Kath could stand there all day watching, but they’re ushered down the stairs and to a waiting car. It’s a short five-minute drive to Kennedy. Kath can’t wipe the grin from her face. She’s always wanted to visit but never had the opportunity and would never have been able to get the VIP tour.
Nikki escorts them through the reception area in the main building and up to a corner conference room. The view out the windows is stunning. The Vehicle Assembly Building seems to rise from the surrounding swamp. The vertical doors have been raised, revealing an SLS rocket within. An orange central core is flanked by two white solid rocket boosters, but it’s missing its payload—the Orion. The SLS is mounted on a mobile crawler. Massive steel treads dwarf the engineers walking through the building. In a few weeks, they’ll carry the rocket to the launch pad. Broad empty gravel roads stretch toward the sea, beckoning for use. Lightning towers surround the sloping sides of the concrete launch pads. Beyond them, the Atlantic seems to stretch forever.
On the other side of the VAB, raised roads line the causeways. They crisscross the grasslands and waterways. Kath can see the airport. The Galaxy still has its nose cone raised. Kath can’t resist. She pulls out her smartphone and grabs a panoramic shot only to have it ruined by a flock of egrets flying past. The birds settle on a nearby creek. Kath takes a second photo, posting it on Instagram.
“What’s next?” Kath asks Nolan as Nikki leaves them, going to get someone.
Kath wonders how she can be of help as the team seems to have covered every possible angle.
“Dunno,” Nolan responds, pouring a cup of coffee from a heated carafe in a kitchenette at the back of the room. “Do you want one?”
“Sure.”
Nikki returns with someone wearing a lab coat.
“This is Dr. Jacobs. He’ll be taking care of you from here.”
“Okay?” Kath says, confused.
“I’m going to need blood and urine samples,” the doctor says, opening a medical kit.
“Ah, what’s going on?” Kath asks, turning to Nolan.
“Wait a minute?” Nolan says, laughing. “Are you telling me you’re only just now figuring this out?”
Kath’s eyes go as wide as saucers, staring at him, wanting an answer.
Nolan points at the rocket sitting in the Vehicle Assembly Building. “The President said she wants you on that flight.”
“That flight?” Kath says, getting to her feet and pointing out the window at the Super Galaxy sitting on the runway. “I thought she wanted me on that flight!”
“Why would she want you on that flight?” Nolan asks.
“I don’t know,” Kath says, frustrated. “But I’m not an astronaut.”
“In four weeks, you will be.”
Kath goes pale. “You don’t understand. I don’t do heights.”
“You were just in an airplane.”
“No windows,” Kath replies. “I always sit in the center.”
“It’s not that bad,” Nikki says. “Think of it like a rollercoaster. A big rollercoaster.”
“You’re not helping,” Kath replies. She turns back to Nolan, saying, “Why me?”
“Why us,” Nolan says, correcting her. “Because the President is confident that, together, we’ll make the right assessment. Colonel Falcone here will be the pilot, so we’re in good hands the whole way.”
Nikki smiles and offers a friendly wave.
“You’re an astrophysicist,” Nolan says. “You dream of outer space.”
“I dream of black holes swallowing stars,” Kath says, lowering her head as she glares at him. “There’s a difference.”
He says, “I can’t think of anyone more qualified than you to go up there.”
“I’m qualified to talk about space, not to go up in it!”
“Oh, come on,” Nolan says. “It’ll be fun.”
Orbital Rendezvous: March
Launch
“T minus one minute.”
Kath is lying on her back in a custom-fitted seat. She has her knees up in front of her, staring out the window at a beautiful blue sky. Her position isn’t simply the result of the Orion facing upwards. It’s a deliberate design choice, ensuring blood flow to her head. We wouldn’t want anyone blacking out while being blown apart, now would we? That’s enough, Kath.
A series of voices chat over the radio.
“LOX is secure and at pressure.”
“Weather is go.”
“Range is clear. You are go.”
“Tracking is go.”
“Safety is armed.”
“SLS is running on internal power.”
“Coming up on thirty seconds.”
A gloved hand reaches over and grabs her arm, pressing through the stiff layers in her spacesuit.
“Remember, we get the easy part,” Nikki says, talking to her on their internal comms. “We get to sit back and enjoy the ride.”
Nolan is quiet. He was talkative during breakfast.
Like all astronauts going into orbit, they’ve been in quarantine for the last few days. Kath is a magnet for the flu. This winter, though, she somehow avoided getting sick, damn it!
The past four weeks have been a mix of technical instruction and intense physical training. For a couch potato like Kath, lunges, stomach crunches, press-ups, sit-ups, chin-ups, and free weights have been torture. Then there were the progressively longer runs around the Cape. So much fun. Their personal trainer works with Hollywood heavyweights, getting them into shape for movies. He must have a bunch of signed NDAs as she couldn’t get any gossip out of him. Between exercise and a diet of stir-fried vegetables and lean meats, Kath has never been so healthy. By the end of her training, she was comfortable running ten miles every other day.
From what Kath understands, they were supposed to be trained at JSC, not KSC. When a lively argument broke out during one of their early meetings, Kath reminded everyone that NASA is an acronym. It’s no surprise everything NASA deals with is also an acronym, but acronyms are meaningless to outsiders. Someone blushed and pointed out that JSC is the Johnson Space Center in Houston. KSC is the Kennedy Space Center, better known as the Cape. Kath was quite happy to stay at KSC. She loved the history and mythos surrounding the place. The director of flight operations wanted to fly them to Houston for training. But given the damage caused by the wave, JSC was in no state to host them.
Training occupied fourteen hours a day. Kath got up, brushed her teeth and that was it. Her ‘me time’ was over. Four hours in the classroom. Two hours exercise. Four hours in the simulators. Another two hours of exercise, followed by two hours of recall and review. Meals were sandwiched in there somewhere.
The only way to stay in the loop with what was happening outside their training was by listening to audio while exercising. Sergeant Jacinta Andrews made her way to Florida on a commercial flight and continued working for Kath and Nolan. While they were studying, she’d trawl through incoming correspondence and attended meetings on their behalf. She compiled a daily summary, picking bits of audio from various discussions. Jacinta distilled the progress on projects into a personalized 45-minute daily podcast. Kath and Nolan would reply in writing or using audio clips.
More than once, Kath found herself locked in imaginary debates with her science team. She’d run along the causeway out toward the launch pad, rattling off ideas into a recorder. On a good day, she’d run along the beach between LC39A & B, but always under the watchful eye of her instructors. Given the swamp between the pads still had the odd alligator sunning themselves on the bank, Kath didn’t mind human company.
Sundays were their day off. For NASA, a day off meant one classroom session and an endurance run in the morning. Sunday afternoons, though, were bliss. Kath spent hers soaking her weary body in a spa pool. She’d chat with her partner Eugene on video calls, They always seemed to end too soon. Nolan would disappear to spend time with his wife and kids. The President invited both families to the Cape for the launch. Eugene brought Newt, but by
then, Kath was in pre-launch quarantine. She could only greet her dog from behind a floor-to-ceiling glass window.
“Ten seconds.”
Goddamn it!
Kath’s heart is beating out of her chest.
Kath got a lot of advice from the other astronauts on what to do during the launch. In the heat of the moment, the only thing she remembers is, “In through the nose, out through the mouth.” Breathing 101 doesn’t help.
Kath’s nerves are on edge. She was in too many risk assessment meetings at the Cape. She heard the complaints of flight engineers feeling rushed by a quick launch. Senior managers objected to hundreds of mechanical test reports. With a pristine build, the mean-time-to-critical-failure for the Orion is eighteen months. Engineers expect a year and a half to pass before anything critical breaks. After the electromagnetic pulse that came in the wake of An̆duru, though, several subsystems were downgraded to 45 days. She’s launching in a death-trap, but it’s all they’ve got—all Earth’s got. Kath pinches her eyes shut.
With her visor down, the sound of her breathing is amplified.
“Nine. Eight. Seven.”
“Main engine start. Ignition.”
“Three. Two. One. And we have liftoff of the Iris First Contact Mission to An̆duru.”
The shudder that rocks through Kath’s body is like nothing she’s ever felt. It’s deep, resonant, causing her vision to blur.
“We have cleared the tower.”
No one talks within the Orion. Listening to the flight controllers reading from their checklists is stressful enough.
There’s something surreal about the vibrations that rumble through her. Instead of being shaken violently, it’s as though the very molecules in her body are being torn apart. Her muscles, sinew, ligaments, and bones are being stretched on the modern equivalent of a torture rack.
Rather than being thrust up, Kath feels as though she’s being pushed down. She’s being driven back into her seat. It’s the lack of any tacit feedback. There’s no wind in her hair, no telephone poles rushing past on the side of the road, just the monitor mounted in front of her. On the screen, a rocket roars into the sky. She could be watching a replay.
“Roll maneuver complete.”
Kath tries to distract herself from her impending sense of doom. Somewhere two hundred feet below her, three Rocketdyne engines are propelling her toward space. Together, the engines produce over two million pounds of thrust. They churn through several tons of hydrogen and oxygen a second. One loose bolt. A carelessly discarded rivet in one of the fuel tanks. A forgotten wrench. If just one fragment reaches the turbo-pump—Boom! Kath is cursed with an astonishing memory. She knows it’s happened before. When the first stage of Apollo 8 was righted, someone heard a spanner fall. If not for that, Borman, Lovell, and Anders wouldn’t have made it into orbit.
Don’t think about it, Kath.
Don’t.
“Abort mode 1-B is active.”
Kath’s been briefed on the different types of abort at various stages and altitudes. She took Nikki’s advice—you really don’t want to know. Being accelerated to eighteen times Earth’s gravity in barely a second may or may not be a survivable event. Her background in physics is a curse. Even a back-of-the-envelope calculation tells her that equates to a car crash at several hundred miles an hour.
When Kath first entered the Orion simulator several weeks ago, in what seems like another decade, she was surprised by the rough finish. In the movies, everything’s futuristic—smooth lines, aesthetic curves, minimalistic designs. Reality is different. Every screw is accessible. Tiny guards protect toggle switches, preventing them from being bumped while floating around in space. Nothing within the cabin is particularly pleasing to anything other than the eye of an engineer.
“Mach 1.”
There’s a shimmer on the edge of her vision. Clear skies shine from above. The azure blue is obscured by the rim of her helmet. Kath has to focus on something so she looks there, watching as wisps of cloud float by.
Kath knows considerable thought has been given to even the most mundane features within the Orion, but reason escapes her. The shiny, machined aluminum parts and austere vent covers seem frugal. It frustrates her that she doesn’t understand the design. Everything has a purpose, but she’s lost in ignorance.
Labels have been plastered over every moveable item within the Orion. They scream, Space Flight for Dummies.
The word Release is plastered on the hatch above the handle as though that weren’t obvious. On either side of the handle is Latch and Unlatch. Isn’t the reverse a given? To be fair, the engineers are trying to be there for the astronauts during an emergency. In a pressure situation, these distinctions will avoid confusion. They could be the difference between life and death.
Then there are the random struts. Thin metal poles run at an angle within the cabin. They’re designed to help with structural integrity, but it’s not apparent when or why they’re needed. Perhaps during reentry? This is what bugs Kath most. The Orion is a contradiction of the bleeding obvious and the infinitely obscure. Her mind short circuits.
Two red straps of thick webbing bind a white plastic bag next to the main hatch. The label beneath it reads Egress Ladder. Well before their launch, Kath decided that was her favorite label. It’s a reminder that all this will come to an end. At some point, they’ll splash down in the Gulf, kicking up a wall of spray as their parachutes drift lazily to the water. Once Navy divers are on location, they’ll pop the hatch and finally open that pouch, draping the rope ladder over the outside of the Orion.
Kath won’t be the first one out. She’s not sure why she’s so confident about that particular detail, but she’s pretty sure she’ll follow someone. She’ll climb up out of the hatch and be struck by the warmth of the Sun and the smell of the ocean. Kath’s barely launched and already she wants to get out of the Orion. After a lifetime of imagining the stars and longing to leave Earth, she realizes the folly of such dreams. Earth is our only home.
“Max-Q.”
Yet another flight milestone rolls by. Their rocket has passed the maximum aerodynamic pressure on its structure. Now the atmosphere is thinning out, they can open up the throttle. Yay.
Breathe, Kath.
Don’t worry. Relax.
The Orion is capable of holding six astronauts. On a long-duration spaceflight, resources such as food, water, and oxygen are at a premium so the decision was made to limit the crew to three. Kath would be more confident with a bit more experience onboard. Once they’re in orbit, though, they’ll have plenty of space to stretch out.
The passage of An̆duru caused flooding in Florida. Being on the Atlantic, the Cape was spared. The Johnson Space Center in Houston, though, was swamped. The roof in the Neil Armstrong Operations and Checkout building collapsed. Water damaged equipment stored there. The primary spacesuits for the Iris mission were ruined. They’ve been assured the backup suits they have are flight-worthy, but it’s one more worry nagging at the back of Kath’s mind.
Kath reminds herself that rocket flight is mercifully short. Spaceflight isn’t, but the launch itself, getting into space, will only take a few minutes. Their Orion is configured for a long haul flight with a service module and solar array. The overall length is about the size of a small bus, but they’re confined to the capsule at the tip. The crew has enough supplies for 90 days, stuck in a tin can the size of an SUV. Three long months, and yet Kath will be in orbit before her Mom drives out of the parking lot at Kennedy.
Nikki told her the surprising thing about spaceflight is the boredom. As adventurous and romantic as it seems, there’s an awful lot of mundane drudgery. Lots of floating around. Waiting. Oh, what Kath would give for that right now as her seat shakes beneath her.
The SLS rocket thunders into the heavens.
“Coming up on booster separation.”
The sky fades. Kath barely notices until she’s staring into the darkness.
“Separation complete.”
Now they’re above the bulk of the atmosphere, the shaking subsides.
“The next flight milestone is MECO.”
There’s silence for a few seconds, followed by, “And we are staging… We have main engine cut off. Second stage ignition. You are looking good, Iris.”
“Copy that,” Nikki says.
The transition between stages is smooth. Rather than being shoved in the back, Kath feels a gentle push, slowly increasing in intensity.
Nikki asks, “Are you doing okay?”
“I’m good,” Kath says. She’s doing good now. For the past few minutes, Kath’s been fighting off a panic attack, but now she feels immense relief.
“We’re going for an eccentric orbit,” Nikki says. “Normally, we’d go for something almost circular, but as we’re headed for deep space, the second stage is going to give us a bit of a kick. We’ll run the tank dry and push as high as we can before it falls away.”
Kath knows that’s the plan, but hearing it from Nikki is reassuring.
There’s nothing to do. That’s something Kath never considered before when thinking about astronauts. Rockets are glamorous, but when launching into space, everything’s already done. Months of preparation by the launch team are now playing out autonomously. All the work is long over. It’s a case of letting the architectural and engineering decisions play out.
Nikki reaches up, switching screens. She gives them a view of the glowing engine bell beneath their second stage. The burn is precise, with barely any flicker. A tiny flap of tinfoil-like insulation shakes on the edge of the screen. Although it looks like it’s caught in the wind, it’s vibrating with the spin of the turbo-pump. Flecks of ice race past, dissipating in the exhaust.
Minutes pass like hours.
“Iris, Houston. You are coming up on SECO.”
“Copy that, Houston. Coming up on second engine cut-off,” Nikki replies.
She switches to their internal comms and says, “Are you ready to fly like a bird?”
Kath surprises herself with an enthusiastic, “Yes.”
Wherever Seeds May Fall (First Contact) Page 27
