He started the video where his flight attendant had left it, past the ready-made melodramatic soundtrack and graphics (which she knew he detested) to get straight to the facts of Orion 1.
Rather, it at least got to those facts that were patently obvious.
Art Hammond had been in aerospace long enough to know that most reporting about it was utter baloney, accidents especially so. Driven by each network’s burning need to scoop the others, the rapid-fire news cycle uniformly ignored the tedious investigative work that would follow for months afterward.
But there was no mistaking the long-range video he saw from Canaveral. Though blurry, there was Orion, its exhaust plume tracing a slender arc across the sky.
Whoa, he thought with a whistle. They finally made that pig fly? The reporter was babbling away in the background; Hammond reached for the mute button then thought better of it. This network at least had a halfway-competent space reporter, so he might as well listen. He turned up the volume as the video continued.
“NASA Public Affairs has not released any further statements. But we have been able to piece together a rough sequence of events from the live feed from Mission Control. One engine experienced a precautionary shutdown,” the man’s voice said as they promptly cut away from the tracking video to a hastily-rendered animation of the pump system.
Hammond cursed under his breath. “I know what the damned thing looks like!” he blurted before catching himself. Turning, he gave the flight attendant a sheepish look.
Settle down, Art. They didn’t make this special for you, he reminded himself.
To his relief, the news feed returned to a clearer video of Orion in close-up: “Shutdown occurred before the strap-on boosters cut off,” he explained. “At about two minutes,” he continued, “a shower of sparks appeared around the main engines, apparently some kind of debris. Then, we see...just watch.”
At that second, the grainy video flashed white as the rocket exploded. A glowing mass tumbled ahead of the inferno. It had to be the crew capsule. Hammond audibly sucked in his breath at the cascade of glowing debris.
“Holy God,” he whispered, closing his eyes and unconsciously bowing his head. “Rest their souls.”
After a moment he opened his eyes to find his fists were clenched, almost to the point of being white-knuckled. His company had been involved in an earlier project called “commercial crew” before NASA had cannibalized all their funding to prop up Orion. He now felt the same sickening realization as the controllers in Houston: this was the end of the American space program. They’d spent too much money over too many years on a vehicle that could barely meet its expectations. And now it was resting with its crew at the bottom of the Atlantic.
Congress certainly wouldn’t keep this boondoggle going, he thought. What a fix they’ve gotten us into, begging the Russians for rides on Soyuz.
What was that old saying, he wondered—the Chinese symbol for “crisis” also means “opportunity”?
That was it, then. He stood, smoothed down his tie and slacks, and headed forward to the cockpit. Nodding towards the cabin attendant, he rapped briskly on the door and stepped inside. It was his airplane, after all.
“Tom?”
A lean man with salt-and-pepper hair pulled himself out of the left seat and stood in the small space behind it.
“Yes sir?”
“You know what happened, right?”
The pilot sighed. “Afraid so. There was lots of chatter on the air-to-air channel, so Gander center sent a blast message out to all operators with the story. Shut down the gossip, at least.” Regardless of any connections to the space program, the pilot community was a close-knit one. If something happened to one of their comrades, they all wanted to know about it. And absent hard facts, they would gossip like schoolgirls.
Hammond gave him the tablet. “Have a look”.
Tom Gentry’s jaw tensed as he watched the news. Finished, he handed the video over for his copilot to see. “Guess that’s it then,” he said.
“I sure as hell think so…no way they come back from this,” Hammond sighed. “You know anybody on that mission?” Gentry had once been a NASA research pilot and had many friends who’d moved on to Houston.
“Wyatt, the mission commander. He and his wife were friends from Dryden.”
Hammond frowned. “I understand. I’m sorry, Tom.”
Both men stood in silence, each sorting out his feelings. After a few minutes, Hammond absentmindedly brushed a hand across his scalp and thumbed his suspenders. He fished the Gulfstream-650 pilot’s handbook from a nearby cubbyhole and began idly flipping through it.
“You’re thinking about something else,” the pilot observed with a sideways glance as he checked his watch. “Still going to London, right?” he asked, mentally calculating the fuel they’d need if his boss turned them back home to Denver.
Hammond looked up with fiery eyes, his demeanor infused with new purpose. “Damn straight we are. And I need you to get the Farnborough propulsion lab on the Satcom channel. Give Malcolm our ETA and then let me talk to him. We’ve got work to do.”
“Work?” asked Gentry, wondering which components Hammond Aerospace may have contributed to Orion. None, so far as he knew. And the struggling airline his boss had just rescued from bankruptcy certainly had no connection.
“You heard me, Tom. Work. Lots of it. It’s time we blew the dust off a few ideas.”
Hammond took a long look around his airplane. The G-650 was headed across the North Atlantic at Mach .92; over ninety percent of the speed of sound. As the supersonic Concorde had ended service years ago, this was now the fastest passenger jet in the world. It’s time for that to change, he thought.
Slapping the Gulfstream manual into his pilot’s hands, Hammond fixed him with a determined stare. “How’d you like to fly something really fast?”
3
Above the South Pacific
Six Years Later
“Ladies and Gentlemen, this is your Captain. We’ve turned on the Fasten Seatbelts sign which means we need you to prepare for initial descent. It’ll be a little bumpy on the way down, so please take your seats as soon as possible and buckle up tight.”
Tom Gentry placed the cabin interphone into its cradle and cinched down his shoulder straps. With a gentle tap on the controls, he rolled the plane back right-side up. They had been flying inverted—upside-down—for the past twenty minutes, much to their passengers’ delight.
“All set, skipper,” his copilot reported. “Boost pumps and igniters on standby.”
“Thanks Ryan,” he said and lightly placed a hand on the throttle levers. “Cabin secure?”
As if anticipating his question, a chime sounded overhead: the flight attendant’s signal that everyone was safely strapped in. “Right on time,” Ryan Hunter confirmed as he checked the display. “Marcy’s nothing if not efficient.”
“Yeah, but you’re biased.”
“Won’t argue that. I’m a pushover.”
A quick glance through the heads-up projection in Tom’s forward windshield confirmed their pitch angle. Their nose was rock-steady relative to the horizon ahead; a brilliant blue arc slashing across black sky. The altitude counter along one side of his display had just changed units from nautical miles to feet, now steadily ticking down from 400,000. A similar counter on the opposite side displayed their speed, hovering around 6,600 knots—almost eight thousand miles per hour.
Faint, metallic pings rang through the hull as individual molecules of air began to strike outside. The noise became a whistling rush as both pilots began to sense atmosphere and gravity reclaiming them.
The Austral Clipper had begun its initial re-entry, falling from suborbital space at Mach 10.
…
Polaris AeroSpace Lines
Denver, Colorado
1302 ENTERING SKIP AT N02.50 W157.30 // SYSTEMS GO // FUEL STATE 78400 // ETA DEN 2308Z…SURFS UP flashed the message on Charlie Grant’s console. He had just been infor
med that flight 1302, otherwise known as the Austral Clipper, had begun its re-entry skip. A quick glance up at the control center’s map projection confirmed their reported position, just north of Christmas Island.
Reminiscent of an amphitheater, the room was bathed in the dim glow of computer screens and indirect lighting. Workstations were arranged in semicircular rows; each staffed by flight controllers. The ranks of consoles marched down toward the far wall, itself dominated by a floor-to-ceiling projection of Polaris AeroSpace’s route system: a map of the world, overlaid with graceful curves tracing the route of each Global Clipper spaceplane.
The control center’s insular nature had led them to label it “The Casino”: once on duty, its controllers were completely absorbed by the flurry of activity within. They likewise became oblivious to whatever time of day it might be outside.
On the longer flights, like this non-stop from Sydney, the suborbital Clippers would hop across the upper atmosphere like stones skipping across a pond. During the hypersonic descent from space, rapidly increasing air density created a shock wave which the plane’s belly was carefully shaped to ride along. The proper term was “compression lift,” but the pilots simply called it “surfing” and swore they could feel the tide of air building up underneath them.
Quickly recalculating the flight’s fuel, he also checked weather at potential landing sites along the way before typing out a reply. If they had to land short for any reason, that time would come soon. After bouncing back into space, physics would demand they end up somewhere in the western United States, preferably “home plate” in Denver.
…
Flight 1302
“Two-hundred-fifty thousand feet,” Ryan reported. “Skin temp one thousand thirty. Dispatch just uplinked weather for Hilo and Oakland, both clear and a million.”
“Thanks,” Tom answered, eyes fixed on the heads-up display. His right hand still rested on the throttle levers. “Waiting for power.”
The glowing digits of his altimeter ticked down another ten thousand feet within seconds. Beyond the windshield, tendrils of glowing plasma danced across the plane’s broad nose. There was no need to check the engine gauges; the steady whine reverberating from behind confirmed that all three had stubbornly remained idle.
“And…we’re still waiting,” Ryan said in dismay, one hand hovering above the autopilot cutoff. “Net thrust is falling off…nothing on the caution and warning panel.”
“Lovely,” Tom sighed. “Go manual,” he directed while sliding the throttles forward. “Let maintenance control know the auto-throttle’s gone stupid again. I’ll need your callouts on fuel and temps.”
“All yours, skipper,” Ryan answered as he thumbed the switch and grasped for an electronic chart tablet by his seat. “Might be good to have those diversion airports handy,” he muttered.
Far ahead, the horizon curved away, a thin rainbow of color punctuated by the silhouettes of towering clouds a thousand miles distant. That’d be the weather waiting for us, he thought dourly. We’ll earn our pay on this leg.
…
The flight attendant chime was as remorseless as it was poorly timed. “Miss?” called the rotund passenger over in seat 2A. “Miss?” he demanded again, this time waving an empty highball for emphasis as he pounded the call button.
Uh oh, Marcy Cannon thought. She could sense the potential troublemakers, but this one was pretty obvious. She did her best to politely wave the man down. Leaving her seat as re-entry g-forces mounted was a patently bad idea.
But this gentleman was clearly too important to respect the laws of either safety or physics. Unrelenting, he waved his glass expectantly as he sounded the attendant chime again, and finally began shouting for good measure.
Bracing herself, she put on her best professional smile and unbuckled the four-point seatbelt. Feels like about one G—I’ve got maybe a minute, she thought, and briskly made her way down the aisle.
“Can I help you, sir?”
“About damned time! What does it take to get a refill around here?” he demanded. She detected a slight accent, Australian or maybe Cockney Brit.
“You’ll have to wait until we’re back in suborbital cruise, sir,” she replied agreeably while gently removing the highball from his hand. There was precious little time for conversation.
“For what I paid for this seat, you’ll get me a drink whenever the hell I want.”
“Sir, you also signed a safety consent which clearly stated that service is not possible during boost or re-entry,” Marcy said as she gestured towards the orange plasma trail swirling past his window. “We announced that twice.”
“Then give me my glass back!” he sputtered.
This guy had to be half in the bag, all right. “Sorry sir. Drink service is not allowed during re-entry due to the sudden changes in felt gravity,” she explained firmly and slipped the highball into a pouch by her hip. “Neither is glassware. It’s a hazard to you and your fellow passengers.”
As if on cue, she steadied herself against a ceiling handhold as her knees began to buckle under the increasing force. They were pulling nearly two g’s now; she had to get back to her seat fast before it would plaster her to the floor.
Using reason had only made him more irritable, but he was at least less inclined towards wild gestures now that gravity was building up. “Do you have any idea who I am, young lady? I’m not about to use those silly-assed sippy cups like some bratty kid,” he argued.
“I’m afraid we’ve not formally met. And until you can learn to control your language around a lady, you’ll just have to stay thirsty,” she said with an icy Charleston drawl. “Now if you don’t settle down fast, I’ll be forced to advise the Captain of your behavior. He will have you escorted off the spacecraft as soon as we land in Denver, and I can assure you TSA won’t care who you are. Neither will your cellmates.”
With that, Marcy made for her seat as the color rushed from the man’s face. She couldn’t be certain if it was from the rapidly building g-forces or just plain embarrassment.
…
“Bottoming out fast,” Ryan said. “Back down to three g’s, skin temp twelve hundred.” They had settled into the high stratosphere and were flying level, riding their own shock wave one hundred sixty thousand feet above the ocean.
“And the engine nacelles?” Tom asked.
“Getting hot. Sixteen hundo at the inlets. Fuel flow is three-fifty per minute. M-dot’s hovering around point eight-three,” he said, referring to the delicate balance of exhaust gas flow.
Tom grimaced; he’d have to fine-tune them quickly. The next few seconds would determine whether they’d glance off the atmosphere for Denver or make a precautionary landing in Hawaii.
A critical range-extending maneuver, the skip and re-boost out of the atmosphere demanded precise technique and so was typically left to the Flight Management Computers - a fully integrated navigation and engine control system. If mismanaged now, the engines could overheat or flame out, either of which demanded an early re-entry and landing. Worse, they could “unstart” as shock waves from the inlets blew back outward. It could tear an engine apart, if not wrench it completely out of the airframe.
He gently backed off the throttles and closed his eyes. Despite all of the information at their command, he needed to sense any telltale vibrations, any dissonance that could signal trouble.
Tom exhaled, as if emerging from a trance. “Hilo weather?” he finally asked.
“Ceiling broken at eight grand, visibility six miles. Winds light and variable. There’s a GPS approach to the main runway, but you’re not going to need it, skipper,” Ryan said. “Flow ratio’s up to point nine. Nacelle temps heading down towards fourteen hundred.”
Tom sighed in relief. It was nearly time to start their final boost back out of the atmosphere. “Just keep those callouts coming. And I hate it when you call me ‘skipper’,” he said. “Sounds like some prep-school weenie.”
“Old habits are hard to break…s
kipper,” Ryan countered with a grin. “Too much time out on the boat I guess.”
“I thought you jarheads didn’t let the Navy get to you like that.”
Ryan ignored the barb. As a former Marine among so many ex-Air Force “zoomies,” he’d long ago gotten used to being a minority. Old service rivalries apparently lasted forever.
…
Denver
Grant frowned as he pored over the latest weather. Every airport along the Front Range was reporting improved visibility but turbulent winds. A whopper of a low-pressure system that had plunged down from Canada that morning was finally sweeping east. Thank goodness for that, the dispatcher thought, as two of his other Clippers had already come close to diverting across the mountains to Salt Lake. As it was, they were just trading rotten visibility for even worse winds.
Checking his flight’s position reports, he could see that 1302 had just started their next boost. Their engine temperatures were under control, but they had used a boatload of fuel in the process so now most of their reserves were gone. Looking up at an air-traffic display, he could see Denver approach was already stacking up flights halfway into Nevada. Gentry would have no time to waste once they arrived in the area.
New high-altitude wind reports had also come in with the forecasts and he looked to them for any advantage, however slight. He quickly fed them into 1302’s flight plan and recalculated the entry profile they’d need to reach Denver. After a quick phone call to the control tower, he hurriedly banged out a missive to Austral Clipper.
ATTN 1302 // WE SHOW FUEL AT ADVISORY MINS…ATC CLEARING U DIRECT TO RWY 08 ARRIVAL…UPLINKED NEW WINDS FOR DESCENT PROFILE…HAPPY TRAILS // GRANT.
After another check of their last position, he turned his attention to the three other inbound Clippers that were lighting up his message console. Yeesh, he thought. Funny how everything starts swirling down the drain all at once.
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