by Jeff Pollard
While preparations at Kennedy were underway and Lovell was leaving the hospital and Kingsley was overseeing vehicle assembly, back at Hawthorne, Weller and Hammersmith argued through the night, debating whether or not to scrub the mission.
The morning of the launch, a structural engineer working under Weller proposed that the failure could have been caused by a combination of a slight structural weakness and a misapplication of the insulation material. Two things that aren't scrutinized too highly because alone, one or the other would not cause a failure, but in conjunction, they could cause a failure. The engineer did some quick and dirty math to show that he saw the likelihood of two such failures occurring together was something like 10,000 to 1. This satisfied Hammersmith, but Weller was reticent to buy into such math. He pointed out that this assumes the cause of failure is the combination of two somewhat unlikely events, making their conjunction quite unlikely. But without knowing the exact cause, it was impossible to say that the failure wasn't caused by a systemic problem. What if the problem is the result of some technician down the line who has developed a bad habit and has been making the same mistake on rocket after rocket without realizing it? Say the insulation material was being wrongly applied on every rocket, then the odds of a conjunction of flaws wasn't 1 in 10,000, it was whatever the odds were of a small flaw in the bulkhead, perhaps 1 in 100.
But with the countdown fast approaching and their opinions straddling the go/no-go fence, neither Hammersmith nor Weller put up a fight to scrub the launch. And now they stand at the back of Mission Control, hoping they wouldn't be regretting their inaction. Weller muses that if something goes wrong, he and Hammersmith might both turn to each other and say “I told you so.”
“Five minutes, we're at the one minute hold,” Yerino says to both the room and the crew.
“I'll bet you a hundred bucks the first stage doesn't explode,” Weller says to Hammersmith, showing some kind of bravado, confidence in his rocket and his team.
“Will you give me fifty-to-one odds?” Hammersmith asks, and with that one sentence changes Weller from confident to a bet-hedger. He declines the bet which would make him a hundred bucks if the rocket goes fine and cost him five thousand if it doesn't. He had been saying minutes earlier that the odds of another bulkhead failure were probably, at worst, on the order of 1 in 100, thus he should jump at the chance to take this bet. “Yeah, pretty sure you're full of shit with that one in a thousand stuff then,” Hammersmith says. “We should do this with all the engineers, make them put their money where their mouth is. So what are the odds really? Twenty to one?”
“I wonder if they take bets in Vegas,” Weller wonders. “Vegas always knows.”
“That's the end of the five minute hold, unless anybody has any objections,” Yerino says, turning around in his chair and looking right at Weller and Hammersmith with laser-bolts shooting from his eyes communicating a mixture of 'I guess we're go' and 'stop joking about this, you idiots, you'll jinx us.'
Weller replies with a simple nod. The countdown resumes.
“You're awfully calm right now,” Hammersmith says, gesturing toward the screen showing one of his babies on the verge of either sending people to the Moon or trying to kill them.
“It's all a show for my team. I look confident, they don't worry so much, they do better jobs. I'd be more worried if I was you. If my shit blows up, I don't have to go face the media and cameras and questions and all that nonsense.”
“That's no problem,” Hammersmith says.
“How do you handle that?”
“We're the good guys,” Hammersmith replies. “Even if it, you know, and the crew are. . . spontaneously shuffled loose the you know what, they signed up for this, they know the risks. One of my first jobs, right after university, I talked to the press, handled questions and such for an oil company. Talk about a learning curve. Second week on the job I was answering questions about what's the acceptable amount of poison for us to be releasing and having to repeat a company line about how pollutants disperse as they travel away from the plant and so the numbers once it reaches the public won't be so high, so stop worrying, because our poison will be diluted by the time it gets into the drinking water. That's a job where I was praying every day that nothing would go wrong, because then I'm the one who gets grilled about it, not the board, not the people making decisions, it's always people like me. I had to defend poisoning people for the sake of profit. Here, I don't need to make those arguments. The worst I could ever have to do is defend the idea that it's worth risking lives to explore space, a case I could make in my sleep. People die driving cars, that doesn't mean we ban cars, or even mandate that you wear helmets while you're in a car. So why do we think space-travel, which is much higher reward, shouldn't also carry some risk?”
“Why don't we wear helmets in cars?” Weller asks.
“It would look stupid,” Hammersmith replies. “If you really think about it, why don't we wear helmets just all the time? I mean, in ten seconds you could pass out for some odd reason and hit your head on the corner of a metal table.”
“Thanks for that image. Still doesn't answer the why.”
“Because if you look dumb you're less likely to pass on your genes,” Hammersmith says. “Protect the cranium at the expense of your genes? I don't think so.”
The countdown gets close to zero and the control room goes basically silent. Neither Weller nor Hammersmith have slept more than three hours in the last three days thanks to the scramble to get another launch.
And now they watch as the rocket lifts off. They don't breathe for the first three minutes. Once the first stage, on its third flight, cuts off and the second stage kicks in, they start to share a sigh of relief. The first stage would fall uncontrolled for a destructive splashdown in the Atlantic. For missions lofting a Griffin 3.0, the larger Griffin with enough propellant onboard for lunar-orbital-insertion as well as trans-Earth-injection, the Eagle 9 is pushed to it's full capacity of 17 metric tonnes to LEO, leaving basically no fuel left for the rocket to make a powered landing, let alone the more fuel intensive burn-back maneuver. For the smaller LEO version, the Griffin 2.5, at only 12 tonnes when fully loaded with cargo, the Eagle 9 first stage can make a powered landing and be reused.
Weller and Hammersmith watch as the clock reaches five minutes and the Griffin is in space and at roughly half its final orbital velocity.
“Flight,” the flight surgeon says nervously.
“Go surgeon.”
“I'm seeing an unusual heart beat here.”
“On who?”
“Who do you think?”
“Well let me know if it gets worse.”
Five minutes later the second stage cuts out and the Griffin 3.0 detaches from the upper stage and is in orbit. The whole world seems to relax.
“I was thinking in my head,” Weller says, realizing that's a silly phrase, but kind of chuckling to himself in his delirium, “that if this thing doesn't work, the both of us would turn to each other and say I told you so at the same time.”
Hammersmith smiles and laughs quietly.
“What are you doing later?” Weller asks.
“Hanging out here until TLI, then going to that building I pay rent on for some unknown reason.”
“You mean your house?”
“Allegedly. You want to go get some lunch?” Weller asks.
“And miss TLI?”
“We're not gonna miss anything. Wake me up when they're starting powered descent, until then it's 90 hours of abacus...ing? Alright, then how about this. We break into K's office and have a celebratory drink.”
“And what's phase B in this plan?” Hammersmith asks with a mixture of suspicion and coy flirting.
“A five hour nap on his couch,” Weller replies.
“We shouldn't be having celebratory drinks yet, they've only just gotten to orbit, you don't want to tempt fate.”
“Hey, I'm the rocket guy, remember? The rocke
t worked, everything else is someone else's problem.”
“One small celebratory drink,” Hammersmith says sternly. “Then I'm coming back here for TLI.”
“He's got some fancy stuff, you shouldn't plan ahead for some artificial limits. What if we discover some new kind of alcohol that's made from liquified money or something. It would probably have cocaine in it.”
“Just one drink,” Hammersmith says.
In the Earth's shadow, the Griffin of the Pegasus 3 mission proceeds slowly toward docking with the waiting Aquila in-space stage that has the propellant and engine that will send them to the Moon. Three hours after launch, they have rendezvoused to within a kilometer and are now closing in on the 53 tonne rocket stage. The docking needs to be done soon because the window for TLI is coming up shortly. The TLI burn has to be done at a certain point in their Earth orbit in order to send them out not toward the Moon, but to where the Moon will be in three days. If they don't dock quickly enough, then they have to wait for another full Earth orbit before the TLI-window will come back around, a delay of about 90 minutes, not insignificant when you're racing against a spacecraft that did TLI several hours ago.
Commander Bowe and Kingsley are in their seats, monitoring panels as they begin the docking. Lovell watches Tim and Kingsley closely.
“550 meters, closing at 8.5,” Kingsley reads off to Tim who watches the view from the Griffin Eye system which shows him the docking mechanism in the infrared, making it easily visible even in Earth's shadow.
“I've lost the IR feed,” Tim says, alarmed. The screen that was showing the IR feed is now showing static.
“Have you tried turning it off and on again?” Caroline asks, getting glares from all around her. “What? That usually works with...everything.”
“Try the other camera,” K says.
“Can't see shit,” Tim says. The Laser Range Finder, part of the Griffin Eye system, still reads off the distance to the docking mechanism on the Aquila. The LRF screen also shows a simulation of the alignment of the two docking mechanisms. Tim focuses on this alignment screen now. He keeps the cross-hairs of the Griffin on the cross-hairs of the Aquila and continues the slow approach.
“300 meters, closing at 5.5,” K reads off.
“How accurate is that?” Jim Lovell asks.
“What? The LRF?” K asks.
“Yeah, that screen, that's a computer generated thing right?”
“Yeah,” K says.
“Are we sure it's right?” Lovell asks.
“250, closing at 5,” K says. “The Griffin Eye system creates that, it's really accurate.” Jim unfastens from his seat and floats up toward the front window of the Griffin.
“Nothing beats the old Lovell eye,” Jim says. He strains to see the Aquila. In the shadow of the Earth, it's very difficult to see anything at all.
“200, closing at 4.8,” K says. Lovell squints, tries covering an eye, then the other, straining to find any method that will reveal the 53 tonne rocket stage ahead of them. “See anything?” K asks.
“Not a damn thing,” Jim says, but that doesn't stop him from trying. He pulls an eye-patch from a Velcro pocket in his suit and puts it on.
“150, closing at 4.5,” K says.
“Is that meters?” Jim asks. “150 meters?”
“Yeah,” K replies.
“That's not right,” Jim replies.
“What do you mean?” K asks. “120 meters, closing at 4.3.”
“I can see it, I can see the silhouette of it against some lights down there,” Jim says. “It's not real clear, but I'd say it's no more than 150 feet.”
“Let me see,” K says, unstrapping and floating up to the window. “I don't see anything.”
“That's cause you've been staring at a screen,” Lovell replies. “Try this,” Lovell hands over the eye-patch.
“You brought an eye-patch?” K asks.
“Useful for seeing in the dark. You know, just little things you pick up in the Navy,” Jim says sarcastically.
“Caroline, would you read that off for me,” Bowe asks.
“95 meters, closing at 3.8,” Caroline says.
“I still don't see anything,” K says as he lifts the eye-patch and squints.
“80, closing at 3.7,” Caroline says.
“Stop! Stop right now!” K shouts. Bowe thrusts and Jim and Kingsley, unstrapped, are pushed forward toward the window.
“Holding at 74 meters,” Caroline says.
“Nope, that's maybe 20 meters,” K says. “I can see it clearly.”
“So we've got a bad reading on the LRF?” Bowe asks.
“It's telling us we're 50 meters farther away than we really are,” K says.
“So if Jim hadn't whipped out the eye-patch and spotted it-” Bowe begins.
“We would have slammed into her at 3.5 meters per second.”
“That's not that fast right?” Caroline asks.
“Fast enough to potentially damage the docking mechanisms,” K replies. “Which would have scrubbed the mission.”
“Hey Kingsley, what are the odds that we have the LRF give us bad readings and we lose the IR camera both at the same time?” Bowe asks.
“I think we're thinking the same thing,” K says quietly.
Chapter 28
“Sabotage.”
“Sabotage?”
“Sabotage.”
“You're sure, sabotage?” Caroline asks.
“Look at the pattern,” Kingsley says.
“What pattern?” Caroline asks.
“Well, I need to know right now, are we go for TLI,” Tim Bowe asks. “Window is in ten minutes.”
“I say we go,” K replies.
“Of course you do,” Caroline adds.
“I say we kill the data uplink, burn TLI, then figure out who we can trust on the ground,” K says.
“What about Brittany?” Caroline asks.
“I don't know, can I trust her?” K asks.
“Why couldn't you?”
“Everyone has a price,” K replies. “She's been rumored to be running for governor. Maybe she's tired of my shadow. Maybe somebody just put a billion dollars in a super PAC with her name on it. Governor, then a run for president. You think that wouldn't grease her wheels?
“You think ULA is behind this?” Caroline asks.
“If you've got a hundred billion in contracts at stake, you wouldn't be willing to part with a few million to make sure you get it?” K asks.
“Could Brittany actually sabotage anything though? She's not hands-on in any of the technical stuff, she's the business side,” Tim replies.
“True, but she could have underlings,” K says.
“Underlings? Pretty soon we're going to be talking about henchmen,” Caroline says incredulously.
“If you were on the outside looking in, and you wanted to stop us from getting to the Moon, who would you turn?” K asks.
“Weller,” Tim says.
“Right,” K agrees. “He's the one individual person involved in the most systems and with the capability of engineering plausible-seeming sabotage.”
“Well, not the one individual,” Caroline says.
“Who's more involved than Weller?” K asks.
“You,” Caroline replies. “So what's your price, you'd sell out SpacEx for how much? Which is why I think your idea that everyone has a price is ridiculous.”
“You think if someone offered me a trillion dollars to hand SpacEx over I wouldn't take it?” K asks.
“No, I don't,” Caroline says.
“I would.”
“What if there was a non-compete clause?” Caroline asks. “Then that trillion can't help you go to Mars.”
“Okay fine, then I wouldn't.”
“And while Weller is perhaps the best for the job, the guy is a nerd. He's a rocket nerd,” Tim says.
“Before I found him, he was literally lost in the desert, building rockets in
his spare time,” K says. He lives for this. SpacEx is my baby, but Eagles, those are his babies. It would be a really steep price to buy him off.”
“So I don't think Weller or Hammersmith are involved,” K says. “But are we sure enough to go to them? I've seen enough spy movies to know that you better not pick the spy to go on a spy-hunt for themselves.”
“Hammersmith,” Caroline says. “You can trust her.”
“Right, let's immediately pick the person with political ambitions, that surely can't backfire,” K replies.
“Okay well, TLI window coming up, what do we do?” Tim asks.
“Pegasus 3, Hawthorne, do you read?” Josh Yerino asks.
“Roger,” Tim says.
“We've lost all data from the Griffin, can you try switching to channel B?”
“How's that?” Tim calls back.
“Still nothing,” Josh says, quietly worried. The Mission Control room is silent and filled with controllers with no data to look at. Their eyes wander and they all turn collectively to the back of the room with bewildered looks. Mission Director Eric Greenwood makes a throat-slashing gesture toward Josh.
“Pegasus 3, if we can't get the data-link right, we are no-go for TLI,” Josh says.
“Sabotage?” Sylvia Probst asks, but is immediately shushed by two voices on the other end of the line. Sylvia, a former F-14 pilot and now astronaut three times over as a SpacEx commander, puts on her uber-calm pilot voice and persona and stands up slowly from her spot at the edge of Mission Control. “I read you loud and clear,” she says.
