Voyage. Stephen Baxter

taken nine Saturn VB launches so far to put the Ares complex into orbit. Today’s will be the tenth. So nesting isn’t so good any more.

      T minus four minutes and counting. As a preparation for main engine ignition, the fuel valve heaters have been turned on. T minus three minutes fifty-four seconds and counting. The final fuel purge on the main engines has been started. That’s the vapor you can see there, billowing across the launch pad, away from the Saturn booster.

      The liquid oxygen replenish system has been turned off, so we can pressurize the tanks for the launch.

      The wind is below ten knots, and we have a thin cloud layer. That’s pretty nearly perfect launch weather, well within mission rules.

      It is typically hot, humid Florida weather here, on this historic day, Thursday March 21, 1985.

      T minus three minutes forty seconds and counting.

      I am told that there are an estimated one million here with us today, the largest turnout for a launch since Apollo 11. Welcome to all of you. You might like to know that among the celebrities watching the launch today in the VIP enclosure are Apollo 11 astronauts Neil Armstrong, Joe Muldoon and Michael Collins, cosmonaut Vladimir Viktorenko, along with Liza Minnelli, Clint Eastwood, Steven Spielberg, George Lucas, William Shatner, sci fi authors Arthur C. Clarke, Ray Bradbury and Isaac Asimov, and singer John Denver. We’re sure you aren’t going to be disappointed.

      T minus three minutes twenty seconds and counting. Ares is now on internal power.

      Coming up on T minus three minutes.

      T minus three minutes and counting.

      The engine gimbal check is underway, to ensure that the engines are moving freely, ready for flight control.

      T minus two minutes fifty-two seconds. The liquid oxygen valves on both stages have been closed and pressurization of fuel and oxidizer tanks has begun.

      T minus two minutes twenty-five seconds and counting. The liquid oxygen tanks are now at flight pressure.

      Coming up on two minutes away from launch.

      T minus two minutes mark, and counting. Two minutes from launch.

      The liquid hydrogen vent valves have been closed and the hydrogen tanks’ flight pressurization is underway.

      T minus one minute fifty seconds and counting. No holds so far.

       Capcom John Young has just said, ‘Smooth ride, baby,’ to astronauts Phil Stone, Ralph Gershon and Natalie York. Mission Commander Stone has replied, ‘Thank you very much, we know it will be a good flight.’

      T minus one minute thirty-five seconds and counting.

      T minus one minute ten seconds and counting. All liquid hydrogen tanks are at flight pressure.

      T minus one minute, mark, and counting.

      The firing system for the sound suppression water system will be armed just a couple of seconds from now.

      The firing system has now been armed.

      T minus forty-five seconds and counting.

      T minus forty seconds and counting. The development flight instrumentation recorders are on. We are still go with Ares.

       Astronaut Stone reports: ‘It feels good.’

      T minus thirty seconds.

      We are just a few seconds away from switching on the redundant sequence. This is the automatic system for engine cut-off.

      T minus twenty-seven seconds and counting.

      We have gone for redundant sequence start.

      T minus twenty seconds and counting. Sound suppression system fired. Solid Rocket Boosters armed.

      T minus fifteen, fourteen, thirteen.

      T minus ten, nine, eight.

      Main engine start.

       Book 1 DECISION

       THE WHITE HOUSE WASHINGTON

      Thursday, February 13, 1969

      

      MEMORANDUM for

      

      The Vice President

      The Secretary of Defense

      The Acting Administrator; National Aeronautics and Space Administration

      The Science Adviser

      

      It is necessary for me to have in the near future a definitive recommendation on the direction which the US space program should take in the post-Apollo period. I, therefore, ask the Secretary of Defense, the Acting Administrator of NASA, and the Science Adviser each to develop proposed plans and to meet together as a Space Task Group, with the Vice President in the chair, to prepare for me a coordinated program and budget proposal. In developing your proposed plans, you may wish to seek advice from the scientific, engineering and industrial communities, from the Congress and the public.

      I would like to receive the coordinated proposal by September 1, 1969.

      Richard M. Nixon

      Handwritten addendum: Spiro, do we have to go to Mars? What options have we got? RMN.

      

       Public Papers of the Presidents of the United States: Richard M. Nixon, 1969 (Washington DC: Government Printing Office, 1969)

       Mission Elapsed Time [Day/Hr:Min:Sec] Minus 000/00:00:08

      In their orange pressure suits, York, Gershon and Stone were jammed together so close they were rubbing elbows. They were enclosed from daylight; small fluorescent floods lit up the Command Module’s cramped cabin.

      There was a powerful thump. York, startled, glanced at her crewmates.

      ‘Fuel pumps,’ Stone said.

      Now York heard a dull rumbling – like faraway thunder – a shudder that transmitted itself through the padded couch to her body.

      Hundreds of feet below York, liquid oxygen and hydrogen were rushing together, mingling in the big first stage engines’ combustion chambers.

      She could feel her heartbeat rising, clattering within her chest. Take it easy, damn it.

      A small metal model of a cosmonaut, squat and Asiatic, dangled from a chain fixed above her head. This was Boris, the gift from Vlad Viktorenko. The toy swung back and forth, its grotesque features leering at her out of a sketch of a helmet. Good luck, Bah-reess.

      The noise began, cacophonous, a steady roar. It was like being inside the mouth of some huge, bellowing giant.

      Phil Stone shouted, ‘All five at nominal. Stand by for the stretch.’

      The five liquid rocket engines of the Saturn VB booster’s first stage, the MS-IC, had ignited a full eight seconds ahead of the enhanced Saturn’s four Solid Rocket Boosters. And now came the ‘stretch,’ as the stack reached up under the pressure of that immense thrust. She could feel the ship pushing upwards, hear the groan of strained metal as the joints of the segmented solid boosters flexed.

      It was all supposed to happen this way. But still … Jesus. What a design.

      Stone