keep the COIL beam on target long enough for the laser to burn a hole in the target’s thin skin with just seconds to spare…
…and as the beam drove itself through the target, it broke apart and showered Armstrong Space Station…with a cloud of paper confetti, traveling at eighteen thousand miles per hour but causing no damage.
“Good job, Seeker,” Raydon said. Lukas safed the COIL and secured her station, then let herself go limp in zero-g, being careful to use a towel to wipe away the sweat before it floated off her skin and became both a nuisance and a hazard. “Telemetry says you had the beam on target for three-point-eight seconds. I’d say that would be enough to take down a real antisatellite weapon.”
“Thank you, sir,” Lukas said. “But I wish we could do an auto engagement one of these days so I could sit back and watch the Hydra work.”
“What fun is that?” Raydon asked with a smile. On the stationwide intercom he spoke, “All personnel, exercise target successfully destroyed in a visually acquired, manual-track engagement with the COIL. Inspect your stations for any signs of damage, secure from emergency stations, and submit postexercise reports to me as soon as possible. Thank you, everyone. Good job.”
“Midnight One to Armstrong,” Hunter Noble radioed from the XS-19 Midnight spaceplane, which had launched the target at the space station for the test. “Just want to be sure you guys were still breathing air and not space dust.”
“Successful visual-manual engagement, Boomer,” Raydon replied. “The confetti was a cute touch.”
“Thought you’d like it, General.”
Raydon switched the monitor at his station to the constant feed of telemetry he received from all of the spacecraft under his control, including the Midnight spaceplane. “Come on in to refuel and we’ll load you up for a return to Roswell.” Spaceport America, located at the former Roswell Industrial Air Center in southern New Mexico, was America ’s first private-commercial facility dedicated to supporting manned spaceflight-many of the supply rockets sent to the space station were launched by commercial companies from there. Because of its rather isolated location and twelve-thousand-foot runway, it made a good place to land from space without disturbing too many residents with sonic booms. “Hope you don’t mind doing another trash run.”
“Anytime, General,” Boomer said. “Any chance I get to fly the spaceplanes, even if it’s just haulin’ trash, I’ll take it. FYI, the major will be doing this approach and docking, so don’t be surprised if you feel or hear something hit the station in a couple hours.”
“Thanks, Boomer,” the copilot, Air Force Major Dana Colwin, interjected. Colwin was a thirty-year-old former Air Force B-2 Spirit bomber pilot and aeronautical engineer, and had completed military astronaut training only a few months ago. She still wore her jet-black hair long, and preferred Dallas Cowboys baseball caps under her headset to keep her hair under control in zero-g.
It would take almost two hours for Boomer and his copilot to catch up with the space station. “I’ve got a project I need you to do while we’re waiting to rendezvous, Colwin,” Boomer said.
“Sure,” she replied. “What is it?” Boomer called up several pages of computer routines that he had downloaded from Armstrong Space Station and sent the list to Colwin’s multifunction display. “All this? This’ll take me hours.”
“Nah. They’re diagnostic programs. When the first program finishes, it’ll direct you which ones to do next. The results all get beamed to the station, but unfortunately the computer won’t automatically select the next program to run, so you have to babysit it. Wake me when we’re five minutes out.”
“Wake you?”
“I’m going to inspect the cargo bay, and then I’m going to take a nap in the air lock.”
“A nap? Are you kidding?” But Boomer unstrapped, gave her a wink, then floated though the cockpit and entered the air lock.
The dark-haired, brown-eyed astronaut shook her head in amusement. “Okay, Noble,” she muttered, and got to work running the diagnostic programs. Hunter Noble always seemed so hyper during every flight she had been on with him, hardly ever appearing to need a nap-but she thought nothing about it and got to work. He still checked in every fifteen minutes as required, but she couldn’t see that guy actually napping back there. Oh well-spaceflight sometimes really takes it out of you, she thought, and Noble was by far the busiest pilot in the unit.
About ninety minutes later the intercom clicked on: “How’s it going, Colwin?”
“If you don’t mind me saying, Boomer, this is mind-numbing busywork,” she replied. “Tire-pressure histories? Hydrazine-container electrostatic checks? A monkey can do this.”
“If it seems like it’s just busywork, Colwin, you’re right…because it was just busywork.”
“Say again?”
“I needed you distracted so I could finish prebreathing and suiting up.”
“Suiting up?”
“You’re fairly new with the spaceplanes, Colwin, but you’ve done several automatic dockings, observed a few manual dockings, practiced many times in the simulator, and we have plenty of fuel, so I think it’s time you did a manual rendezvous with the station.”
“A manual rendezvous? Are you nuts?”
“You have been practicing in the simulator, haven’t you? I guess we’ll find out shortly. I’ll be watching from outside.”
“From outside…?”
“Just don’t jostle me around too much, Colwin. Relax and do it nice and easy. Don’t cheat and turn on the computer-I’ll be checking the flight-data logs. Outer hatch coming open. Break a leg, not the spaceplane.” The large red “MASTER CAUTION” warning light flicked on, and the message OUTER HATCH UNSEALED appeared on the computer monitor.
“Where are you, Noble?”
“I’m just halfway out the hatch, enjoying the view.” Armstrong Space Station was about two miles away, sunlight reflecting off its silver antilaser covering, which gave the station its nickname “ Silver Tower.” “Once you’re down to less than three-meters-per-second closure rate, I’ll hop outside on the tether and use the suit’s thrusters to watch away from the ship.”
“I feel like going to less than three mps right now, Noble.”
“We’ve got plenty of fuel, Colwin, but not all day,” Boomer said. “You can do this. You need to do this for spacecraft-commander certification, and you know you want this. Let’s do it.”
“This your idea of fun, Noble?” General Kai Raydon radioed from Armstrong Space Station.
“I think Colwin’s ready, General.”
“You’re in charge of pilot training, Noble,” Raydon said, “so you’re responsible for these little unplanned unannounced evolutions of yours. If the major dings up my station or the spaceplane, you might as well stay out there.”
“Copy loud and clear, sir. She’ll do fine.”
As Boomer watched from the upper hatch, one by one he saw the thrusters on the nose release tiny jets of hydrazine exhaust. Colwin used the spaceplane’s control stick and trim switches for directional control to make it easier and more intuitive, but steering a spacecraft wasn’t like flying an airplane because orbital forces dictated the path, not flight control surfaces or aerodynamics. Although the thrusters could make minor altitude corrections, “up” and “down” were controlled by forward velocity-slowing down always meant losing altitude, speeding up always meant increasing altitude, and you had to be ready to correct anytime you made a velocity change. There were other nuances as well. In space, there was in reality no such thing as a “turn”-you could either move laterally into an entirely different orbit, roll along the longitudinal axis, or you could yaw the nose in a different direction, with the actual orbital flight path unchanged.
Normally the flight control computer controlled all of these subtleties, but computers failed quite often, so spaceplane pilots were expected to manually fly and dock the spacecraft with control, confidence, and precision before being fully certified as spacecraft commanders. Apart from a fully manual reentry and power-off landing, manual dockings were the most difficult and nerve-racking for pilots, and they practiced doing them quite often in the simulator.
Maybe it wasn’t quite fair to unexpectedly lay this on her, Boomer thought, but it was time to see if she had what it took to qualify as a spacecraft commander. A lot of pilots stayed as mission commanders, perfectly happy to be second in command and let the computers and someone else accept all the responsibilities. Boomer was
