Launch on Need by Daniel Guiteras (small books to read txt) 📗

were to have been shared by the three AEMs during the 16-day mission. If the astronauts hoped to be rescued, hoped to survive in space long enough for NASA to ready Atlantis, they would need every canister they could get. Then they needed to stretch Columbia’s resources to their absolute limits.

Knowing all this, Jan still had left the AEMs until last. Before this very moment, she hadn’t been ready to face the reality of the task—and what it implied about her own situation.

From a position midway fore and aft in SpaceHab, Jan looked up from her clipboard at the forward bulkhead; her toes extended up into the foot loops, counteracting the movements of her torso. Her checklist showed all boxes had been checked, all except for the AEMs.

It was time.

Jan had already communicated with NASA’s chief veterinarian. He had reviewed the procedure with her, talked her through the details. She knew what to do; she just did not want to do it.

She velcroed her clipboard to her pants and made her way to SpaceHab’s forward bulkhead, then again blindly felt for a pair of toe loops to hold her in place. At waist height and in the middle of the bulkhead was the tunnel opening that led to Columbia’s middeck. Above the tunnel opening and on the starboard side of the bulkhead were the three AEMs, each neatly fitted into a standard-dimension stowage locker.

The four sides and bottom of each AEM were constructed from aluminum. Two-thirds of the top panel consisted of a clear Lexan window to facilitate daily visual health checks of the specimen. The modules measured 17 inches wide, 20 inches deep, and just less than 10 inches in height.

The rats had been brought aboard Columbia well before liftoff at about T-minus-31 hours. Each AEM was placed in its assigned SpaceHab stowage locker by a closeout team member at the launch pad. Before liftoff, the rats milled about their cages in normal gravity, with a seemingly unending banquet of food and water.

Then suddenly, as Columbia took flight, their tiny legs collapsed like overloaded leaf springs. Each rat’s short tiny legs struggled to hold up their growing body weight—two-and-a-half times normal. Their bellies were plastered to the cage fronts. Then as Columbia began its planned roll program, turning upside down relative to Earth, the rats were held tight against the AEMs Lexan windows. This lasted about eight minutes, and then, almost as suddenly, the 13 male rats found themselves floating, swimming in air, weightless in their highly specialized cages.

Before sliding the AEMs out from their stowage lockers, Jan first removed a Velcro-attached cover from the front of each AEM. The cover, made from Nomax fabric, served as a muffler from the noise of the four radial-blower fans at the front of each module.

Next, she turned the safety-release latch on the first AEM, and the 55-pound module slid out easily with a single hand, right out to its stops. Through the window, she saw five male albino Fischer 344 Specific Pathogen-Free rats clambering for purchase, their front legs dog-paddling in desperate attempts at propulsion.

Two incandescent bulbs, shielded from contact with the rats and their excrement, burned brightly in the AEM, providing the “light” in the 12-hour light/dark cycle. Ten tiny rubies squinted back at her as light from SpaceHab’s general lighting poured in through the Lexan window.

At the center of the cage, a rat worked at getting a drink from one of the four Lixit valves attached to the water refill box. The water level was still good; Jan had added water herself earlier that morning—that is, before Mission Control first notified them about a possible debris strike. Rectangular food bars, formed from sterilized lab-formula rodent food, were attached to four vertically mounted plates inside the module. The rats had more than enough food for a 16-day mission. What about a 31-day mission?

In a few minutes, it wouldn’t matter.

The term “euthanize” was derived from the Greek term meaning “good death,” and Jan had every intention of giving the rats one. But the 13 rats could not be euthanized all at once. She would have to perform the procedure separately for each of the three AEMs.

To get started, she first located stowage locker number three, which contained the CO2 storage assemblies. She pulled the quick release pin on the first assembly and removed it from the locker. The assembly consisted of a metal cylinder insulated with Nomax and pressurized with CO2 to 852 pounds. Attached to the end of the cylinder was a pressure-relief valve, a main valve and a quick-disconnect male pipe fitting. She connected one end of the umbilical hose to the CO2 assembly and the other end to the CO2 manifold assembly on the front of the AEM.

Jan felt compelled to say something, but “Sorry, guys,” was all she could come up with. She slid the AEM back into its locker, then turned the valve handle, releasing the entire contents of the CO2 cylinder into the AEM. It took less than a minute to discharge the cylinder.

Death by asphyxiation.

Adult rats exposed to CO2 concentrations of 70 percent or more usually die in five minutes. Initially, the rats experience a nervous system depression that is combined with an anesthetic effect.

Death soon follows.

She disconnected the assembly from the AEM and stowed it back in the locker. Then she pulled the pin for the next CO2 assembly and repeated the procedure on the other two AEMs.

Jan’s work was complete. She lowered herself into the tunnel partway, then turned back to look into SpaceHab. It was dark, quiet—and dead.

It was then that the events of the past two days really sank in for her. At first, the ramifications of a hole in the wing had not registered. Well, yeah, there’s a hole in the wing, but you have a workaround for us, right?

If all the NASA heroics and dedicated manpower were not successful—if Atlantis could not be launched, if the rescue attempt failed—she would suffer the same fate as the