The Daedalus Files, page 6
So, that was good news, sort of…it sure beat having to breathe every other breath.
As I came up on North America, my changed orbit was obvious. I passed well south of Baja California, and almost directly over the sixteenth-century town of San Luis Potosi, but it was too dark to see anything, except the lights of the town itself. Before I really had a chance to integrate the lights below me, I flashed past the Mexican coast into the Gulf about five hundred klicks south of Houston.
Houston—home to flight control of virtually every American manned space flight except mine. The phrase Houston Flight Control had captured my imagination since I was a small kid. And that’s when it hit me.
“Master Chief Boldt, are you still there?” Silly question. Of course, he was.
“What’s on your mind, Tiger?”
“Since I probably won’t be landing in San Diego, can we arrange to land in the parking lot in front of the entrance to Houston Mission Control?”
I have absolutely no idea what kind of behind-the-scenes activity this innocent proposal generated, but by the time I was coming up on the West Coast of Africa for the second time, Boldt got back to me.
“It’s a go, Tiger! NASA loves the idea and will do everything possible to facilitate your landing.” The Master Chief actually sounded excited. “We’re working out the parameters now. Generally, twenty-one-hundred klicks from Houston, you’ll initiate your drop. That’s just off the coast of Baja. You’ll be able to see it when you initiate.
“Now…let’s focus on getting you home.” The Master Chief’s emotionless voice had returned, so it was back to business.
Mother shifted my oxygen content to sixteen. I could tell the difference, and that made me think. The reason we were doing this is that if we didn’t, I would deplete my oxygen supply before I had a chance to hook into the one they were sending me. If I ran out of oxygen before the backup pallet reached me, or even about the time it arrived, I wouldn’t have enough brainpower left to do what was necessary. That thought nailed it. I decided to take a nap to remain on sixteen percent as long as I physically could.
LEO—RENDEZVOUS
Master Chief Boldt’s voice jolted me awake. “Tiger, Control…Look alive! You’ve got work to do.”
I quickly checked my heads-up readings and the map Mother had superimposed over my panoramic view. I had slept for about an hour, give or take. The backup had been launched and was on its way to our rendezvous. As the Sun rose ahead of me, I passed south of Houston, 12,000 klicks from the meet-up twenty-four minutes hence.
“Tiger, time to do what you practiced in Max.”
“I practiced a lot of things in Max…most of them got me killed!” I wasn’t really grumpy, but my sense of humor was lagging behind me in orbit.
“Tiger, you need to extricate yourself from the Gryphon. Gotta be ready for whatever might happen at rendezvous.”
“Roger, Master Chief. I’m working on that right now.” Boldt was more than right. If things went exactly as planned, my pallet and the replacement would end up side-by-side. All I would need to do is slip out of the damaged Gryphon-10 into the replacement, and then ride it out for about forty-three minutes to the drop point. But real life has a habit of interfering with the best-laid plans. I had one shot at the rendezvous. I needed every advantage I could get.
Time to undress. I manually released the seal around the pod cover. A cloud of moisturized air escaped, forming an expanding halo around the pallet. I activated the mechanism that opened the Gryphon-10 pod cover like a clamshell carrying me with it. My arms and hands were free, so I loosened the waistband and then undid the leg straps. I had nineteen minutes left to think about all the things that could go wrong.
“Tiger, Control…The backup will approach you from below to your rear. Its differential velocity should be very small both along your orbital axis and your vertical axis. You should see it in about five minutes.”
“I’m lookin’ hard, Master Chief, trust me!”
LEO—MISS
Iooking down against the bright Atlantic surface for a small approaching object is not exactly what I had trained for, but you better believe I concentrated more than I ever had before.
I picked it up three or four minutes later—I sort of lost track of time I was concentrating so hard. “I see the pallet, Master Chief!”
“That’s a bit early,” he answered. “It’s gonna go right past you…but pretty slow.” He paused. “Give me an angle from the base of your pallet.”
I sighted and let Mother do the math. “Ten-and-a-half degrees, Master Chief.”
“Yeah, we see it. That’s a problem. Should be about seven to eight degrees. Sucker’s going to pass you at about one-point-four meters-per-second. What’s the pallet’s relative bearing drift?”
I watched it for a few seconds. “It’s pulling off to my right…”
“Wait one,” the Master Chief said. “I’m patching NASA through.”
“This is Flight Control Houston, Tiger. We got you and the approaching pallet on high-resolution radar. You are at three-hundred meters and closing at one-point-four meters-per-second, decreasing. At CPA (that’s Closest Point of Approach for you landlubbers), the pallet will be one hundred meters off your starboard side at ten-point-four degrees above your plane, one-point-two meters-per-second relative velocity.”
“Mother, time of CPA?” I asked.
“Three-minutes-and-fifty-seconds.”
I thought about tethering myself to my pallet, but considering the forces involved, I decided I would be better off on my own under TBH propulsion. After all, 1.4 m/sec was about walking speed. I should be able to catch the pallet just a football field away.
“Mother, give me angle and time to commence personal burn to rendezvous with pallet.” Believe it or not, she actually understood that.
“Two-minutes-and-three-seconds; heading zero-nine-zero relative; ten-degree up-angle. You will need to correct continuously as you traverse.”
I had less than a minute. As Mother counted down the last few seconds, I said, “Captain, Master Chief…wish me luck!” I oriented myself and tapped both big toes…and whispered, There’s no place like home!
Mother set my heads-up display to show the pallet carrying the spare Gryphon-10 on its projected path, myself on my projected path, and the rendezvous point. I concentrated on keeping my path intersecting the rendezvous point. I was a little low and to the right. I bent both knees just a bit and moved my left leg outward a fraction. As the points closed, I got ready and then tapped both toes to shut down the TBH boots. As we closed still five meters apart, I tucked and rolled, pointing my feet at the pallet. Two taps with each toe—on and off, and I grabbed the pallet.
“Nice job!” the Master Chief commented. “Now buckle in! You got a circularizing burn coming up in a minute.”
He didn’t say Hustle!, but I heard it in his voice. The Gryphon-10 was a hardy beast, but it was not designed to take acceleration with the clamshell open. It took me thirty-five seconds to open it, lie face down, and shut it over me. I was not strapped to anything, so I grabbed my hand controls, braced my knees against the pod, and held on.
“On my mark,” Master Chief Boldt said. “Three, two, one…fire!”
I don’t know what I was expecting, but the acceleration caught me by surprise. About ten seconds or so of something less than one-gee, and that was it.
“You’re good to go,” the Master Chief informed me.
I couldn’t have increased my oxygen percentage to 21% if I had wanted to. I was quite literally on my last couple of breaths. I rolled out of the clamshell and quickly hooked the oxygen manifold to my backpack and recharged my tanks. There was no need to inform Control.
I opened the clamshell and pressed against the pod cover. I strapped my legs to the pod. I tightened the broad waist strap, placed my arms at my sides, and then closed and sealed the Gryphon-10. As I crossed the east coast of Africa, I was ready to go.
Figure 7—Spare Gryphon on pallet with oxygen tanks and makeshift piping.
LEO—ORBIT SHIFT
By now, I had sufficient oxygen to make several trips around the globe, but my bladder bag was filling, and I had already tested the capacity of my astronaut diapers. It was definitely time to go home.
“Tiger, this is Control.” It was the Master Chief again.
“What’s up, Master Chief?”
“Nothin ain’t easy,” he said. “Your successful rendezvous and burn were not entirely successful. You can’t make Houston on your present path.”
“Well…sheeit!” I said. I really wanted to do that landing. “Master Chief,” I said after a minute of thought, “check with Houston, but I think we might be able to adjust my orbit. I got a bunch of pressurized oxygen up here with the manifold pointed to the rear. I got the nearly full kick thruster and my TBH boots with two spare sets.”
“Well…” Master Chief Boldt was obviously skeptical.
“I can do another orbit or two if we have to. We still have half-a-day before night sets over Houston.”
“Tiger, this is Houston Flight Control. I need a complete inventory of what you have up there. SWIC Flight Control, give me the mass and dimension parameters for the items on Tiger’s inventory.”
My part was easy. “The pallet with a partially used kick thruster; four oxygen tanks, just an RCH under six-hundred-eighty atmospheres; the TBH boots I’m wearing and two fully charged extra pairs; my spacesuit with fully charged pack; the Gryphon-10 with fully charged thruster.” I also listed the hand tools Senior Chief Baxter had attached to the pallet.
“Houston…” It was the Master Chief. “I’m calling you on a secure line.”
I knew what this was all about. NASA is a sieve when it comes to classified material, and Gryphon-10 carried a classification above Top Secret. Capt. Nelson would be bending some ears at NASA to ensure the confidentiality of our project.
At SWIC headquarters, all available personnel assembled in the North Island hanger. They had one purpose, one goal: quickly create a mockup of my pallet and link it to NASA by holocam. Our best and NASA’s best people would be working with the mockup to find a real-time solution to my predicament.
It took them a bit over a half-hour. They uploaded instructions for Mother and walked me through my part of the operation.
I shifted my oxygen backup to the outside right tank. I modified the oxygen manifold so that by opening just one valve, 680 atm of oxygen would provide thrust to the rear of the pallet, and I attached a stiff wire to the valve handle that reached to my left-hand location outside the carapace. I replaced my TBH boots with a fresh pair and prepared to angle myself with my feet pointing in a direction specified by Mother, varying the angle in real-time as she directed. The combined team decided not to employ the kick thruster because I would need it for deorbiting. They decided not to use the Gryphon-10’s thruster, but to hold it in reserve for my drop. That was fine by me.
To sum up, I would use thrust generated by the oxygen tanks and whatever my TBH boots would produce. As I came up to a point about 500 klicks northwest of Jarvis Island, I would initiate the “burn” to shift my orbit left by a couple of degrees. The exact time, duration, and direction of thrust would be determined in real-time by Houston’s Flight Control Computer, talking directly with Mother.
I had about a half-hour to worry about what would happen if this maneuver didn’t work. Worst-case scenario would find me ditching somewhere in the Gulf of Mexico, with rescue coming by air or sea, depending on how far from civilization I hit the drink. Did I say worst-case-scenario? Actually, I could think of several that were much worse, but being an optimist, I chose not to consider not making it as an option.
My personal time sense must have been out of kilter, because what seemed a minute or so later, Mother announced five minutes to the correction.
I remained inside the Gryphon-10, but with the seal cracked and the wire in my hand. Mother had already changed the pallet orientation, so we were pointed about 10° to the left of our direction of travel. Houston had calculated the expected amount of thrust the oxygen bottles would generate, but there were way too many variables to be certain. I was prepared to extract myself from the Gryphon-10 on a moment’s notice to add the thrust of my TBH boots to our acceleration profile.
Mother commenced her countdown: “Ten, nine… three, two, one…fire!”
I pulled the wire, and wouldn’t you know, it slipped from the valve handle without opening the valve. “Fuck it all!” I said while I slid out of the carapace. With my left hand, I grabbed a carabiner with a two-meter safety line attached to my utility belt and slapped it onto a tie-down to the left of the wingsuit while I swung back to the manifold and twisted the valve with my right. A stream of oxygen looking every bit like a small rocket exhaust shot out the hole in the manifold. The pallet shot forward, popping the Gryphon-10 pod cover open and jerking my utility belt, dragging me behind the pallet with a pull that had to be approaching one-gee.
If the acceleration damaged the Gryphon-10 hinge, I might not make it back. I tried to pull myself hand-over-hand along the safety line, but the acceleration was too strong. I had only one option: I tapped both toes. The TBH boots didn’t cancel out the acceleration, but they gave me enough advantage to do the hand-over-hand thing. Even so, it took me several seconds. When I got to the pod cover, I tapped my toes to shut down the jets, wrapped a loop of safety line over the open upper end, pulled it down, and cinched it to a tie-down on the other side. Then I held on for the duration.
Finally, Mother ordered, “Secure the burn.”
I knew what she meant and didn’t argue her terminology. Without letting the safety line go, I reached back and shut the valve. The stream of oxygen dissipated, and everything seemed to return to normal. I unwrapped the safety line from the pod cover and carefully exercised the hinge. So far as I could tell, there was no damage.
As I removed and stowed the safety line, I queried: “What’s the status, Master Chief? Did we make it, or am I going to tread water in the Gulf?”
“This is Houston Flight Control, Tiger. We do not fully understand your Gryphon-10 parameters, but your new orbit passes directly over Trinity Bay.”
“That’s a go,” Master Chief Boldt said without formally identifying himself. “By damn, that’s a go!”
Figure 8—Orbital paths as they pass over the U.S. and Mexico of the Original Orbit, the Resulting Orbit after the accident, and the Final Orbit following the correction.
Figure 9—Orbital paths from Kinshasa to Australia of the Original Orbit, the Resulting Orbit after the accident, and the Final Orbit following the correction.
Figure 10—Orbital paths over the Pacific of the Original Orbit, the Resulting Orbit after the accident, and the Final Orbit following the correction over the Pacific.
LEO—MANNED DROP
The first thing Mother did was rotate the pallet 180° with the launch pouch gyro while I secured myself into the Gryphon-10. This was the real thing. Once Mother initiated the deorbiting burn, there was no turning back. My heads-up display told me I was 400 klicks off Baja California. I knew the burn would commence right around 200 klicks—I had about thirty seconds.
“Godspeed!” Master Chief Boldt said as Mother initiated the burn twenty-eight seconds later.
After the two longest minutes of my life, Mother cut the kick thruster and rotated everything back, so I was pointed in my direction of travel. I felt a sharp jolt.
“Pallet separation,” Mother announced. “Forward velocity six-eight-hundred meters-per-second.”
I think I may have briefly seen the pallet fall away, but Gryphon-10 was heading toward the horizon at 6,800 m/sec while accelerating toward the ocean at 9.8 m/sec2. Fat chance I actually saw it. Mother had set a timer when she separated the pallet. The digits flashed at the right side of my display. At the two-minute mark, my display told me Copper Canyon was sixty klicks below—Barranca del Cobre—in Chihuahua, Mexico. I had been there a couple of times, even wingsuited from the balcony of the Divisadero Hotel. It took me three days to get back to the ridge. But right now, things were happening too fast, and I didn’t have time for reminiscing or sightseeing.
As I approached the 150-second mark at forty klicks, Gryphon-10 began to grab atmosphere, and things started to heat up. The Master Chief said, “Talk to me, Tiger!”
“Suit’s warming up…I’ll continue a few seconds more…”
At 160 seconds, I said, “Now, Mother!”
Mother had already gimbled the rocket nozzle to push the stern down and adjusted the wing torque controls to optimize my return to space. I felt weight return as I rocketed upward. Then Mother cut the burn and announced, “Forward velocity five-zero-eight-five meters-per-second, net forward transfer nine-two-one kilometers.”
I watched the timer reset as Mother said, “Vertical motion zero on my mark…Mark!”
Although Mach numbers don’t really matter at this altitude, we started out at Mach 20, and as we began to grab air sixty-four klicks above Copper Canyon, we were still near Mach 18 and frigging hot. When Mother fired the rocket at forty klicks and made slight adjustments to Gryphon-10’s control surfaces, the wingsuit headed back out of the atmosphere, but 1,500 m/sec slower. We were down to Mach 15 as we commenced the second dip.
Other than the landscape below, I really could tell no meaningful difference between the first and second dips. We hit Mach 9 sixty-five klicks above Big Bend off to my left a bit. After we climbed back out of the atmosphere, we were down to Mach 5, and I let out a whoop.
“You okay?” Boldt wanted to know.
“Yeah! This is cool stuff. I think I could do this without Mother’s assistance. The heat tells you when to pop, and physics does everything else.”
“Roger that,” the Master Chief said, “but Mother will get you to your destination. Without her, you could end up anywhere.”
