Back to the Moon-ARC

Momentarily disoriented, Chow looked around, trying to figure out where he was. For a moment he thought he was, like in his dream, on the Moon. He then concluded that he must be at home in his bed—no, that wasn’t right, either. Now fully awake, hearing the blaring of the klaxon, he realized he was on the Orion spacecraft on his way to the Moon. He looked quickly over at Bill Stetson, who was also being jolted awake.

“Bill, what’s going on?” he asked nervously.

“I have no idea.” Stetson quickly unzipped his bag and didn’t even bother to cover himself as he floated forward to check the status boards and find out why the alarm was sounding.

Chow unzipped and joined Stetson. Just as they arrived, the radio came to life.

“Mercy I, this is Houston. We’re seeing a problem with one of your solar arrays. Are you seeing it as well?”

“Uh, checking it,” Stetson relied. “Copy that, Houston—we see it. One appears to have stopped tracking the sun.”

“That’s what telemetry is showing us, over.”

The solar arrays, mounted on the Orion near its base, provided most of the power required to run its systems. They were mounted on gimbals that allowed them to continuously track the sun so as to maintain the ability to generate a consistent amount of power. Since the Orion was moving toward the Moon while it was still orbiting the Earth, albeit on an ever-increasing altitude orbit, and since the whole spacecraft was slowly spinning to equalize the heat input from the sun in its so-called barbeque roll, the solar arrays were constantly moving to keep the sun in view.

“Batteries are kicking in,” noted Chow as he looked at the status board. With the array not pointing at the Sun, the power generated would drop, requiring the onboard batteries to come online in order to maintain the ship’s systems, including life support.

“Houston, one of the arrays appears to have seized and is not moving,” Stetson said. He looked at Chow and then back at the status screen.

Chow could see that Stetson was concerned. Without maximum power from the arrays, the ship would have to rely on batteries to make up the difference. There was enough power from the batteries to allow the craft to swing by the Moon and return to Earth—this was one of the contingencies that the Disaster Team had noted and required them to train for. The Disaster Team were the guys who looked at all the possible failures and then wrote training scenarios for the astronauts to practice and learn from. This was one of them.

The problem with letting this real-life problem be resolved as it was during training was that they would not have enough power to go into lunar orbit and land. Without landing they could not rescue the stranded Chinese taikonauts. If they followed the book, the mission would be over. They would survive, and all the Chinese would die.

Chow momentarily imagined himself as one of the Chinese taikonauts, stranded, cold, and waiting to die. It was too much like his dream, and he quickly shook himself away from the daydream and said, “Bill, we can’t let this happen. We can’t let those people die.”

“Damn right we can’t. But right now I sure don’t know what we can do about it. While I come up with something, let’s run the drill.”

“Makes sense to me,” Tony agreed.

“Houston. We’re going to power down the array-control system and restart. I’m pulling up the reboot procedure now. Do you concur?”

“We concur. Reboot will take approximately twenty minutes. We’ll be running the simulations in parallel. If we come up with something you need to know, we’ll be in touch.”

“Roger that. Mercy I out.” With that, Stetson began reviewing the manual restart procedure for the solar-array pointing system.

Chow hadn’t trained for this, so he decided it would be best to step back—float back, as it were—and let Bill do his job. He went to the window and looked out into space. As the Orion spun, he caught sight of the Earth, which was still, by far, the largest object in view, and only fleeting glimpses of the Moon. He took a deep breath and waited.

Twenty minutes later, Chow watched Stetson complete the sequence that would completely power down the solar-array pointing system and then restart it. Anyone familiar with computers would have been in agreement with what he was trying to do—reboot.

Chow heard nothing to indicate that the reboot sequence was complete. He only heard his own breathing, some mumbled curses from Stetson, and a few status requests from the radio. He halfway expected to hear the sound of a large machine grinding to a halt and then restarting. Instead, there was just the silence of the crew compartment and the recirculating fans.

“Damn it!” Stetson said, pounding his fist against the console. The reacting force started him spinning in the opposite direction. He quickly stabilized himself with his other hand and planted a foot against his couch to hold him still. “Houston, the reboot is complete. No change. The array is not moving.”

No sooner had those words left Stetson’s lips than Chow’s heart sank.

“We show the same on our boards down here, Bill. We’re still looking at options.”

Stetson pushed back from the console and floated to where Chow was perched.

“Tony, I have an idea. What if the gimbal just needs a good kick to get it moving again?”

“EVA?”

“Yes. I think I’m going to suit up, go out, and give it a kick. We’ve got to get it moving.”

Stetson had that look that Tony recognized so well. It was that look that intimidated almost everyone who came into his presence. It was the get out of my way, I have something important to do look. And Chow didn’t feel like getting in his way. He replied to his commander and friend, “I’ll get the procedure pulled up, and then we’ll get in our suits.” Both men had to wear their suits, because the Orion didn’t have an airlock. When the door opened to the vacuum of space, all the air in the crew cabin would vent. That meant that