When Gesling appeared in the doorway, the crowd erupted into applause. And the applause was not limited to those in the VIP area. The throngs of people outside the gates that had turned out for the launch six days ago were back; they too clapped and cheered. And more than a few people watching on television did so as well.
Gesling, somewhat taken aback by the whole spectacle, raised a hesitant arm and waved back to the crowd. With a little more confidence in his land legs than the passengers who had exited before him, he made his way down the stairs and received an approving handshake and welcome from Childers when he arrived there.
“Well done, Paul,” Gary exclaimed as he pumped his hand and patted him on the shoulder. “Well done!”
“Thanks” was all Paul could think of to say as he returned the handshake and smiled in Gary’s general direction.
“Smile for the people, Paul. This is our payday.”
“I knew you would do it!” Caroline O’Conner shouted and cheered as she brushed past Childers and threw her arms around Gesling, greeting him with a more than collegial “Welcome home, Paul.” There wasn’t time for the close contact to continue, but it was clear to all that neither O’Conner nor Gesling was quite ready for it to end.
“Payday? We lost money on this flight,” Paul said under his breath to Childers.
“Did we, Paul? I’m not so sure.” While the flight in particular lost money, Childers considered it an “investment.” The bookings on the next ten flights were firm, and by number eight he would be in the black. And he’d been thinking about the rescue mission. He’d heard one of the talking-head science experts on the news claim that all of the American and Chinese astronauts could reenter in the Orion space capsule and that they would likely be dropped off at the ISS. The wheels were turning in his dollars-oriented brain. Of course, his company could use the write-off provided by the first seven flights as “losses” if they needed to. And of course they would do that. With good accountants, losses could be a good thing. But Gary liked making money and planned on doing just that.
Chapter 21
Astronauts Bill Stetson and Anthony Chow were swiftly and accurately stepping through procedures and checking off items on their checklists. Their Orion space capsule sat roughly thirty stories atop more than a million pounds of highly explosive ammonium perchlorate composite propellant and another fairly large volume of liquid oxygen and liquid hydrogen. If things were to go awry, there would be plenty of fuel for that fire. But Bill and Tony were far too busy to ponder the ramifications of such an unlikely event when the solid rocket motors of the Ares I first stage ignited. Unlike the space shuttle, which sat lazily on the launch pad for the first few seconds after igniting its main engines, the Ares I leapt off the pad, the resulting acceleration pushing the two men solidly into their couches with more force than that experienced on any other human-rated rocket.
Selected for safety and not comfort, using solid rocket motors for a rocket carrying people had been controversial from the beginning. Many astronauts, including Stetson, had been skeptical. Unlike a liquid-fueled rocket, a solid-fueled rocket could not be shut off once lit. A solid rocket motor would burn until it ran out of fuel. And it was precisely because of this that the Von Braun team had designed the Saturn V rocket with liquid-fueled engines and refused to use solid rocket motors. But, being beholden to data, Stetson eventually became a fan of the approach when he reviewed the reports showing that solid rocket motors failed far less often than their liquid motor counterparts.
“T minus four minutes and holding.” The voice of the launch director sounded deadpan and emotionless over the intercom, on television, radios, and inside Bill’s helmet speakers. “This is a scheduled twenty-minute built-in hold. The countdown clock will resume in nineteen minutes and forty-seven seconds from now.”
“Getting close, Tony!” Bill couldn’t hide his excitement. “Put your game face on, buddy.”
“Damn close, and put me in coach!” Tony replied then keyed the com after looking at his checklist. “Launch control, we are starting the interior launch cameras and telemetry recorders.”
“Roger that,
“Control.” Stetson added his checklist items to the conversation. “The launch computer is showing green and is configured for launch.” Bill thought about the action taking place back in the launch control center or LCC. The director was probably polling the various console drivers to see if they were ready to continue with the launch. Were Bill a fly on the wall, he would have heard a query of “Launch Authority Team go, no-go?” Which would usually be followed by “Go for launch.” And then “Guidance and Control go, no-go?” “Go for launch!” And the process would continue through all the Ares 1 launch systems until the launch director was assured that, indeed, the Ares 1 launch vehicle was cleared to leave Earth.
“Launch control shows first-stage igniter heater power removed.
“Uh, roger that, launch control. We show green light on first-stage igniter heater breakers,” Stetson replied. Bill and Tony responded to what seemed like an endless list of items to be checked until the twenty-minute hold was complete. Finally, the word was given.
“This is launch control. We have final launch status verification and are now resuming the countdown. Start the clock now at T minus four minutes and counting.”
“Roger that, control.
“Let’s go, let’s go!” Tony replied.
“T minus one minute and forty seconds. We show the rocket’s flight-control system is enabled for launch.
“Flight-control system is green.” Tony tapped the green icon on his computer screen to verify. At that moment the flight-control system software switched the entire flight-control system from land power over to internal rocket systems power and started counting off seconds to ignition.
“T minus one minute and counting.”
“We ready, Tony?”
