The Titicaca Effect

by Richard N. Tooker

  To his credit, Maldonado had concentrated on damage control with the world press and other governments without attempting to fix blame for the disaster. Freeman had half expected to be fired. Instead, he had received a hand-delivered letter expressing full confidence in his management of the spaceport from the president within hours of the chief executive’s release from the hospital and return to the presidential palace in La Paz. The letter reinforced Freeman’s opinion that Maldonado was a class act, and made him even more loyal to the President, if such a thing were possible.

  Maldonado had his hands full. Predictably, the United States publicly questioned the Bolivian government’s ability to manage an undertaking as large and complex as a space program, suggesting that NASA was the only organization left in the world capable of doing so. The fact that the source of the stories could not be pinned down kept President Truesdale above the fray when he was questioned about the allegations. The Russians and Chinese, for once, agreed with the Americans. Everyone seemed to be jockeying for position, hoping to wrest control of the space program away from Bolivia. Maldonado had quickly regained the upper hand in the press war by providing detailed information about the failure of the multinational security force to protect the facilities at the spaceport. His appointment of Suarez and expansion of the general’s role played well in the press, especially when it was revealed that the general had expressed concern about security at the site, in writing, more than a week before the disaster on the Island of the Moon. The communication had been ignored by the on-site commander of the multinational security force who had been appointed by the participating nations. Maldonado’s release of the letter effectively shifted blame for the disaster back to the nations who were complaining the loudest.

  The rebuilding of the launch facilities at Espaciopuerto De La Titicaca gave Freeman an opportunity to improve the physical layout of the spaceport. Access to any part of the facilities that would connect to either the launch area or any of the staging areas for equipment, supplies or payloads would now require passing through a minimum of three security checkpoints, complete with scanning equipment that could detect plastic explosives as well as metal. Anything that could not be penetrated by the scanning equipment would be hand-searched, and bomb-sniffing dogs were brought in to live and work at the spaceport. All of this slowed down the work flow and created some inefficiencies, but there was no real alternative. There could be no repeat of the lapse in security that had cost the lives of so many.

  Preparations for the second launch attempt, meanwhile, had gone well. The replacement lifting body had arrived from McDonnell-Douglas with significant improvements in telemetry and communications equipment, including a tail-mounted, custom-configured IMAX camera that would film a spectacular large-format view of the receding earth as the spacecraft ascended. Only the lenses would be exposed to space. They were connected via fiber optics to the body of the camera and the film path secured inside the spacecraft, and the lenses would be jettisoned before reentry. Freeman wanted to take advantage of every opportunity to merchandise the spaceport to the world, and when the IMAX people approached him with the idea of filming the launch from the spacecraft, he had jumped at the chance. The IMAX film entitled “The Dream Is Alive” about the U.S. space program had captivated him as a boy and was in large part responsible for motivating Freeman to follow his father into the Air Force so he could become a pilot, and maybe one day, an astronaut.

  Because he had never qualified to fly for NASA, Freeman cherished his role in creating and running the Bolivian spaceport. It wasn’t the same as going into space, but in every other way he was living his dream.

  Now, after four months of intense preparation, the day of the second attempt to launch a manned flight from the spaceport had arrived and the final countdown had begun.

  “Sixty seconds and counting!” the voice boomed over the loudspeakers in the control room.

  Freeman drummed his fingers on the console nervously. Preparations for the launch of Condor Two had gone flawlessly. The new thruster frame was in place, the spacecraft’s systems had been powered up and checked out, the astronauts were aboard, and there was nothing to do now but wait for the pipe to establish itself and send them into space.

  “Thirty seconds.”

  Thaddeus Stout pulled out the chair next to Freeman and sat down. “Looking good,” he said. He had just finished running through a final systems check with the flight director who supervised the 22 controllers manning the other consoles.

  Freeman glanced up at the large monitors that had been set up to display the news feed being sent from the Island of the Moon to networks all over the world. Because the first attempt to launch had been such a disaster, the audience for this event was estimated to be more than two billion. People all over the planet were watching.

  “Ten seconds.” Freeman held his breath.

  “9 – 8 – 7 – 6…”

  The lights on the console in front of Freeman continued to glow green.

  “5 – 4 – 3 – 2 – 1….”

  The thruster frame and spacecraft fell up noiselessly, quickly gaining speed as the cameras tracked them. The side thrusters on the steel framework surrounding the spacecraft were firing intermittently, keeping the payload in the center of the antigravity field.

  “We have liftoff!”

  Freeman exhaled and grinned as the control room technicians cheered. “Condor Two, do you read?” the flight director asked.

  “Condor Two, roger,” Segurola’s voice replied. “We’re on our way!”

  “Any turbulence?”

  “None at all. So far, a smooth ride.”

  “There shouldn’t be any until they reach the stratosphere,” Stout said to Freeman. “If they’re feeling anything at all, it should be something like skydiving. They’re just falling.”

  Freeman watched the monitors closely, looking for signs of trouble. The launch appeared to be going without a hitch. Within less than a minute, the payload bearing the five astronauts was out of the range of the ground-based TV cameras that had been following its ascent. The image on the newsfeed monitors switched to a wide-angle view of the control room, taken from a wall-mounted camera behind him. The video feed carried an audio channel that people all over the globe were listening to, the voice of the flight director announcing altitude thresholds as the spacecraft and thruster frame ascended to orbit. Condor Two was already more than nine miles high, and continued to ascend smoothly.

  “Titicaca, we’re right on target,” Segurola announced. “Thruster fuel consumption looks good. Still accelerating. Life support nominal. All systems are go.”

  “Condor Two, roger,” the flight director responded. “How does it feel, Pancho?”

  “We’re starting to get some turbulence now,” the pilot responded.

  “They’re in the stratosphere,” Stout said, looking at the telemetry data streaming to the monitor in front of him. “High winds, but nothing to worry about. The thrusters can handle it.”

  “Still centered,” Segurola announced, indicating that the thrusters were keeping the spacecraft correctly aligned in the center of the antigravity field. “Man, you should see this!” Evidently, he was looking at the rapidly-receding earth through the windows of the lifting body, which was oriented within the thruster frame so that it remained horizontal and parallel to the earth’s surface.

  All over the world, people were glued to their TV sets watching the launch. At the moment, the newsfeed continued to show a wide-angle view of the control room at the spaceport, but there wasn’t much to see. One thing that was very different from traditional launch scenes people were used to seeing was the lack of an orbital track display at the front of the room. Since the spacecraft remained directly over Lake Titicaca as it ascended, there was no lateral velocity relative to the earth’s surface, so there would have been nothing to show on such a display. Instead, the large monitors were scrolling through columns of numbers generated by various telemetry feeds. It was visu
al, but not very interesting. Most of the networks had switched to their talking heads, space experts hired to lend technical expertise to the broadcasts, and were filling time until Condor Two reached orbit. That would take awhile, since it would continue accelerating once it left the earth’s atmosphere, but not nearly as quickly as a rocket-launched spacecraft would have.

  Stout continued to monitor the data streams while Freeman punched in a communications code and picked up the headset and microphone that would link him directly to presidential palace. General Suarez had insisted, for security reasons, that President Maldonado not come to the spaceport for the launch. This pleased the president’s doctors, because he was still recuperating from his injuries and they preferred that he not travel anyway.

  “Mr. President,” Freeman said into the microphone, “We’ve launched.”

  “So I see, Tyler,” Maldonado responded. “Is everything going all right?”

  “They’ve just passed 100 miles and they’re accelerating more rapidly every second. The flight looks good so far.”

  “How much longer?”

  “Another 109 minutes. Once they reach altitude, Pancho will exit the antigravity field and insert into geosynchronous orbit. Then, it’s just a matter of implementing the flight plan and coming home.”

  “Is everything set at El Alto?”

  “Yes, sir. All the flights into and out of the airport are cancelled for the duration. General Suarez has it buttoned up like a fortress, and we have chase planes ready to go.”

  “Tyler, I want you to know how much I appreciate all you’ve done.” Maldonado said.

  “Thank you, Mr. President. I just want to get this first flight over with and get those five men home safely. As we all know from the Challenger and Columbia disasters, no matter how hard we work to reduce the risk, space travel is inherently dangerous. I’ll celebrate when they land at El Alto.”

  “I want to know the second they’re in orbit.”

  “Will do, Mr. President.”

  For the next hour and a half, Freeman and Stout busied themselves looking at the monitors that kept track of the spacecraft systems and occasionally talking to the flight director. Because the ascent was unpowered except for the thruster frame keeping Condor Two properly aligned in the center of the pipe, there was very little that could create the kind of catastrophe that had always threatened shuttle launches. The spacecraft was simply falling up, and that put virtually no stress on the equipment. All the risk in the flight would be concentrated in the return, when the spacecraft would be using internal thruster power, first to move from a geosynchronous orbit to a lower planned orbit 160 miles high, and from there to brake for atmospheric reentry. NASA had once believed that the non-powered glide home was relatively risk-free, but the loss of the Columbia space shuttle had dramatically disproved that theory.

  Ten minutes before Condor Two reached its target altitude, Segurola took manual control of the spacecraft and prepared to fire the engines mounted on the thruster frame again, giving it a push that would cause them to exit the pipe. Once free of the antigravity field, the plan was to first drift a safe distance away, then fire the explosive bolts that would separate Condor Two from the thruster frame. From the spaceport on the Island of the Moon, controllers would then fire the thrusters on the steel framework a final time, pushing it into a descent that would cause it to burn up in the earth’s atmosphere. Stout had vetoed a plan to leave the assembly in orbit for future use, electing instead to get it completely out of the way so there could be no chance, however remote, of it interfering with the flight of the manned spacecraft. There would be plenty of opportunities on future missions to stockpile raw materials for use in orbital construction.

  By the time this was accomplished, the Titicaca Effect would have shut itself off, leaving the area above the lake free of the antigravity field, eliminating another potential danger to the crew. They would be back on the ground well before the next day’s eruption.

  The exit from the field was completely uneventful. Segurola steered the craft toward the edge and when it crossed the threshold it was like nothing had really happened, even though the spacecraft’s lateral velocity was nearly 7,000 miles per hour. At more than 22,000 miles above the surface of Lake Titicaca, Condor Two had long ago left behind any vestiges of the earth’s atmosphere, and because they had been falling, the astronauts had been weightless since the moment of launch.

  The spacecraft had at long last reached orbit.

  Freeman had been watching the telemetry from Condor Two. When the spacecraft left the antigravity field, he wanted desperately to talk to Segurola and congratulate him, but this was a defining moment that required the mission commander to make first contact.

  The radio crackled for a second, then Segurola’s voice boomed throughout the control center and into the living rooms of billions of people all over the world, “Titicaca, Condor Dos moscas. La humanidad comienza hoy su viaje a las estrellas.” Then in English, “Titicaca, Condor Two flies. Today mankind begins its journey to the stars.” Freeman, Stout and practically everyone else in the control room leaped to their feet, laughing and congratulating each other. Freeman grinned, thinking, He kept the note. Segurola had used the words that Freeman had written for him before the first, ill-fated attempt to launch Condor One.

  He reentered the codes that would connect him to the presidential palace, and Maldonado answered. “Mr. President, you heard?” he asked.

  “Indeed I did, Tyler. Can you put me through to Condor Two?”

  “We can, Mr. President. Do you want a private channel, or is it OK to broadcast your conversation?”

  “By all means, broadcast it.”

  “One moment, sir.” He nodded to the flight director, who entered another set of codes into the console in front of him, then flipped a switch that would send the audio channel to the worldwide newsfeed. “Condor Two, we have someone who wants to talk to you.”

  “Condor Two,” the president said, “Congratulations. People all over the world are celebrating.”

  “Thank you Mr. President,” Segurola answered. “You should see Bolivia from here. The Andes are beautiful, and at this altitude the lake looks very small.”

  “Perhaps I will see it one day,” Maldonado replied. “You have begun a new era of space travel, one in which more people will have an opportunity to go into space. How was the trip up?”

  “The best way to describe it is uneventful, Mr. President. It was a very smooth ride, with no surprises. Exactly what we had hoped for.”

  “Bolivia takes great pride in what you have done today, all of you. I know you have a great deal to do now to prepare for reentry. I will see you at El Alto when you land, Pancho. Have a safe journey home.”

  “We will, sir,” Segurola responded.

  As the conversation ended, one of the large monitors at the front of the control center switched from a scrolling screen of telemetry data to a view of the earth from 22,000 miles up. The Russian astronaut, whose duties included photography, had oriented the internal TV camera so that it was taking pictures through one of the viewports in the spacecraft. The picture was spectacular. At this distance, the curvature of the horizon was very evident. There was, of course, no rotation, since the spacecraft was stationary over South America, but it was possible to see the shadows move slowly across the planet as the angle of the sunlight shifted. Later, after the spacecraft had descended to a lower near-earth orbit, there would be time to broadcast a televised greeting from the crew.

  During the conversation with the president, the Titicaca Effect had reached the end of its daily eruption and had shut down, so there was no danger of drifting back into it. The crew now had a little more than 90 minutes to complete their reentry checklist, which included more photographs, a complete check of all the spacecraft’s systems, and most importantly, separation of Condor Two from the thruster frame. That task was the first order of business.

  The explosive bolts were oriented so that when they fi
red they would not only release Condor Two from the frame, the pressure wave from the series of small explosions would also give the frame itself enough of a push so that it would drift clear of the spacecraft at a velocity of six feet per minute. At that rate, the thruster frame should be more than a half-mile from the spacecraft when the flight plan called for the thruster burn that would push the frame into an uncontrolled descent into the earth’s atmosphere. The steel frame would be nothing more than ashes drifting toward the earth by the time Condor Two was ready to descend to its near-earth orbit.

  Freeman was only half-listening to the countdown to separation as he and Stout discussed the plan for the landing at El Alto.

  “Titicaca, we have a problem.”

  Segurola’s words first registered in Freeman’s subconscious. A microsecond later they burst to the forefront of his attention, and he immediately stabbed at the emergency button that would shunt communications away from the worldwide newsfeed and directly to his workstation. The room fell silent as he answered, “Condor Two, say again?