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

or whatever it is that astronauts do when they get home from being away in space.

“But of course that’s not how it’s gone at all, so here you are now, heading into flight-day seventeen and you find yourself, instead, only halfway through your mission. And to top it off, you don’t know if you are going to live or die. NASA officials, through the various media channels, have made it patently clear over the past ten days or so that it will be one way or the other, with no shades of gray. They live or they die. I don’t mean to be melodramatic here. I’m simply trying to covey how grim the astronauts’ situation really is.

“So imagine yourself helpless in your spacecraft. All the training you’ve endured as an astronaut means little in terms of your being able to help yourself. You hope and pray NASA has carefully screened your fellow crewmates and that no one on board loses it. Hell, you hope you don’t lose it. So you’re forced to wait. You are expected to sleep extra hours and you haven’t exercised in weeks, all in the name of minimizing your CO2 production.

“Your critical astronaut’s mind, the one that was so gifted at math and engineering and everything to do with science, is gasping for something to work with, starved by the lack of information. You have so many questions. It’s your fundamental nature. But you’re an astronaut, and so from NASA’s perspective, you’re on a need-to-know basis.

“There’s nowhere you can go to be alone with your thoughts, except maybe your minuscule sleep compartment, but you’re concerned about what your fellow astronauts will think if you crawl in there during the day.

“The artificial lighting throughout the crew compartments is bleak, anemic, and grim even. In a given ninety-minute period, bright natural light spills into the cabin through too few windows for a precious sixty minutes. And then you wait thirty minutes more until the next cycle, your mood cycling with the sun.

“Looking out the window used to be a magnificent experience, bright colorful images of Earth turning in the window. Every time you looked out you did your best to identify geographic landmasses. Earth begged for your attention. But now somehow it has become the enemy, a relentless reminder of a place to which you may never return.

“Mealtime too has grown into a solemn occasion. Oh, there’s some small talk, with everyone trying to be optimistic about the rescue, but it’s obvious what’s on everyone’s mind.

“It’s a little like being in solitary confinement, and you’ve been told that at the end of thirty days one of two things will happen: You’ll hear either the hiss of poison gas seeping into your cell, or the thud of the cell door’s locking bolt sliding back, signaling your freedom.”

Randall allowed several seconds of dead air to pass.

“So, I want to hear your thoughts on this. What goes through your mind as you wait for rescue, or possibly death?

“One-eight-hundred seven-nine-zero WSPX. Jason on a cell phone, you’re first up.”

“Hey Craig, thanks for taking my call, great topic. Well, I can tell you, I’m married, I mean I have a wife and kids, two boys actually, and I can’t imagine what my wife would be going through if it were me up there in Columbia.”

“Can’t imagine being a spouse of one of the astronauts,” Randall said.

“That would be awful. Do we know what communication abilities they have up there? I mean, are these astronauts going to make videos that NASA can send to their families, like a final farewell or something, you know in case they don’t make it back?”

“Well, I don’t know for sure but I’d imagine the astronauts have the ability to downlink videos to their families. We know they have e-mail capabilities and they’ve had live video communications several times during their mission so far. I guess each astronaut could go to a corner of the orbiter, into the abandoned SpaceHab module possibly or maybe up on the flight deck one at a time to videotape private messages to the families. Something to think about, thanks for the call, Jason.”

Stangley found it hard to listen without squirming in his seat. Obviously, he’d heard questions from Randall’s show that he absolutely knew the answers to. Sure he could call in, set the record straight for Randall and his audience. Because of his celebrity, Stangley would likely get moved to the front of the caller queue. But instead of calling in or talking back to the radio, he played along with Randall’s scenario, letting his imagination run.

“Samantha, you’re on WSPX.”

“Hi, Craig, how are you?”

“I’m fine this evening, thanks. What’s on your mind?”

“Well, I just wanted to know. This may seem like a dumb question, but I mean aren’t the astronauts trained to handle problems, I mean when stuff goes wrong up there? They get special psychological training for just this sort of thing, right?”

“Well, they’re trained to handle problems, NASA calls them contingencies, but I can assure you none of them signed up for this, not this kind of problem, that’s for sure. I know that in Special Forces training, for example, elite soldiers are put through a series of very difficult training operations that may include periods of starvation, prolonged fatigue and sleep deprivation. I’m not that familiar with the details of astronaut training and what sort of tests like this that they may be exposed to. Maybe someone can call in and answer that for us.”

“But it’s their job. They’re astronauts.”

“Well, sure it’s their job, Samantha, but really…”

“Well, I’m just saying they shouldn’t be too surprised that something went wrong with their spaceship, ya know?”

“So, Samantha, you’re saying that the astronauts should just suck it up and not act too surprised to find themselves in a predicament that no other group of astronauts has ever had to endure? You do realize this rescue scenario is a first in the history of manned spaceflight? Samantha? Sam… Well, I guess she hung