Shuttle, Houston

by Paul Dye

  One way to slow the leak was to decrease the pressure in the cabin voluntarily to its lowest practical limit—eight psi. This would still give the crew what they needed to breathe and maintain the capability to cool the minimum amount of equipment—but it added a lot of overhead to the deorbit procedures, and we’d be operating on the razor’s edge of keeping the equipment in thermal bounds. I felt I needed to lead the “witness” a little—take some of the pressure off by stating the worst case myself.

  “Okay, so EECOM. You’re saying a variation of the leak of about five percent is going to make or break us—is that right?”

  “Uh, yeah Flight. That’s about right.

  “What kind of variation have you been seeing in the leak rate so far?”

  EECOM glanced back at his numbers, and I could tell by the way he cocked his head that his back room was feeding him more information over his headset. “Well Flight, that’s hard to say, we really haven’t had the time to…”

  It was time to make a decision. “EECOM, we’re really not going to have any more data, or time to look at it, before we have to call it. Give me what you’ve got—can you get me to the ground at five hours from now?”

  “Uh, Flight, I don’t think we can be sure of that—I just… no Flight, that’s too close—we could make the first opportunity with some confidence…”

  “Uh, thanks EECOM, but I think the first opportunity—I’m going to rule that out. There are just too many things we could screw up if we tried for it that fast. Maybe in the old days, but not coming off the Station. So, EECOM—you can’t make the second opportunity?”

  I could see the pressure release from his shoulders as I stated the blunt conclusion for him. “No Flight, I don’t think we can.”

  I looked up at the clocks one more time. Barely thirty minutes had gone by since the first hint of the leak, and we had been going full blast since then—time compression made it seem like ten minutes. The crew was waiting for our thoughts and words. The rest of the team was looking at me. We had all practiced emergency deorbits more times than any of us could count. Many of my team had been around for well over a decade, flying Orbiters for real and in simulations at least once a week. They knew how to get it home if I asked them to do it—and if the leak would allow. All they needed was the word.

  I stood up and stared straight at EECOM. “So, EECOM—are you recommending that we stay on the ISS, leave the crew there?”

  “Flight, EECOM. Uh, that’s correct Flight—from this console, we don’t see a way to make a deorbit work in this case.”

  This last of all Shuttle missions was unique. Ever since the Columbia had broken up on entry, we had always maintained an Orbiter rescue capability—we always kept enough supplies on board the Station to keep a Shuttle crew alive until another Shuttle could be launched to retrieve them. The rescue mission was a “canned mission” developed by a team I had led. Every mission’s preparation and planning flow was put together such that the mission could be accelerated, the payload removed (or flown, if appropriate), and the Shuttle launched with a minimal crew to leave room to bring back the stranded crewmembers that had been left on the ISS. The damaged Shuttle would have been long-since jettisoned—deorbited with the payload bay doors open, by remote control, so that it would break up over the ocean. The crew of the doomed Orbiter would wait patiently for rescue on board the ISS.

  The problem was, this was the last Shuttle mission—there was no rescue Orbiter. There were no External Tanks left, no sets of flight-ready solid rocket motors. There had been a debate over whether or not this last mission should have been flown—some thought we should have saved that last set of boosters and tanks to rescue the previous mission—and then simply not use them. But that would have been a horrible waste—and we had another plan up our sleeves. The Soyuz vehicles that brought long-duration crews to and from the ISS had three seats, and they were all planned to be used. But… the ISS could survive with fewer crewmembers if several Soyuz vehicles were launched less than full—with empty seats. We could bring home one extra person every time—and accelerate the Soyuz launches to maybe three per year, rather than two. I was concerned for the four crewmembers on Atlantis, and I was thankful we did not have a full crew of seven aboard. There was no way we could bring a stranded crew of seven home in any reasonable amount of time… but we could bring back a reduced crew of, let’s say, four in a little over a year. Some unlucky Shuttle crewmember would be setting a new record for spaceflight duration—but they’d be coming home. The Soyuz was old, but it was dirt-simple reliable. A cannonball shot back into the atmosphere, parachutes for the descent, and a sudden—but survivable—jolt at the end. It was a sure thing, and a certain way to get our crewmembers home. What I was looking at was a huge gamble—a gamble that the leak wouldn’t increase. A gamble that we could keep cooling the avionics. A gamble that nothing else would go wrong as we accelerated our normal undocking and deorbit, usually a two-day job, and tried to do it in just three hours.

  The odds against a successful deorbit were pretty large. And while I have no problem with calculated risks, I am not a gambler. The four crewmembers of Atlantis were folks I had known for years—decades in fact. The Orbiter was going to a museum after the flight. I could bring everyone home safe, or I could take a huge risk and maybe bring the machine back to be decommissioned for tourists to gawk at. That deorbit was so tempting—the ground so close in time. The leak rate was steady now—but could I trust that? It had changed several times a few minutes ago. What if it was a crack, a tear—and aerodynamic forces opened it up? What if the vibration of entry through Earth’s atmosphere shook loose the leaking fitting? What if, what if…

  It was time to formalize the decision. There were hundreds of people in the building listening to the Flight loop, and many more in offices at all levels who probably had their ears cocked to their squawk boxes. Nothing that happened on the Flight loop was private, and the number of folks listening had probably increased as soon as the first person outside the Control Center heard the words “cabin leak” and told someone else.

  I sat up straight and keyed my mic. “Okay, everybody, amber on the Flight loop, and Station Flight, Shuttle Flight—are you up on my loop?”

  “I’m here Shuttle Flight.”

  “Okay, folks, I’ve got everyone… I think we’ve pushed this as far as we can go—FIDO, you’re still not comfortable with the first opportunity, are you? I’ll tell you, I’m not.”

  FIDO came back quickly. “No Flight, I don’t think that’s reasonable.”

  “Okay, then—we’re going to have to go to lifeboat mode—ISS Flight, are you ready for some long-term guests?”

  “Uh, yes, Shuttle Flight, we’ll make room.”

  It was time to tell the crew of the decision that they probably knew was coming. Shuttle Commander Chris Ferguson, “Fergy” to just about anyone who worked with him, needed to be told directly what the situation demanded, and what we were going to do. I wanted the next call to go directly to him to make it official.

  “Okay, CAPCOM, let’s tell Fergy that it’s time to reopen the hatches and start to gather equipment—uh, ACO, have we got an equipment list for stripping the Orbiter?”

  The Assembly and Checkout Officer (ACO), one row ahead of me and to my left, responded. “Yes, Flight. Page 4-1, in the Stowage Checklist.”

  “Okay, CAPCOM, let’s get them stripping the ship and retreating to the ISS.”

  ACO, in our control room, kept detailed records of every item in both the Shuttle and ISS—where it all was, what it was—and most importantly, what the crew needed to take with them in the case they had to abandon ship. That list was going to be needed—right now.

  “Atlantis, Houston for Fergy.”

  “Go ahead, Houston, this is Fergy.”

  Shannon keyed her mic again. “Fergy, we’ve been watching the leak, and the next landing opportunity just looks like we are going to be cutting it too thin. We are going to have you reopen the hatches a
nd strip the Orbiter—we’re going to have you retreat to the ISS and stay there. We’re going to abandon Atlantis. You can find the list of gather hardware in…”

  I tuned out and sat back in my chair—the hard work was done—the decision was made, now it was just execution. We had plenty of time to get whatever the crew needed or wanted to strip from the Orbiter—food, clothing, spare parts, tools, Launch and Entry Suits, seats. The Station had lots of air to feed the leak for the hour or two it would take to render the vehicle derelict. Then we’d set it up for deorbit, install a set of jumper cables that allowed us to fire the orbital maneuvering system engines (by remote control from the ground), and send her to a fiery end over the Pacific. We had to do this all before it ran out of air completely—because once again, we had to do it before the computers overheated and we lost control…

  But that would be for the oncoming team—I’d already sent an email to get the ball rolling and get another team into MCC to help my team make sure we didn’t drop the ball—it would be terrible to drop an Orbiter on a land mass. We’d done what we could, we’d kept the crew alive and safe. The goal of the Flight Director is twofold—crew safety and mission success. You couldn’t have a successful mission if everyone didn’t come home, and of the two goals, crew safety was first. It would be a year before I saw Fergy back on Earth, but at least I knew he—and the rest of the crew—would be alive, if albeit a little worse for the wear.

  “Flight, Sim Sup on the Flight loop!”

  Sim Sup (pronounced “Sim Soup”)—the Simulation Supervisor—was a voice I hadn’t heard for about an hour—ever since this whole thing got started. She and I had a private communication loop that no one else could hear, but I hadn’t heard a peep from her end as we worked through this problem.

  “Go ahead, Sup. Ahh… Station Flight, are you here too?” No need to make Sup’s counterpart on the ISS side tell the same story.

  “Yes Shuttle Flight, the Station team is here.”

  “Flight, Sim Sup, that was a good run, we think you came to where we thought we wanted you to be, and when do you want to debrief?”

  “Let’s make it ten minutes, Sup—I think we can use a quick break before we talk about it… so everyone be back in ten, and we’ll debrief.”

  And just like that, we all leaned back from our consoles, took a deep breath, and realized that once again, it was all just make-believe. The Sim Sup had scripted a clever problem—but no one was going to be at actual risk. The Atlantis “crew” (Fergy, Rex, Sandy, and Doug) were safely on the ground, just across the duck ponds from where we were sitting. This was the last run of the last simulation for the orbit teams of the Space Shuttle program. And once again, like countless times before, we’d worked our way to a point where we could bring our crew home.

  The art of any simulation is making it as realistic as possible. We like to say that we fly the way we train—but it is equally important to train the way you fly. One instantly unacceptable answer in any conversation on the Flight Director loop is “Well, Flight, if this were a real day…” That would get you slapped down pretty quick, and it doesn’t make any difference who is sitting in the Flight Director chair at the moment. Fly the way you train, and train the way you fly—and always, take it seriously. I always told my flight controllers that if they didn’t leave a sim exhausted, then they weren’t really putting their heart into it. Thirty-three years in Mission Control took a lot of heart—and it was only in retrospect that I realized just how tired it made us all.

  The last time I sat in the Shuttle control room was shortly after the (real) landing of STS-135. I had released my team—the planning team—for the last time about ten hours before, making way for the entry team who handled the last shift of the Shuttle program. The entry went smoothly, as expected, and the postlanding handover to the Kennedy Space Center took its normal course—everyone usually wished that part would go by faster because our job was done, but little things always slowed it down. No one really cared that it ran long that day; no one really wanted to leave. I watched the landing from the Director’s Suite, which was a little office space above, behind, and to the right of the Flight Control Room (FCR) with two big windows looking out over the floor. The suite was allegedly designed for the Center Director to use, but in actuality it was the gathering place for off-duty Flight Directors, former Flight Directors, managers, senior astronauts—anyone who wanted to feel like part of the action yet had no reason to be in the FCR itself. The crowd in the suite grew and dwindled from flight to flight depending on what was going on, and what time of day it was happening. Ascent and entry were the big times, of course. Very few folks spent any time in the room during orbit operations, unless something very unusual was going on. But, it was a good place to informally catch up on gossip with other senior members of the team before and after mission management team meetings. Most everyone who had access to the room had been in the trenches themselves, most for many years. There was really no rank there; you spoke your mind, told jokes, even heckled the team a bit if things were going well. They couldn’t hear you, of course, but it relieved the tension and made everyone think they were still part of the game. Weather decisions received the most comment, usually—weather was always a matter of opinion.

  But this last day—the last time we’d sit in the room during a Shuttle operation—we all sat and watched, made a few comments, let our breath out collectively at wheels’ stop (the moment the Orbiter stopped moving on the runway, and the mission was over). We waited for handover and the news that the doors of the FCR were unlocked. What followed was the largest and longest group hug I’d ever been a part of. The room was literally flooded with people—they came in waves—mostly flight controllers and operations people who just wanted one last touch of what it had been like to be a part of the program. Older Flight Directors and astronauts, senior management who had risen up through the ranks—there was barely room to stand, and plenty of noise to go around. The Shuttle FCR was now just a room full of people shaking hands—and saying their goodbyes.

  It was actually early in the morning Houston time. Landing was just before sunrise at the Cape, and handover an hour after that, so the sun was just reaching Houston—yet so many came to say goodbye. I hadn’t bothered to go home after my shift. I just took a nap on the couch in the suite until a few folks showed up for the initial stages of deorbit. The post-handover backslapping and hugging reminded me of the last episode of the old Mary Tyler Moore Show, where the characters couldn’t seem to break the bonds of a final goodbye hug and finally shuffled out of the room together, in a large embrace. In the same manner, it took a long time before people started to leave the FCR. At least an hour passed before gaps appeared in the crowd. Some decided to head off to breakfast, some headed home to bed. A few of us simply couldn’t get it in our heads to leave. We wanted to be the last ones there.

  In the end, there were about six of us. The viewing room was empty by this time. No one was coming back in, and other than Flight Directors, the ground controller was the only person left. We had been told that the Flight Director’s flight data file—the exact duplicate set of all the books and checklists that the crew had on board—was not going to be inventoried after the mission. It was never going to be used again, so they didn’t have to prepare it for the next flight. It was, in fact, surplus. So we split it up. Being the senior orbit Flight Director (by an unfortunately wide margin), I took the orbit checklists. The Shuttle lead for the mission hung on to his Rendezvous Checklist. The ascent and entry guys took their books as well. They were just checklists that we all had electronically, but there was something magic about these paper copies—and we knew that if we didn’t take them they would be headed for the trash. We hung on to them because they had been an important part of our lives for so long. They were mementos, as surely as the patches, pins, and stickers we all had overflowing from our desk drawers.

  After we divided up the spoils, we sat back and realized that we simply had no place else to
go—nothing left to do. Sure, we’d all be back the next day, or the day after that, working in the office, looking at work that needed to be done for the Commercial Crew program, or the Orion program, or the ISS program, itself. If you wanted to remain in “the office” (as we referred to the Flight Director Office), it was a given that you had to get or stay certified for Space Station console duties. I had been an ISS Flight Director on and off since the program’s beginning. And I had picked it up again in earnest a year or two before we finished with the Shuttle. So we’d all be back in the same building—but not flying a winged spacecraft. We sat there and exchanged stories, and at some point, we left as well. But not before a cooler with a few beers arrived. Drinking? In Mission Control? It seemed like a good idea at the time, but boy, was it nonregulation. I don’t remember who was last out the door, but I do remember looking back at a very quiet place. The FCR was rarely noisy—conversations into headsets rarely rose above a low murmur, but this silence was the silence of a weekend holiday when nothing was in the air. It was the silence of abandonment, and the moment struck me as the same one that we had faced on that last simulation case: the final decision had been made and there was no going back. An era was ending, a glorious era. The only difference was that while the decision to abandon ship during that last training case was the right one, the decision to leave the Shuttle program behind was very hard to justify for anyone with the spirit of exploration running in their blood.

  Chapter 1

  The Most Complex Flying Machine Ever Built

  The Space Shuttle program was, to make the understatement of the century, huge. Five space-qualified vehicles flew a total of 135 times. Originally approved in the early 1970s, the Shuttle first flew into orbit in April 1981 and landed for the last time in July 2011. Before then, the original atmospheric flight vehicle (Enterprise) dropped off the back of the 747 carrier aircraft for four free flights, landing by itself on the dry lake bed at Edwards Air Force Base in the Mojave Desert. Literally millions of people had a hand in this multigenerational project over its lifetime. People came to the program from all walks of life. From the engineers who designed it to the craftsmen who built it, from the planners and program managers who kept track of every little detail to the pilots and flight controllers who executed the missions—it was an all-consuming way of life for those involved at just about any level.