Admiral Hauch was elegant in his dress blues which carried seven inches of ribbons and gold wings upon his heart. He only broke out his blues for audiences with the Chiefs or with the Old Man himself.
The Admiral rose and walked to the glass wall of their chill cage. His spit-shined shoes glowed five feet above the concrete floor under the floor of clear glass. Standing erect by the glass wall, the Admiral gripped one huge fist in the other behind his back which faced the men behind him. As he gazed at the wall charts, he cut every inch the image of the flag ship commander upon his high quarterdeck.
“Well, Doctor. Your impressions now?”
“Admiral.” The little man with the squirrel face fumbled with a stack of green computer paper as he addressed the Admiral’s ample backside. The technocrat perspired under the ceiling lights.
“We’ve run a full re-entry simulation. Assuming an operational right OMS pod with its RCS capabilities, Endeavor can shoot a successful re-entry profile. They will experience lateral trim imbalance flying with only half their aft RCS capacity, but they should still be within the attitude dead-band limits of the flight control loops. Endeavor will have to fire the one remaining, OMS engine for a full five minutes to do the work of two normal engines. Our real concern is the tile loss on the aft fuselage.”
“Fatal?”
“Don’t think so, Admiral. We may lose some structural integrity from soak-back heating, maybe even one of the two, surviving auxiliary power units. But I vote for survival.”
The standing Admiral sighed audibly.
“We build them pretty tight, Doctor.”
“Yes. And you have two of your best pilots up there.”
“My best. I know.”
“Any word from Moscow, Admiral?”
“Yes, Colonel.” The big man did not turn to face the table. “It’s Sleep Tight.”
“But they have their own man in there.”
“Yes they do, Major. But LACE was and is to be a totally . . . antiseptic operation. With extreme prejudice if necessary.”
“If I may: I cannot believe that the Kremlin would advocate such a senseless waste.”
“I agree, Commander.” The old fatigue crept into the Admiral’s deep voice. “They have their ‘upstairs’ and we have ours. I imagine the Kremlin knows as little about this operation as our own government. Even the President has not been briefed on all these little details.”
“Admiral, I cannot support assassination.”
The tall sailor turned to glare coldly and wearily at the small assembly.
“None of you were invited here to vote! The votes are all in. You are here to help your country out of her worst embarrassment since the Bay of Pigs in ’61 . . . Doctor, will your Programmed Test Input Seven do the job?”
“Absolutely. With the left aft RCS pod disabled, the shuttle has lost one-third of her total Reaction Control System impulse for precision attitude control. The key here is attitude rates: She will be slow in attitude changes. The PDPU maneuver of PTI-7, that’s push-down pull-up, will crack her spine . . . just like that.”
The Admiral winced as the little man snapped his fingers.
“Major? Will the crew run the PTI if they have doubts about it with partial RCS capacity?” The Admiral spoke slowly.
“That is their job . . . Of course they will run it, Admiral.”
“Then I shall relay the go ahead to the network feed.”
“Mike, you can’t!”
“That is my job.”
The large man in his dress blues turned away. He looked up at the small video insect which crawled across eastern Brazil toward open sea and its local midnight darkness. Then the old dragon of the Tail Hook Club closed his tired eyes tightly.
“Nine minutes, Skipper.”
The mission clock ticked up past 09 hours 46 minutes. Endeavor flew upside-down and tailfirst through the night. Below, it was almost midnight. The starship left Porto Alegre, Brazil, and the coastline behind as she made for open water and Okinawa, now 15,400 statute miles away. There would be no more major landfalls until wheels-on, except for a brief glide over Southeast Asia.
“Feet wet.” Enright studied the television on his right side of the forward cockpit.
When Endeavor crossed the coast, she entered a 5,130-statute-mile stretch of the South Atlantic Anomaly. Now it did not matter. An ionic orange glow warmed Shuttle’s inverted 26-foot-long tail which led the way southeast making 300 miles per minute. That made no difference to the crew, either.
“Entry attitude hold, set.” The Aircraft Commander read his checklist. “Ten degrees up bubble on the bow . . .Yaw right 007 degrees. Set.”
Shuttle’s nose was lower than her tail section from the local horizontal as she flew backward. But since the crew was oriented headsdown, the nose appeared to them higher than the tail. The computers directed the nose to hold slightly off center. This side drift would help the single OMS engine deliver its 6,000 pounds of thrust in a thrust vector through the ship’s center of gravity. The single right orbital maneuvering system rocket can also swing from side to side through an eight-degree arc to direct the line of fire.
“Looks fat on propellant, Will. Good news.”
Enright had run a check of the OMS propellant tanks in the single right pod in the tail. The OMS pod was loaded with propellant for 1,250 seconds of firing. Only 190 seconds worth of fuel and oxidizer were burned during the two firings of the OMS pod to insert Endeavor into orbit 9½ hours earlier. Very little had been consumed during the first-orbit rendezvous with LACE. Ordinarily, with both OMS engines firing to slow Shuttle for leaving orbit, the de-orbit bum lasts 150 seconds. With only one OMS pod to fire the 77-inch-high, 45-inch-wide Aerojet General rocket engine, the burn would take a full five minutes to jar Shuttle from her circular orbit 149 statute miles high.
“OMS prep, your side, Jack.”
Enright looked up through his bandages at the panels of switches and pushbuttons on the ceiling. The AC challenged and Enright readback.
“Overhead Panel-8: Helium pressure vapor insolation valve, Loop A, to General Purpose Computer.”
“Alpha to GPC.”
“Loop B to GPC.”
“Bravo to GPC.”
“Propellant tank isolation valve, Loop A, talk-back open.”
“Alpha, open.”
“Loop B, talk-back open.”
“Bravo, open.”
“Right OMS crossfeed, closed, Loop A.”
“Alpha, closed.”
“Right crossfeed, Loop B, closed.”
“Bravo, closed, Will.”
“Panel Overhead-16, engine valve, on.”
“On.”
“Engine lever-locked arm.” Parker checked the toggle switch on the center console by his right elbow.
The clocks reached 09 hours 50 minutes, MET, and the event timer ticked down through minus five minutes to OMS ignition.
Endeavor flew on her back, tailfirst, over the black water below and with the faint star Acamar in the southern constellation Eridanus above. In the west, 1,400 nautical miles away, Montevideo, Uruguay, slept away a summer night. Below, it was midnight, six days before Christmas.
“State vectors loaded,” the AC confirmed. “Major Mode 302 running and Mother likes it.”
On the center of three television screens, the plots were up for the de-orbit maneuver. At the base of the green screen, numerics counted down in tandem with the event timer near Parker’s painful right knee.
“Jack: ADI to inertial mine and yours, ADI error and rates to medium. And DAP to auto.” The crew set their round attitude director indicators for the final plunge home.
“Four minutes, Alexi,” the AC called over his right shoulder.
The Soviet survivor nodded to the back of Enright’s bandaged and blistered head. Then he tightened his lap and shoulder belts.
“Let’s do it, Jacob.”
“Think I’m old enough, Will?”
Dozens of greasy hands reached into bowls
of popcorn on the floor. The large hands belonged to adults but their voices and their eyes were those of children.
“Told you it was already on TV.”
“You were right, Emily. Let’s just remember that the television people don’t know everything.”
“Oh, I know that, Cleanne. I wish everyone would shush so we could hear about my daddy.”
The two women leaned toward the television in the airy, institutional family room. Outside, it was a dark winter evening.
“Dan, the day has certainly taken on a tone far different from this morning.”
“Yes indeed, Walter. There was that magnificent launch of the Shuttle Endeavor from Florida this morning. Even though we have seen Shuttle ride that pillar of fire other times, it is still awesome and the crowds still line Coco Beach to watch her go. Then that first-orbit rendezvous with the lost Intelsat-6 satellite and with the Russians sent up for this first truly international space repair operation . . .”
“And then, Dan, it became unglued this afternoon. Somehow, the whole thing just unraveled. And we know very little tonight. First we had Astronaut Parker going outside instead of Jacob Enright who was injured, mysteriously, inside Shuttle. Barely two hours ago, we were told that Parker’s spacewalk had failed to secure Intelsat-6 to Shuttle. And then an hour ago: that terse announcement from NASA in Houston and from Moscow that Intelsat-6 had been destroyed, that a Russian cosmonaut was dead, and that a Soviet survivor was picked up by Shuttle.”
“Unraveled is the word tonight, Walter. From the day’s dramatic turn of events, the sparse air-ground communications which NASA has relased to us, and then this sudden announcement less than thirty minutes ago that Shuttle is coming home at this very moment—all these events suggest that someone will have some explaining to do in the days to come.”
“Indeed, Dan. And Endeavor is coming down damaged, perhaps fatally . . . Eric?”
“Yes, Walter. Dan.” The white-haired retired journalist with the elegant Mount Rushmore face spoke with his wonderful voice. His upper lip never moved as his words flowed like warm honey.
“I think that the worst part of this strange day in space is the brevity of this mission not yet ten hours old. The suddenness of this flight and this now, life-threatening crisis announced with so little real information coming out of Houston has somehow cheated us, I think.
“The nation simply has not had time to get to know our brave men up there: Parker and Enright. Who even remembers that Colonel Parker flew the two-man Gemini spacecraft and then Apollo so long ago, back when we still called their tiny craft ‘capsules.’
“Before yesterday, no one really knew about this sudden rush to Intelsat at all. And I cannot help but wonder if anyone is even following this flight at home with us now?
“It’s funny, you know, how an old reporter’s memory works, Walter. Dan was too young, but you and I covered the state funeral for Franklin Roosevelt a lifetime ago. And all three of us covered the national pageant at John Kennedy’s death.
“I just cannot stop thinking about the demonstration which would follow the tragic loss of those three men up there in Endeavor: Parker, Enright, and Karpov. At least the Apollo One astronauts who burned on the launch pad in 1967, Mercury astronaut Gus Grissom, and Roger Chaffee and Ed White, America’s first spacewalker, all received a hero’s funeral. The country had the sense of really knowing those three men. But no one knows Parker and Enright.
“Remember when the seven bodies were plucked out of the sea after the Challenger explosion? They could have gotten the national funerals on television. All seven of them; and especially the schoolteacher from New Hampshire. But they really did not. Almost as if NASA wanted everything to go quietly away—quietly into the ground and into fading memory.
“And, strangely, it is not the sadness which this old warhorse remembers, not the feeling of loss, not the mournful tattoo of muffled drums. I remember, instead, the saddest and the most austere sound of all: horses’ feet falling crisply upon the street. That cold, stark sound. Even now, when a Manhattan or Boston mounted policeman rides by, I hear again that terrible sound, that sadly grand, manful sound which brings the chill to the back of the neck. Like Shuttle herself thundering into the sky, the sound of six great grays plodding slowly before a gun carriage is a sound which has flesh and which becomes a part of the flesh and the bone of all who hear it.”
The great stoney face frowned.
“Yes, Eric. Let us hope: Not again. The crippled ship Endeavor is out of radio contact now. She will remain so for about six more minutes. Out there, in the darkness, Parker, Enright, and Karpov, the Russian, will be firing their only maneuvering system rocket in one minute. As we have noted, they cannot fire Shuttle’s three main engines, since the fuel for them left when the external fuel tank dropped off after the launch this morning. On our monitors here in New York, we can see Mission Control in Houston. We understand that the new United States Space Command in Colorado is also helping to bring Endeavor safely home to Okinawa, one of her secondary landing sites. As we look in on Mission Control, everyone looks rather quiet.”
Tristan Da Cunha, a tiny group of three South Atlantic islands, were dots on the large video plot board. Above their image, a little bug crept along its curved track line. At the base of the screen, digital numerics read TIG -30 SECONDS.
The big man in dress blues sat alone in his glass house. Sitting in his high-backed chair with his back to the erect Marine sentries, the Admiral slumped with his head bowed. As the clocks reached twenty seconds to single-engine ignition, the old sailor looked down at his thick hands folded in his lap.
“Fifteen seconds, firing command is in.” Parker pressed the EXEC key on the computer keyboard on the center console.
The AC’s voice was calm. After all, he had returned to Earth from Out There three times before this moment.
“Proceed light!”
Enright’s voice was brimming with excitement. As the launch 9 hours and 55 minutes earlier was his first ride of the sacred fire, so this was his first homecoming from the great silence.
Mother’s green faces showed the first re-entry trajectory plot as her warm black boxes hummed confidently with computer program Major Mode 302.
“PAP at 360! Ten, nine . . .” Enright called.
The television in front of Enright’s swollen face confirmed that the Pneumatic Activation Pressure in the gaseous nitrogen, firing mechanism in the OMS engine’s propellant valves was at ignition pressure.
As Endeavor flew headsdown, tailfirst, and 10,520 statute miles southwest of her Okinawa target, the two fliers read aloud and together the seconds winking on the event timer.
“Four . . . Three . . . Two . . . One . . . Ignition!”
“Fire in the hole! Looks good.” The copilot’s voice was ecstatic.
As the 6,000 pounds of thrust from the single right OMS rocket fired against the momentum of the 200,000-pound starship, the deceleration was only a gentle nudge of the flight seats against the backs of the three airmen.
“Go, babe!” Enright shouted. “One minute down, four to go. NTO flow rate right on.” The nitrogen tetroxide oxidizer utilization was nominal on Mother’s television.
“Much gentler than I expected, Skip.”
“Should have felt an SPS burn in Apollo. A real eyeballs-in maneuver.” Will Parker once rode Apollo’s Service Propulsion System engine out of lunar orbit. In all the world, only 24 men could say that. Three more moon men in their crippled Apollo 13 mothership had no SPS engine after a near fatal explosion. They rode their Lunar Module engine home, instead, in 1971.
“Sorry, Will. I wasn’t old enough then.”
The AC chuckled.
“Got a little out-of-plane building. Anything, Jack?”
The single engine on the far right corner of Shuttle’s up-side-down tail labored to compensate for the off-center forces of its three tons of thrust. The flight director needles on Parker’s instruments displayed a slight side-to-side error i
n trajectory.
“Negative, Skipper. Still fat inside the cross-range envelope. Hang tight. PC at 125. Oh, sweet, sweet bird!”
The OMS engine combustion chamber pressure was normal. Shuttle’s cross-range landing capability allows her to land at a site nearly 1,000 miles on either side of her ground track. Any reasonable, cross-range error will be adjusted as she steers through the upper atmosphere at a velocity of twenty times the speed of sound.
“Three minutes; one to go, Will. OMS mixture ratio 1 point 65. Right on!”
The single OMS rocket continued its 298-second firing. The engine burned 14 pounds of nitrogen tetroxide oxidizer and 9 pounds of monomethylhyrazine for each one-foot-per-second change in Endeavor’s speed. Gaseous, high-pressure helium forced the caustic propellants into the engine. Inside the engine’s combustion chamber, the propellants burned at 2,300 degrees Fahrenheit.
“Seventy seconds to go, Will . . . 68, 67, 66. Positive nose RCS, now!”
Enright noted that with 66 seconds left in the OMS deorbit burn, an early OMS shutdown would not be fatal. After this moment, the additional rocket power needed to leave orbit could be provided by turning Shuttle around and firing the three, forward-firing, nose thrusters for 150 seconds. This is the maximum allowable continuous thrusting time for the reaction control system jets in the ship’s nose. A 2½-minute burn of the three RCS engines firing together has the same impulse as one OMS engine firing for 66 seconds.
“Twenty seconds to go.”
The pilots watched Mother’s green faces tick off the final seconds to automatic engine shutdown. They read the digital numerics from the screens together. Parker had his finger poised to manually give the stop command if Mother failed to pull the OMS plug herself.
“Five . . . Four . . . Three . . . Two . . . One . . . Auto shutdown.”
“Thank you, Mother,” Enright said with reverence as he patted the glareshield above the instrument panels.
The instant the OMS engine stopped automatically, all three fliers floated out of their seats as far as their lap belts. They were still in orbit, still weightless. All the OMS engine did was lower their 130-nautical-mile-high orbit to a low point some 12,000 miles on the other side of the planet. Were there no atmosphere, Endeavor would remain in this new, very lopsided orbit for centuries. What would bring her home was the air which they would now intersect in another twenty-two minutes at an altitude of 76 statute miles.
The Glass Lady Page 37
