesy knew that Ryan would be listening to the communication while helping the excited passengers to stop bumping against each other. Jonesy then heard his partner’s voice
“We are getting thirsty up here, partner.”
“Kid, top canister, second set of ten, top canister, third set of ten. First target Russian, second target Tennessee,” replied Jonesy.
“Mr. Jones, are you secretly sending up illegal bottles of hooch to my team in space?” asked Ryan making sure that the two behind couldn’t hear them.
“They are not illegal up here, and don’t tell the boss, it was his best bottle of bourbon,” smiled Jonesy into the intercom.
“Crap! Now I have to get some more. This isn’t the first bottle that has disappeared.”
“It is the last,” smiled Jonesy. “The only bottle left is in the left hand desk draw of Igor’s desk in Ground Control, and we thought you might need that one. Second stage complete, 99 mile altitude at Mach 21.”
“Roger that, Herr Shuttle Pilot,” laughed Suzi. “Astermine II, 80 miles above you 2,190 miles behind, slowing through Mach 24. Just think, all three of you men are going to be fathers soon. By the way, Herr Ryan, I like the layout in the bedroom here in Astermine II. Herr Noble and I were thinking of taking it very easy on the way back.”
“Boss, I think you had better get the guys back down in their seats. You don’t want them to puke with excitement. Do an interview or something while we transfer the cargo.”
As the two craft drew closer, Ryan helped the two men strap themselves back into their rear seats. Jonesy opened the cargo roof doors and continued to check his equipment. He turned on the four-way comm. “How is my flying so far, guys?” he asked.
“Wonderful, I never felt so light in all my life!” replied the cameraman, excited and trying to film Scott while he was being strapped in by Ryan who had turned his pilot chair around. “These shuttle craft are sure high tech!”
“We are passing over the west coast of China. If you point your camera out of the port side, Mike, sorry your left side portal, you should catch the two Koreas. There isn’t a cloud down there over them. Dawn is just allowing them to appear. I need to do some tests, so our current height is 100 miles above earth, and our speed is close to Mach 22, or 16,000 miles an hour. We will complete our three orbits. Each orbit will take around 90 minutes and I must do the checks I flew up to do on this flight.” Jonesy turned off his connection allowing the guy to film the earth below and then Ryan would give them an interview.
Suzi caught up to the shuttle and slowly she moved her craft to within twenty feet to the rear of the opposite side wing to where the cameraman was sitting, in case he pointed his wide-angle camera lens in the rear direction. Astermine II was several feet to the rear of the shuttle’s cockpit and there was no way that the two passengers could see out far enough to the rear to see her floating right next to them.
VIN exited the docking port and jet-packed over to get the shuttle’s arm up and ready. He connected the arm onto the first load of ten canisters, and Jonesy fired the connectors releasing the tightly strapped bundle from the floor of the cargo bay. VIN slowly allowed them to float out and then moved them, extending the arm at the same time to deposit the pyramid of canisters into the third cargo bay of the spacecraft. He did that twice more with the arm, extending it fully twenty-four feet out from the shuttle and into the spacecraft hold Suzi gently brought closer, with VIN’s directions. VIN made sure that the arm would push them gently into each hold. They fitted well enough into the hold not to have to tie them down and immediately the three pyramids of canisters were in Suzi closed the long roof doors.
VIN then refolded the arm back into the shuttle’s cargo bay and, still tied to Astermine II with his usual cord, jet-packed back to the docking bay waiting for him.
“Cargo transferred, partner, you can close your cargo bay doors, I’m clear,” reported VIN as he floated away from the shuttle.
“Pretty fast partner,
73 minutes; now get out of here and let me get these visitors back to earth.” He turned his radio back to the four-way and heard the end of Ryan telling the “60 Minutes” team why he had to do so many flights into space.
“…and due to having these shuttles so precise and technical, it takes hours of testing, our systems, our pilots, and our computers so that when we are carrying deadly waste cargo, we don’t have problems during the flight. The transporters NASA is building for us will allow our crew only a certain amount of time before it has to be ejected into space. Our shuttles must reach an altitude of 390 miles, far above the ISS and much of the lower space junk, and at a speed of Mach 41 or above. We need to eject the transporters at more than 30,530 miles an hour directly towards the sun. Any speed or altitude below that could allow the cargo to be pulled back into a possible orbit of earth, and damage military GPS satellites, or even the geostationary communication satellites above them.”
“Thank you Ryan. Now we at ‘60 Minutes,’ CBS, and the rest of the country understand why you have to be so precise in testing your equipment for this very important task ahead of you. Thank you Ryan, this has been a trip of a lifetime for Mike and me.”
“Sierra Bravo to ground, we are ready to start checks for reentry. We have completed Orbit Two. Over.” The two men in the back heard Jonesy for the first time for quite a while.
“Have you completed your tests, Colonel Jones?” asked the interviewer, curious.
“Yes. Computer programming, mostly. This specific flight was to align the computers to auto-pilot the craft directly to where we want to eject the radioactive transporters, right above us. Of course that ejection point is far higher than we currently are at this low altitude, but space is three dimensional and we have calculated the time, fuel usage and necessary thrust to get us up there and back to a point 10,000 miles in front of our position, a point we pilots call top of ‘D’, or ‘top of descent’. There is always a position where any pilot flying an aircraft reaches a point where it is correct to begin a descent to his destination. Our top of ‘D’ is now 8,100 miles in front of us and the computers are ready to begin our own procedure in several minutes.”
This seemed to satisfy the passengers. They relaxed, looking out of the portals not knowing that a second spacecraft was climbing away from them a couple of miles behind, its Cloaking Device reactivated. Suzi was helping VIN off with his helmet. She wasn’t wearing her helmet and she kissed him as she placed the helmet in its holder and returned to maneuver the craft.
Two hours later, they broke the reentry silence, the passengers recording everything that was happening. They saw the Californian coast come up below their portals and were amazed at the speed they were flying.
Ryan was expecting visitors on landing and as they silently passed the apron, the chutes slowing them down, he saw three news helicopters on the apron and all three local Las Vegas news teams recording their arrival.
Thank you and applause erupted from the two men sitting behind as they came to a halt. The tractor, with the Customs officials walking down the runway connected up and everybody headed back to the apron.
The two passengers were helped out first, as usual being pulled out sideways onto the ramp outside the shuttle. Jonesy switched everything off, and opened the cargo doors for inspection.
“Guys, how was it?” asked the producer as the passengers’ spacesuit helmets were removed first.
“I can now die happy and content that I’ve seen our beautiful planet from space,” replied Scott excitedly being filmed by several cameras. “I’m going to try and get a retirement job here at Astermine. That flight is totally indescribable. I now understand the human desire to go to space.”
“Well, we have several people dying to get a copy of our footage,” smiled the producer as Ryan and finally Jonesy had their helmets removed.
“You won’t believe how many government departments want an early viewing of our segment. You have really excited many people; so far the CIA, NSA, USAF, NASA, Congress and even the president have asked for an early viewing as soon as we put the segment together.”
“Very surprising,” smiled Ryan. “Just make sure it goes out next Sunday night. I would hate the government to ban your broadcasting it, and they will try, believe me.”
The “60 Minutes” crew looked at Ryan Richmond.
“This is a free country, why would the government want to stop our broadcast,” Scott asked?
Chapter 13
Double Trouble: In space and from Washington
The day after the “60 Minutes” team left, Ryan received a call from his friend at Hubble. There were big problems in space.
“Ryan, you told me that the mid-section of the rock from DX2014 your crew observed is about the size of the Empire State Building, correct?”
“That is about the size my astronauts said it was. My flight crew was right next to DX2014 when it broke up. Why?”
“We have viewed this rock through several telescopes in Arizona and New Mexico, but if we can verify its exact size we can determine the sizes of the other pieces of DX2014. The Empire State Building-sized piece is now only six weeks away from passing earth. The front piece of DX2014 is still in one piece, although it has also changed direction, probably because of the initial break up. We calculated it would pass our planet at a safe distance of 587,000 miles. As of midnight last night that safe distance has decreased to 415,000 miles. Its speed has also increased from the 3,000 miles an hour to 3,700 miles an hour probably due to being magnetically attracted to the mid-section just over 200 miles in front of it.”
“That sounds a little scary,” replied Ryan. “We know that the mid-section is extremely magnetic. We had problems getting our craft off the surface. As I said before, the mid-section of DX2014 had been zinged by a couple of meteors, or smaller asteroids, before we got there. Our scientists here at ground control in Nevada believe that DX2014 must have been hit within a year or two of our landing on it. Our astronauts described minute earthquake-type vibrations on their first visit with more intense vibrations on their second visit, and then, of course, the actual breakup when we nearly lost one of our craft.”
“Well, those two forward pieces of DX2014 are the smallest of four parts we are now following.”
“You found the rear part of the asteroid?” Ryan asked raising his eyebrows and putting the phone on speaker so that his whole ground control crew could listen in.
“Yes, two new meteors, the third and fourth parts of DX2014, were found by the Spacewatch team at Kitt Peak Observatory in Arizona three days ago. We asked them to scan the massive area of space where DX2014 had broken up. They sent the pictures of their scan through to the LINEAR program, which you know is located at the Lincoln Laboratory's site on the White Sands Missile Range in Socorro, New Mexico. These two new meteors shocked the observers. It seems that the rear of DX2014 broke up into two main parts and both of these meteors are also being drawn towards the mid-section which, as you stated, is strongly magnetic. The observers at Kitt described it as looking like magnets being pulled together out there. Ryan, this morning Kitt Peak renamed the four parts; the mid-section is DX2014B, the old front section is DX2014A, the third section now 1,000 miles behind the most forward rock is DX2014C and the fourth, about 200 miles behind the third piece, is called DX2014D.”
“How could the mid-section, the ‘B’ section, attract the other rocks from such a distance?” Ryan asked.
“These parts of DX2014 seem to be powerfully attracted to each other just like two magnets, and much more than usual asteroids or meteors of this size. We can only assume that the other pieces have the same pull. We have never seen anything like this before in space. Most asteroids or meteors move on their own orbits around a planet or the sun, at distance and without having much effect on other rocks passing close by. These four rocks are still very close to each other and are doing their best to reconnect.”
“What are the sizes and directions of the ‘C’ and ‘D’ pieces?�
�� asked Ryan.
“Size is the main issue. DX2014C is five times the size of DX2014B and the fourth piece is about 85 percent of the third piece. It looks like more than two-thirds of the mass of the original DX2014 is in the two rear pieces. Their speed is stable, and we hope they might all collide together before arriving in our area of space, in fifty days’ time. Both Kitt Peak and LINEAR are sending warnings to Washington through NASA and the USAF as we speak. The directions these asteroids are beginning to turn are not very positive,” replied his friend. “They are all getting nearer and nearer to earth’s orbit, and definitely will be pulled in closer by earth’s gravity. First, the moon could pull them in, which the LINEAR computers show could be in the exact path of all four asteroids, and then they could be pulled by earth’s gravity itself. What is interesting is that our moon could be in the direct path of these rocks at about the right time, and if the four parts are within 2,000 miles of each other, the moon could take all the hits. Asteroids of this size will not cause any problems to the moon’s surface, they are minute in size, but one could glance off and head towards earth, or miss the moon altogether.”
“What are the chances of that, and of an object actually hitting earth?” asked Ryan.
“An impact occurs when two pieces of rock reach the same point in space at the same time,” replied his friend. “Or, more correctly, when some point on Earth's orbit intersects the asteroid's orbit simultaneously. Since the Earth is just less than 8,000 miles in diameter and moves at approximately 18 miles per second through its orbit, it travels a distance of one planetary diameter in about 425 seconds, or slightly over seven minutes. Delaying, or advancing the asteroid’s arrival by times of this magnitude can, depending on the exact geometry of the impact, cause it to miss the Earth. By the same token, the arrival time of the rock must be known to this accuracy in order to forecast the impact, if there is one, and to determine how to affect its velocity.”
