The thrusters fired, rolling and pitching the ship over to the upside-down-and-backward flight configuration. The ship jostled a bit and then settled down as the thrusters halted the ship in just the right position so that the occupants could get a really good view of the Earth from their side and overhead windows.
Only then did Gesling have time to check on his passengers’ physical status. He glanced to his side at the cabin view screen and pretty much saw what he expected. Thibodeau had opened his visor and was puking his guts out into the low-pressure barf bag attached to his seat. The low-airflow suction attached to the bottom of the bag kept the liquid from floating around the cabin as the system pulled it into the onboard sewage tank.
Maquita Singer and Sharik Mbanta were both green at the gills, and hearing Thibodeau lose his lunch was about to send them over the edge also. Space sickness was very common, and almost everyone going into space experienced it. There was no good reason for one person to get sick and another not. It just happened. Gesling was pleased that Thibodeau was among those afflicted.
Bridget Wells and the stuffy Dr. Graves were unaffected. They glanced somewhat nervously at their stricken colleagues and then promptly looked back out the windows.
Gesling assessed the urgency of the situation and decided that it wasn’t too bad. Their training had prepared them for space sickness, and it appeared that they had paid attention to that lesson.
“Matt, Sharik, and Maquita, I would recommend you do your best to reset your inner ear with the exercise we trained on. If you need meds, let me know.” Paul did his job. He looked at the five-sectioned monitor reporting on each of the crew members. Those who were sick began shaking their heads madly, to reset the balance system in their inner ears. Astronauts had learned that trick from watching cats fall out of trees—or at least that was the story Paul had heard. “We’re going around the horn. If you can make it, I want a verbal and a thumbs-up.”
“Matt?”
“Uhm, good,
“Maquita?”
“Good.” She gave a thumbs-up and seemed to be locking her jaws to keep from being sick again.
“Sharik?”
“A-OK,” he got out before having to cover with the barf bag again. He did manage a thumbs-up.
“Bridget?”
“A-OK, Paul.” Paul smiled as she gave her thumbs-up. The woman was a trooper.
“John?”
“A-OK, Paul.”
“Alright, good. Bridget, you can start bringing the telescope online at your leisure,” Paul told the occupant of seat 2B. After all, running the telescope was her job.
“Roger that, Paul. Bringing the ISR package online.” Paul could see the icon for the system turn from red to green and could tell that it was being handled.
A few hours later, Thibodeau was still recovering while Wells and Graves were busily eating a snack and looking at the really awesome imagery coming through the telescope system as well as looking out the windows. Singer and Mbanta were drinking and playing with their water. Without gravity, any spilled water formed nearly perfect spheres and floated like little planets around those who were attempting to drink. Any of the foods or liquids not captured by the crew would hopefully be filtered and captured with the air-handling system. Drops of water or foodstuff might prove a problem if they were to seep into some of the ship’s critical circuitry, but the ship was designed with sealed components to prevent just that from happening.
One by one the crew unstrapped and began bouncing around the cabin from wall to wall, chasing food globules and generally enjoying their weightlessness. For the most part the nausea had subsided—for the most part. Thibodeau still looked a little pale around the edges. To Gesling and the ground crew, who were watching the antics in the passenger cabin on closed-circuit television, they looked like a bunch of kids on the playground. But Paul had to admit that he had done the exact same thing on his first mission into microgravity. In fact, as far as he could tell, all the astronauts throughout history had done similar antics.
Paul believed they were all thoroughly enjoying their ride and was planning to remark to Childers that their customers were definitely getting their money’s worth and the trip to the Moon hadn’t yet even begun.
“Alright, everyone, strap in and prepare for docking with the refueling station.” Paul waited until all the crew safety-restraint icons showed locked and in place before he toggled the automated docking-alignment thrusters routine. The thrusters fired and reoriented the ship so that it was still flying upside down, but now nose first.
“Extending refueling probe,” he said as he tapped the controls. The probe extended from just under the nose of the little spacecraft to a point about twenty feet out in front of it.
“Control, this is
“Roger that, Paul. Telemetry tracking is good.”
“Cycling the pumps and prop-tankage cryo.”
“All systems look good to us, Paul. We show one thousand feet.”
“Roger that, Control. Nine hundred seventy feet and closing. Still in the crosshairs.” Paul gently placed his hand around the stick and prepared for the hand-off of the automated system’s control of the ship’s flight control. The smaller microthrusters on the end of the flexible probe tube were still on auto. The pilot would roughly guide the ship into the “basket” or “funnel” of the drogue on the refueling spacecraft. But the sensors would maneuver the end of the probe for precise corrections.
“
“Roger that,
“Contact in ten seconds.” Paul could feel sweat beading on his forehead, but he didn’t have time to wipe it away. He maintained his focus as he guided the little proboscis into the refueling portal. Boom and drogue was how pilots had refueled aircraft for decades, and Paul had thousands of hours of practice in aircraft and several thousand hours in the simulator. He’d also actually docked with the refueling tank once during the orbital test flight. It was all
