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

seven gather in stunned silence at the mid-deck and join hands, forming a circle of despair and hope. A live audio feed of Atlantis’s launch plays from a miniature pair of speakers, words fashioned from their collective language into a final promise of hope.

Fourteen, thirteen, twelve, eleven. Heart rates up to speed. Ten, nine, eight, seven, six. The main engines awake violently from slumber. Lots of creaking and shaking, bigger movements. One-million-plus pounds of thrust struggle against hold-down posts. Four, three, two, one. The hold-down bolts blow, the boosters light and 6-million more pounds of thrust join the fight against gravity.

Sharp acceleration, g-loads building, arms and legs so very heavy.

External tank foam insulation heats, blisters, loosens, falls.

Chapter 48

ATLANTIS ROARED UP, clearing the launch tower in an instant, seemingly pushed skyward by a growing, billowing, brilliant white cotton plume.

NASA Announcer: Houston now controlling the flight of Atlantis, everything looking good as she clears the tower…

“Don’t you shed you son of a bitch,” Brown yelled into the crowded room, apparently unable or unwilling to edit his sentiment. He stood in front of a large viewing screen intently watching the image of the external tank.

His whole team was watching.

Three different camera angles of the launch played on the various monitors: long range, short range and a view looking down from the external tank. Regardless of the view, all eyes were focused on the external fuel tank. Atlantis was flying with essentially the same type of tank Columbia had used—same foam type, same foam application process and same potential foam problems.

The various NASA engineering departments and managers still had not finished debating the logic of launching Atlantis and exposing her and her crew to the possibility of the same problems experienced by Columbia.

The photo guys said nothing to each other as they watched the live launch video. The room was silent except for the voice of Mike Sinter, NASA’s launch announcer, piped in on the overhead speakers.

Brown’s engineers knew the first two to three minutes were most critical in terms of foam loss. Along the lower edge of their monitors, time code numbers raced, counting elapsed time in hundredths of a second, but no one in the room dared look down at them. No one dared look away from the external tank. Their attention would have to stay focused on the external tank until after solid rocket booster separation, which was expected at just over two minutes mission elapsed time (MET).

Instead, they waited anxiously for Sinter’s announcements of launch milestones. Everyone was keenly aware that Challenger’s problems began less than a second after launch, and that Columbia’s came at launch-plus-eighty-one-point-nine seconds.

Mission Control: Atlantis, Houston, you’re go for roll program.

Avery: Roger, roll.

NASA Announcer: Atlantis now rolling over for a thirty-nine-degree inclination to orbit in order to match Columbia’s position in space. The shuttle is now positioned heads-down wings level for the eight-and-a-half minutes needed to reach orbit.

Brown struggled to keep his mouth shut. His vision was not as acute as it once was, but he was certain he saw streaks, wayward pieces of foam looking for trouble. He desperately wanted a status report from his engineers. He wanted to know if they’d seen anything, any signs of falling debris—but he knew they needed to concentrate. He began pacing, watching the monitor and listening to Sinter.

NASA Announcer: Thirty-one seconds into the flight. The three main engines now being throttled back to seventy-two percent of available thrust, reducing the aerodynamic load on the shuttle as it breaks through the sound barrier.

Atlantis two-and-a-half nautical miles downrange and five miles high. The three main engines are now being throttled back up to one-hundred-four percent of available thrust.

Cap Com: Atlantis, Houston you’re go at throttle up.

Avery: Roger, go at throttle up.

NASA Announcer: The throttle-up call confirmed by Commander Dana Avery, who’s joined on the flight deck by Pilot Edward Rivas, Mission Specialist Shane Garrett and Mission Specialist Terry Mullen. Down on the mid-deck, seven empty seats await the Columbia crew. One-minute-thirty-five seconds into the flight, Atlantis is now eleven nautical miles downrange, fourteen miles high, traveling at a velocity of nineteen hundred miles per hour. About forty seconds away from Solid Rocket Booster separation—three good main engines, three good fuel cells, three good auxiliary power units. Velocity nearly twenty-five-hundred miles per hour. Twenty-five seconds from solid rocket booster separation.

The solid rocket boosters were nearly spent. Each SRB had three pressure transducers located in the solid-rocket motor chamber. The transducers would not activate until the head-end pressure of both SRBs dropped to 50 psi, when they would automatically initiate the separation sequence. Computers onboard Atlantis held yaw attitude constant for four seconds while SRB thrust dropped below 60,000 pounds.

Then came the ordinance firing command.

At the forward SRB attachment, a single bolt with a detonator at each end connected the SRB to the external tank. The aft end of the SRB was connected to the external tank by three struts, all containing similar bolts with detonators at each end. Four small booster-separation solid-rocket motors were fitted to each end of the SRB. When detonated, they would move the SRB safely away from the external tank.

In a coordinated fashion, the SRB mounting bolts blew and the booster-separation motors ignited by firing pressure cartridges into confined-detonation fuse manifolds.

The whole process executed in less than 30 milliseconds.

Following detonation, each SRB gracefully veered away from Atlantis, rapidly falling behind, while Atlantis and the external fuel tank roared on to orbit. Shortly thereafter, a drogue chute located in the forward end of each booster opened, stabilizing SRB descent. Main chute deployment followed, slowing the SRBs to a rate of 75 feet per second. SRB splashdown occurred in the Atlantic Ocean 124 miles downrange from the Kennedy Space Center.

Chapter 49

Kennedy Space Center, Florida