French-made Murene NTL-90 dual-purpose lightweight torpedoes, also on wing pylons. The Shuihong-5 was a significant threat to any ship that did not possess antiaircraft missiles, and to Yin’s knowledge no Filipino warship carried antiaircraft missiles except perhaps short-range Stinger shoulder-fired weapons. It was enough to bomb the hell out of whatever Philippine forces were out there. Then, when his commander, the notoriously mercurial High General Chin Po Zihong, called him on the carpet for the destroyed Chagda, he’d have a large, ample helping of dead Filipinos to serve up. And that would certainly make High General Chin happy. OFF THE WEST COAST OF THE UNITED STATES NEAR VANDENBERG, CALIFORNIA WEDNESDAY, 21 SEPTEMBER 1994, 1131 HOURS LOCAL I ~t1was an absolutely spectacular day for flying. The skies were ear, with only a few stray wisps of clouds to break up the blue all around. The winds were relatively calm and turbulence-free, which was rather unusual at forty thousand feet. Things were not quite as calm, however, inside the special, heavily modified Sky Masters, Inc., DC- 10 aircraft orbiting off the California coast. There was only one booster in the cargo section of the special DC-I 0 that morning, which presumably would have made Jon Masters half as anxious as when he was carrying two. Instead, Masters was agitated and irritable, much to the chagrin of the rest of the crew. The source of his irritation was Sky Masters’ newest air-launched space booster, Jackson-I, a dark, sleek, bullet-nosed object whose very looks promised powerful results. But the booster, named for the seventh President of the United States, wasn’t going anywhere. And that was the problem. “What’s going on?” Masters demanded over interphone, drumming his fingers on the launch-control console. Helen Kaddiri sighed. “We’re still tracking down the prob lem, Jon. We’re having trouble on the Ku-band downlink from Homer-Seven.”
“You’ve got five minutes, ” Masters reminded her. “If we can’t talk to that satellite, we’ll have to abort.” Kaddiri sighed again. As if she didn’t know. An assistant handed her yet another self-test readout. She rolled her eyes and crumbled the paper up in her hands. She took a deep breath and keyed the interphone mike: “There’s still a fault in the bird, Jon, and it’s not at our ground station. We’re going to have to abort. There’s no choice. Air Force is saying the same as well.” That was not what Masters wanted to hear. “Homer-Seven was working fine just seventy minutes ago.” Homer-Seven was one of the constellation of eight TDRS, or Tracking and Data Relay Satellites, launched in the late 1980s and early 1990s to provide uninterrupted tracking, data, and communications coverage for the space shuttle and other military satellites, including spy satellites. They replaced several slow, outmoded ground communications stations once located in remote areas of the world such as the Australian outback and the African Congo. “Now the Air Force wants to abort? After they’ve been screaming at me to get these fuckers in orbit so they can eyeball the Philippines? That’s typical. Tell ‘em to keep their nose out of my business and find out where the problem is in their satellite.” Even as the words came out of his mouth, though, Masters knew that wasn’t what the Air Force was going to want to hear. Besides, the TDRS system had proved generally reliable in the past, and all of Jon Masters’ NIRTSats relied on TDRS to beam status and tracking information to his Blytheville, Arkansas, headquarters as well as to the military and government agencies using the satellite. So the problem had to be on the plane. … “Get another system check at Blytheville and another here, ” he ordered. “Right now. Get on it.” Kaddiri had quickly grown tired of being ordered around. “We’ve checked our systems. They’re fine and ready to receive. The problem’s in the TDRS satellite, not with our gear. Masters muttered something under his breath, threw off his headset, and got up out of his seat. The senior launch-control technician, Albert “Red” Philips, immediately asked, “Jon, what about the countdown?”
“Continue the countdown, Red, ” Jon snapped. “No-hold. I’ll be back in one minute.” He then hurried forward to the flight deck. Despite the roominess of the launch-control cabin and booster section in the rear cargo hold of the DC-JO, the flight deck up front was cramped and relatively uncomfortable. Along with the two pilots, there was the flight engineer’s station behind the copilot, with his complex system of fuel, electrical, hydraulic, and pneumatic controls and monitors; he also controlled the aircraft’s weight and balance system, which was designed to compensate for each ALARM booster launch by rapidly distributing fuel and ballast as the boosters were moved or launched. Behind the pilot’s station, back-to-back with the flight engineer, was the alternate launch-control console and the primary launch-communications center. The system handled the communications interface between satellites and ground stations and the ALARM booster until a few seconds before launch, when the booster’s onboard computer received its last position and velocity update from the launch aircraft and was sent on its way. The ALARM booster’s onboard flight computers continuously navigated for itself and provided steering signals to the launch aircraft to position itself for orbital insertion, but it needed information sent to it through the launch aircraft’s communication system, and right now the system was not picking up data from the tracking satellites. Helen Kaddiri, who was in charge of the console for this launch, had been trying to restore communications, but with no luck. She rolled her eyes in exasperation as Masters rushed through the pressurized cabin door. “Jon, if you don’t mind, I can handle this… Masters immediately checked the status screen for the launch aircraft’s communication system-everything was still reporting normal. “I asked you to run a self-test of our system, Helen.” Kaddiri sighed as Masters peered over her left shoulder to watch the test process on the screen. . “There!” Masters announced. “Umbilical fiber optic hardware continuity. Why did you bypass that test?”
“C’mon, Jon, get real, ” Kaddiri protested. “That’s not an electronics check, that’s a visual check-“
“Bullshit, ” said Masters, dashing out of the cockpit and back into the cargo section. The ALARM booster, its gray bulk huge and ominous in the bright inspection lights of the cargo section, had been wheeled out of the airlock and back into the cargo section so technicians could look it over again. “Push her back in and check the umbilical connections, ” Masters said. “We might have a bad plug.”
“But we need a safe connectivity readout before we can push her into position, ” Red Philips said. He checked the status board on the launch-control panel. “I’m still showing no tracking data from-” “Bypass the safety locks, Red, ” Masters said. “Get the booster into position to launch.”
“We lose all our safety margins if we bypass the safety locks, Jon-” But Philips could see that Masters didn’t care. He punched in instructions in the launch-control console to bypass the safety interlocks, which usually prevented an armed but malfunctioning booster to be wheeled into position for release. The interlocks prevented an accident on board the plane and the inadvertent dropping of a live booster out the launch baynow there were no safety backups. The bypass showed up immediately on Helen Kaddiri’s alternate launch-control board. “Jon, I’ve got an ‘Unsafe Warning’ light on. Is the booster locked down? I show the interlocks off.”
“I turned them off’ Helen, ” Jon said on interphone. He stood with a flashlight at the mouth of the launch-bay airlock as the huge ALARM booster was motored back into launch position. “We’re checking the umbilical plug.”
“You can’t do that, Jon, ” Helen warned. “If it’s more than just a plug problem, the booster might proceed to a final launch countdown before you can open the bay doors or before we can inhibit the ignition sequence. You’re cleaning a loaded gun with your finger on the trigger and the hammer pulled back.” Masters glanced up at the cylindrical launch-bay airlock, which actually did resemble the chamber of a gun; inside, he could see the nosecap of the Air-Launched Alert Response Missile, which certainly resembled a bullet, as it motored into position. His head was right in the muzzle. “Good analogy, Helen, ” he said wryly. The booster slid into position. “Try the umbilical self-test, ” Masters said to the launch-bay technician. A moment later, Philips gave him his answer: That’s it, Jon!” he said with a shout. “There’s a break in the umbilical connector-we had proper voltage but no signal. Come out of there and we’ll have it fixed in no time.”
“Forget it. No time. I’ll do it myself.” Before anyone could say anything else, Masters had scrambled inside the launch airlock and began crawling down along the ALARM booster. “Jon, are you nuts?” the technician said. “Helen, this is Red. Jon just crawled down into the airlock. Put the interlocks back on. “No!” Masters radioed from inside the launch airlock. “Continue the countdown.”
“This is Kaddiri. I’m setting the interlocks, operator-initiated countdown hold. Crewman in the launch airlock. Interlocks on. Just then the self-test on the booster’s umbilical ended with a satisfactory reading. “Continuity restored… you got it, Jon, you got it, ” Philips said. “But we’ve passed the launch window.” “Start the countdown at T minus sixty, ” Masters said. “The booster has the endurance to make the corrections, and we built a little leeway into the launch window. Continue the countdown… “I am not going to reactivate the system until you are out of there, ” Kaddiri said testily. “I’m out, I’m out, ” Masters said as his sneakers appeared from the muzzle of the airlock. “Let’s do it.” Masters closed the airlock doors the second he was out of the chamber. Philips gave him his portable oxygen bottle, and he was just putting it on and strapping himself into his seat when the airlock was depressurized. Less than sixty seconds later the booster was on its way. “Good separation, good first-stage ignition, ” Helen reported as the forty-three-thousand-pound missile accelerated ahead of the DC-10 and roared skyward. “Clear connectivity in all channels . . . wings responding, swiveling on schedule . twenty seconds to first-stage burnout. Masters waited a few more moments as Kaddiri continued to monitor the launch, then said with a faint
