Project Rescue

by Mark Kelly

  Howard made a face. “I remember.”

  “And riding a rocket into space is going to feel the same, or worse,” Egg said. “Isn’t that right, Scott?”

  Scott nodded. “Yeah, your stomach definitely jumps around as the g-forces change.”

  “What if one of us felt sick and couldn’t do the job, couldn’t help Ilya Ilyushin?” Egg asked. “And besides, for his sake, for the sake of the mission, it’s probably good that Scott has experience. You and I, we have to be unselfish about this, Howard. Even if”—she narrowed her eyes at Scott—“it isn’t fair.”

  Mark was grinning broadly. “I vote with Egg.”

  Lisa looked at Howard’s glum face. “Howard?” she said gently. “You know you can’t quit, right? Even if you’re disappointed?”

  Howard looked up, and his usual, slightly puzzled expression was back. “Who said anything about quitting?” he asked. “You guys couldn’t do this without me.”

  “Good man.” Mark slapped him on the shoulder.

  “Ouch.” Howard rubbed his shoulder.

  Scott, meanwhile, was impressed with what Egg had done. She gave up something she really wanted because she thought it was best for somebody else, somebody she didn’t even know. Was he capable of being that unselfish?

  He wasn’t sure.

  Of course, he would never in a million years say any of that out loud—especially to a girl. That would just be weird.

  * * *

  Before the kids said good-bye that afternoon, Egg gave them their instructions. She would serve as the flight director, which put her in charge of the entire operation. She was the boss, which the twins understood.

  Howard was in charge of the Trench—the team that worked out flight dynamics, guidance and retrofire to bring the astronauts back to Earth. Lisa would handle EECOM, which meant the environmental, electrical, and communications systems on board the Apollo CSM.

  “Everybody’s got to be ready to hit the ground running Monday morning,” Egg said.

  Mark frowned. “Uh, hit the ground?”

  “Bad way to say it—sorry,” said Egg. “Everybody’s got to be ready to support launch, the mission, and the splashdown, I mean. We have a lot to learn, plan, and practice in a very short period of time. Are we in agreement? Howard, you’ll have to talk to Steve Peluso tonight.”

  “Roger Wilco.” Howard saluted. “Over and out.”

  Chapter 22

  * * *

  The news was on Grandpa’s TV that night as the twins helped set the table for dinner. With the Washington Monument in the background, a politician was being interviewed on the steps of the Capitol building. The twins weren’t paying much attention. They had a lot on their minds, plus they were hungry.

  On TV, the politician, who was old, had silver hair, and a long face, said something that made the twins take notice:

  “John Glenn is a bona fide American hero, but that doesn’t mean he’s right about everything. In fact, I have reason to believe that contrary to their assurances, the Salyut space station is armed with a powerful and potentially unstable warhead. This clear-cut violation of international agreements also makes it entirely possible that any rescue attempt might be met with calamity. I, for one, am not willing to put American lives at risk.”

  Scott was bringing in plates of food from the kitchen. “Who is that guy?” he asked his brother, who had crossed the room to look at the set.

  Mark read the name printed at the bottom of the screen. “Senator Henry ‘Scoop’ Jackson, of Washington State.”

  Having come in from the kitchen, Grandpa pulled back his chair. “Turn off the tube, would you, please, Mark? I’m starved.”

  “Just a sec, Grandpa,” Mark said. “I want to hear this, if it’s okay.”

  Grandpa said, “Far be it from me to discourage your interest in current events.”

  The senator’s voice continued: “Now, you fellas all know me, and I’m as sympathetic to the plight of a lone individual as any good American citizen. But we as a nation can’t afford to let natural human sympathies interfere with clear-eyed defense policy.”

  The image changed to a baseball diamond, and the announcer said, “In other news . . .”

  Mark turned off the set. Both boys sat down at the table. Grandpa didn’t consider himself much of a cook, but he had a few solid recipes, including an awesome meat loaf. Scott covered his with a solid layer of ketchup from the glass bottle. It seemed to take several minutes to ooze out of its container.

  It’s too bad Earth isn’t bigger, Scott thought. Then there would be more gravity, and I wouldn’t have to wait so long for ketchup.

  Meanwhile, Mark asked his grandfather what the senator on TV had been talking about.

  “Ol’ Scoop Jackson?” Grandpa took a sip of water. “He’s what’s known as a hawk—thinks the way to stay a step ahead of the Soviets is to spend a lot of money on defense, not to mention we shouldn’t trust them farther than a man can spit.”

  “Is he right?” Mark asked.

  Grandpa thought while he chewed and finally shrugged. “I’m no expert on international politics, but it seems to me it might improve our reputation around the world if we helped out that cosmonaut, whatever his political beliefs might be. As for whether it’s risky, well, of course it’s risky—warhead or no warhead.”

  The family ate in silence for a few moments, then Grandpa added, “One thing you got to take into account is this is an election year, and President Ford isn’t very popular right now. The GOP is putting up Ronald Reagan to challenge him at the convention. And every Democrat you never heard of wants to run too—including Senator Jackson. These guys running for president are always saying things intended to get them on the nightly news and get them votes. Sometimes it doesn’t matter if what they say is a bad idea.”

  Scott thought he understood. “So Senator Jackson only said that about a warhead to draw attention to his campaign?”

  “Could be,” Grandpa said.

  Scott and Mark looked at each other. They sure hoped that was it. Otherwise, the rescue mission they were planning just might end with a bang . . . for real. And there was something else, too. If the Russians were the bad guys the senator said they were, was Barry at this moment flying into danger? What if the Russians thought Barry was some kind of spy?

  * * *

  After the dinner dishes were done, Scott and Mark cut a piece of string from the ball in the kitchen junk drawer and then went over to the shelf in the living room where Grandpa kept his globe.

  “What are you doing there, Mark?” Grandpa asked. He was sitting in the big chair reading the paper as usual after dinner.

  “Measuring,” Mark said. “I was going to use the Atlas, but then I realized it’s two-dimensional, so it doesn’t take into account the curve of the Earth if, say, you happen to be flying over it.”

  “Are you still thinking about that poor cosmonaut?” Grandpa asked.

  “I can’t stop thinking about him,” Mark said. “Can I borrow a pencil and paper, Grandpa?”

  Grandpa nodded. “They’re on the desk in my bedroom.”

  When Mark came back, he waved Scott over to the table, and the two of them sat down.

  “What are you up to, anyway?” Scott asked his brother in a low voice.

  “Trying to figure out where Barry is about now,” Mark said. “If he left McGuire at eight, and the jet’s flying six hundred miles per hour, he should be over Nova Scotia—that’s in Canada.”

  Neither boy wanted to say anything to the other, but they were both worried about their friend. Was he going to be okay? What if he couldn’t phone them when he got there? How would they know for sure he was all right? How would they know the Soviets hadn’t put him in jail because they thought he was a spy or something?

  Maybe they’d take him to the KGB headquarters, interrogate him, and ship him to a prison in Siberia. In that case, they would never see their friend again, and boy, would his parents be mad.

  The twins re
ally hoped that Senator Glenn’s friends at the Russian Federal Space Agency came through. If they didn’t, then Project Rescue might be over before it even got started.

  Scott and Mark both wished they had thought all this over before Barry left, but there hadn’t been any time for that then. Now it seemed as if they had plenty of time—plenty of time to worry.

  Chapter 23

  * * *

  “I can’t sleep,” Mark announced a few minutes after lights-out. He and Scott were lying on their mattresses on the floor in Twin Territory, the loft where they always slept at Grandpa Joe’s.

  Scott did not reply.

  “Can you sleep?” Mark asked. “Scott?”

  Scott started awake and snorted. “What . . . did you say something?”

  “It’s important,” Mark said. “I have an idea.”

  Scott’s reply to this was regular, deep breathing.

  “Scott? Sheesh—how can you sleep at a time like this?” Mark asked.

  Scott rolled over to look at his brother’s shadow against the window. “You could too,” Scott said, “if you’d just stop talking.”

  Mark pushed his covers away. “We have to call the Washington Post,” he announced.

  Scott didn’t answer immediately. He was thinking. In a little more than twenty-four hours at this time, he thought, the window silhouetting my brother will be in the hull of a spacecraft, and the view outside will be either the stars of deep space or planet Earth itself. In Scott’s mind, this was exactly why he needed to sleep now. He was going to be pretty busy as soon as the sun rose.

  But Scott also knew Mark would not let him rest until the big idea had been explained. “Fine,” Scott said. “Why?”

  “I’m worried about the Russians,” Mark said. “I’m worried about their space weapon. Aren’t you?”

  “Sure,” Scott said, “along with about five thousand other things.”

  “Well, this is one thing we can fix,” Mark said. “Remember how it was Washington Post reporters who revealed the illegal stuff President Nixon’s campaign did, the whole Watergate scandal? Eventually, the president himself was forced to resign.”

  Scott yawned. “I remember, Mark.”

  “So, let’s say a reporter at the Washington Post gets a tip and writes a front-page article that tells the whole world two American kids are risking their lives to save a cosmonaut,” Mark said. “If that happens, the Russians will have to do everything they can to keep us safe, see? Otherwise, they would be embarrassed in front of the whole world! Also, it wouldn’t exactly help Russian relations with the U.S.A.”

  “That whole détente thing Mom told us about,” said Scott.

  Mark nodded.

  “But the reporter will try to stop us,” Scott said.

  “So we’ll call when it’s too late, like during the final countdown,” Mark said.

  “We’ll be kind of busy then,” Scott pointed out. “And besides, there’s no telephone in the spacecraft, only the radio link to Mission Control.”

  Mark sat up. “Okay, so we work that out later. Right now, we should be writing down what we want the article to say. That’ll make it easy for the reporter.”

  “Do you know what time it is?” Scott asked.

  Mark didn’t answer. Instead, he reached for his duffel bag and unzipped it. “I’ve got writing paper and a pen in here somewhere. You do the writing. Your handwriting is better.”

  In spite of Scott’s reluctance, the twins were soon hard at work, writing as if the article would be appearing in the newspaper after the launch had already happened.

  To convince the reporter and his (or her) readers that they were serious—and not just kids with crazy ideas—they included some real science in what they wrote.

  To make the reporter’s job easier, they tried to make what they wrote sound as much like a newspaper article as they could. Mr. Hackess assigned them current events every week, so they were used to reading newspaper articles.

  WEST MILFORD, NJ—A team of kids from New Jersey is going to launch a mission to rescue stranded Soviet cosmonaut Ilya Ilyushin today.

  If readers are wondering how kids are going to do this, please keep reading.

  The kids were upset and shocked when both NASA and the Russian Space Agency decided to leave Major Ilyushin stuck in orbit. The kids believe that exploring space is a super-important scientific project for the whole human race, and people like Major Ilyushin—people who are risking their lives—should be supported by the whole human race, too. It doesn’t matter what country the space explorers are from, or what kind of government the country has.

  Because of some very amazing good luck, these kids from New Jersey have the equipment and the skill to carry out a space rescue. If readers are wondering how kids are going to do it, please keep reading.

  The team is using a Titan launch vehicle borrowed from NASA to launch an Apollo spacecraft. The crew of the spacecraft is Mark and Scott Kelly, both twelve years old, both from West Orange, both twins. They blasted off from a new space facility near Greenwood Lake on the New Jersey and New York border.

  Mission Control functions are being done by the ground crew, Jenny O’Malley, Howard Chin, Lisa Perez, and Steven Peluso. Another New Jersey kid, Barry Leibovitz, is assisting from somewhere near Moscow in the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics, also known as the U.S.S.R., also known as the Soviet Union, also known as Russia.

  Scientifically, the most difficult part of the space mission will be the rendezvous with the Soviet space station, Salyut. That is where Major Ilyushin is stuck, with his air supply running out fast. There are probably animals stuck with him too.

  A couple of things make a space rendezvous hard. One is that the thing you are trying to meet up with is traveling around Earth at a speed of nearly eighteen thousand miles per hour. Also, your spacecraft is traveling at a similar speed.

  Another thing that makes a space rendezvous hard is orbital mechanics, which means the way objects orbiting around other objects behave. An object stays in orbit because the effect of gravity on it is balanced by its mass and its speed, in other words its momentum. The laws of orbital mechanics say that objects like spacecraft in lower orbit around a planet move faster than objects in higher orbit. This is because the gravitational acceleration, commonly called a g-force, is greater the closer you are to the planet.

  If you want your spacecraft to catch up with a target spacecraft like Salyut, you start off in a lower orbit than the target so you’ll go faster than it does. Then, when the ground radar tells your spacecraft that it is lined up with the target, you fire your thrusters forward, which accelerates you, pushing you into a higher orbit, and then because of orbital mechanics you slow back down. If your timing and math are perfect, it’s the same orbit as the target, so now you are keeping pace with it a short distance away.

  After that you can spacewalk over to the Russian space station to rescue Ilya Ilyushin.

  Readers might be interested to know that a lot of the tools used in a rendezvous are actually pretty old-fashioned. For example, there is the sextant, which measures the angle between particular stars and the horizon to tell you exactly where you are in space. The sextant was invented in the eighteenth century, but even before that ocean navigators like Columbus used tools called astrolabes that work basically the same.

  Another old tool is a gyroscope, a wheel spinning on its axis inside a frame called a gimbal. The gyroscope’s spin creates angular momentum that keeps the wheel stable. The stable gyroscope can be used to measure the movement of what’s around it. In other words, if the spacecraft spins, twists, or rocks, the gyroscope can tell how much.

  The Apollo spacecraft has three gyroscopes mounted at right angles to one another in a metal box called an IMU, or inertial measurement unit. When they are all spinning at top speed, the gyroscopes keep the IMU in a fixed position.

  The gyroscope was invented in the 1800s. Boats and ships use them too.

  Finally, there is radar, which stands
for radio detection and ranging. How it works is an antenna sends radio waves that bounce off whatever is in their way, like a Russian space station, for example. If you know how to read the bounced-off waves, you can tell where the space station is, how big it is, and if it is moving.

  The idea for radar is almost one hundred years old, but the modern kind was invented just in time for World War II.

  Scott glanced out the window of Twin Territory. He was glad to see it was still dark. What they had written so far was pretty good, plus there must be still at least a little time to sleep.

  “What else should we add?” he asked his brother.

  There was no answer.

  “Mark?”

  Still no answer.

  If his brother was asleep, it looked like they were done with their article, whether it was ready for print or not. Carefully, Scott folded the paper in three and addressed it to: Any Reporter/Washington Post Newspaper.

  Monday after breakfast, he would put it on top of Grandpa’s stack of paper napkins, where Grandpa would see it at lunchtime. By then, he and Mark would be in orbit. With any luck, Grandpa would put two and two together and call the Washington Post and read it to somebody there.

  Scott lay down and pulled up the covers. As he drifted off, he had a thought. Maybe by the time their article appeared in the newspaper, the ending would have been written: The successful splashdown of Crazy 9, and the rescue of Ilya Ilyushin.

  Chapter 24

  * * *

  They had one more day to prepare for launch. The next morning, Sunday, at nine a.m., the team assembled at Greenwood Mission Control. Taking charge, Egg announced that the first thing to do was determine launch time, and the second was to establish the insertion burn to enable a circularized orbit.