of conservation of angular momentum. Extending the solar arrays should have the same effect. It probably wouldn’t stop the spin, but it would slow it to something a little more tolerable.
“We agree with that, Bill. Go ahead and cycle the solar arrays, over.”
“Roger that, Houston. I’m making my way through the procedure now.” Bill tapped several commands, and then the graphic of the exterior view of the ship showed the solar panels extending. Bill could feel some vibrations from the gimbal motors. The lights turned green for both arrays, showing that they had been fully extended. He held up his arms. They didn’t feel as weird as they had before.
“Did it work, Bill?” Tony asked.
“Don’t know. I feel different, but we’ll have to wait until the gyro is fully back online. Another minute will tell.” So they waited.
And waited.
When the Orion completely rebooted itself and all systems were back online, the directional gyro showed that the ship was still spinning, but at about half the speed it had been before. That was a little more tolerable.
“Okay, Houston, we show that our roll rate has dropped to a constant speed. Also note that the roll thruster appears to have turned itself off during the reboot.” Bill hit the auto ACS icon and activated the automated-control system.
Several attitude-correction thrusts were initiated by the computer, and then the roll rate showed zero on the directional gyroscope. The ship had stopped spinning. And not a moment too soon, as Tony Chow was reaching for his barf bag once again.
“Houston! That worked. We’ve stopped spinning, and now I believe we are back in business. I’m setting up a full diagnostic run now to see what shape we are in. That should only take a few minutes.” Bill tapped in several key sequences and then leaned back to look out the docking windows. Earth filled the view, and it was awesome. From the look of things, Bill was guessing that they were somewhere over China at the present moment.
“Hey, everyone. Take a look out the window.” Chow, Hui, and Stetson each took a turn unbuckling and floating up to the windows and peering out at Earth—at home.
Bill watched as his home planet rotated beneath them. From the looks of the size of things, it seemed about right. He’d been in low Earth orbit many many times now and knew what it looked like. One thing didn’t seem to add up, though. If he had his bearings straight, then it appeared to him that they were flying much closer to an equatorial orbit than the orbit of the International Space Station.
“Uh, Houston, is there something else you need to tell us?”
Chapter 33
“
“I was beginning to wonder about that, Houston.” Bill replied. “So, where are we?”
“Holy crap!” Bill grabbed at his armrest with one hand to steady himself. With the other he tapped at the attitude-control diagnostics and the directional-gyro screen. “Houston, we’ve got something going on here. We’re rocking and rolling like crazy, and the ACS is trying to keep up with it.”
“
“Roger that, Houston. The ACS is firing almost continuously now.” Bill considered taking control, but he had no idea what the ship was doing and why the computer felt it needed the ACS control thrusters to fire. Something was pushing them. “Tony, can you see anything out your window? I’ve got nothing on this side.”
“Bill! There’s something spewing sparkly stuff in a jet out the side over here.” Tony sounded upset.
“Alright. Take it easy, Tony.” Bill didn’t like the sound of that. It was never a good idea to be spewing anything out of the ship if you didn’t have to. “Houston, we’ve got something leaking out of the capsule near the starboard side up at the nose.” He didn’t have to remind anybody that that was the location where Tony had taken up target practice before the aerocapture. That big noise they heard during the capture process might have been something coming loose up there.
“Copy that,
“Houston, be advised that the P & P PROP warning light is not resetting. Also, it looks like we’re gonna run out of fuel in the ACS thrusters if we don’t do something soon.” Bill was getting concerned. They were off their orbit and running out of fuel. They didn’t die on the Moon, or on the way back to Earth orbit, and he hoped they wouldn’t get stranded in Earth orbit just to die before they could get back to the space station. Home was just a few hundred miles beneath them. Somehow, they had to survive long enough to cover those last few hundred miles. Those last ones were just as deadly as the first half million.
“Sorry,
“Roger that, Houston.” Bill didn’t like it. Houston always came up with something to at least try. “Tony. We’re on our own. We’ve got to fix this.”
“Bill, we don’t even know what is wrong.”
