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

hues of blue. As peaceful as he might have seemed to anyone observing him, his motionless crescent form served as a clever disguise for someone who was actually locked deep inside a terrible nightmare. He tried to thrash his arms and legs and free himself from the relentless volley of terrifying images that had left him in a defenseless paralytic state. The top sheet, soaked with perspiration, clung to Stangley’s now-fetal shape like the embalming wrap of an Egyptian mummy. The images kept coming.

The huge metal scaffold-like apparatus of launch pad 39A, the rotating service structure, had been moved back into the servicing position, placing Atlantis in a protective cocoon, allowing ground crews access to Atlantis’s vital parts. A series of electrical sensors had failed, possibly due to some step in processing that was missed, or skipped, or botched—no one knew for sure. But it was clear she wouldn’t fly today or tomorrow, and certainly not before life ran out aboard Columbia.

For the crew of Columbia, Atlantis simply wasn’t coming.

The inevitable painful decision was finally made—NASA was going to bring Columbia in—take its chances—and hope and pray for the best possible outcome. The astronauts had made it perfectly clear to Mission Control that they were not waiting up in space for the end to come.

Any chance of repairing the hole in the wing was now hopelessly overdue. STS-107’s mission management team listened to pleas by engineers—last-ditch attempts to better prepare Columbia for what was certain to be a tumbling inferno on reentry—but the team quickly came to the conclusion that the crew had neither the physical nor the psychological resources left to endure a two-man, six-plus-hour, unrehearsed spacewalk.

There had been talk of jettisoning everything possible from Columbia’s payload bay to lighten her for reentry. Another idea had involved repairing Columbia’s wing by carefully packing the hole with materials that could survive reentry, namely heat-resistant tiles harvested from less-vulnerable areas of the orbiter’s skin. But a spacewalk to perform those objectives had also been deemed too difficult for the wrung-out crew of Columbia. It would be asking far too much.

These combined procedures, the engineers had argued, might buy the crew extra time. Orbiter structural integrity was needed at least until reentry speed was subsonic and altitude was below 35,000 feet; if they could make that, then there was a chance the crew could survive a bailout.

The STS-107 mission management team was having none of those heroics.

But what they did hope to do was feather Columbia in, place her on a meandering flight path of left-and-right hand banks and bleed off some speed. They would also reduce her drag profile from the normal 45 degrees to 40 degrees, lessening Columbia’s atmospheric angle of attack. They hoped the maneuvers would reduce her friction and keep the wing from burning up. No one knew if these measures would do anything at all to improve the crew’s chances for survival.

“What about… rescue? What about… Atlantis?” Stangley muttered in poorly formed words while turning to his left side, his hand brushing in gross movements about his face as if waving away a swarm of gnats. He did not wake, but seemed somewhat aware of the cold air attack. The temperature in his hotel room was now in the low 60s. Reflexively, he pulled the blankets up over his head.

More images.

From an altitude of 185 nautical miles, flying upside down and tail first, the commander and pilot of Columbia began their deorbit burn by firing the orbital maneuvering system engines for a total of three minutes and thirteen seconds. After the burn, Columbia was righted relative to Earth with her nose tilted up.

“Okay, this is it,” the commander said, after completing the maneuver. “God be with us!”

Columbia began falling toward Earth, belly first.

Atmospheric molecules increasingly collided with Columbia’s protective tiles and wing leading edges, friction increasing with time, and soon temperatures reached 2,500 degrees. So far, everything was normal. She was coming in as all orbiter’s had, without power, and with no way to stop the reentry process once initiated.

But superheated plasma gases quickly found Columbia’s mortal wound and exploited her weakness, cunning like a cheetah spotting the one gazelle out of 50 with the slightly irregular gait. In the harsh environment of space, Columbia was easy prey.

In response to the heat, Columbia’s thermal wing sensors spiked quickly, then went dead, melted. However, neither the crew nor Mission Control knew about the failure, since these sensors were sending their information to Columbia’s onboard modular auxiliary data system—a system that archives important data for review after landing.

Like a pelican barreling in on its prey, Columbia came scorching in over the shimmering Pacific at more than Mach 24, 300 miles west of the California coastline, and at an altitude of 240,000 feet.

The crew had no idea what was happening outside.

The internal wing components held their shape for as long as they could and then crumpled, reduced suddenly into liquid metal that scattered aft inside the wing. The aluminum wing components had little chance of surviving reentry, where wing temperatures normally reached 2,800 degrees.

Above California, Columbia’s luminescent reentry arc was punctuated with bright flashes of light, a telltale sign portions of her wing were being liberated. The flashes continued at random intervals as Columbia entered Nevada air space, then Utah, Arizona and New Mexico.

She was still flying, but the sensors clearly indicated things were not going well. Four left-wing hydraulic return temperature sensors had gone dead within seconds of each other. Then the talk-back sensors that indicated the main-and-nose landing gear positions went dead.

The tire pressure sensors failed next. Engineers cringed at the thought of the two left main landing gear tires blowing out inside their wheel well—with forces on par with two bombs detonating inside Columbia’s left wing.

Super-heated plasma gases danced over the wing edges, lighting the flight deck windows for the crew in brilliant wisps of orange.

Protective tiles flying off zipper-like.

Communication ending in garbled static.

Bright cabin flashes aboard Columbia.

“Columbia, Houston, UHF comm check.”

Tumbling. Tumbling. Tumbling.

Thousands of meticulously machined