23 September 1974
Skylab 1
Orbital Inclination: 50°
Altitude: 270 mi
Dr. Rendezvous had lived up to his nickname. At this point, the calculations were old hat to the FIDO guys back in Houston, but from the middle seat, Rusty Schweickart felt like Buzz would have gotten them to
Skylab with or without all the computers.
For the third time today, Buzz asked him, “How’re you feeling, Rusty?”
“Still okay, Buzz.”
It was all he could do not to roll his eyes, or sigh heavily. He’d known that the questions would be as much a part of the flight plan as rendezvous and docking, but it was his least favorite part.
They’d done a bunch of tests on his stomach after Apollo 9, trying to figure out why he’d reacted so badly to weightlessness. It happened to about half the guys to some degree, though most hadn’t had it as rough. It had become more of a problem with Apollo launches, for some reason. The flight surgeons weren’t sure if Schweickart’s reaction was an anomaly, so his second spaceflight presented a chance to run some tests. Stashed under his couch were a veritable pharmacy of concoctions that were supposed to suppress his body’s natural reactions.
The aeronautical apothecaries down in the gravity well were a bit disappointed to hear that this time around, for whatever reason, he felt no nausea at all.
Now that the majority of the maneuvers were complete, the crew floated silently on the CSM’s couches and ate lunch.
Skylab hovered a hundred and fifty yards away, just waiting for its first visitors.
Buzz finished up a chocolate pudding cup and pocketed the spoon. He turned to face his crew.
“You guys ready to fix this baby?”
He got nods and grins in response, and he pulled his helmet on. Joe and Rusty followed suit. They did a supplemental round of suit checks before Aldrin made the request.
“Houston,
Apollo. We’re ready for the EVA. Can you give us the go, over?”
A moment passed while mission control went around the room. Rusty took a deep breath and tried to find some center while they waited.
They’d done a fly-around this morning, a slow orbit of the station, surveying for any issues.
This had been the largest payload NASA had ever delivered to Earth orbit, and the launch had left one 34-foot long problem.
Skylab’s port side solar array wings had not deployed. The telemetry was inconclusive as to whether this had been a mechanical problem, or if something had gone wrong with the deployment program. At any rate, the station was operating on about 60% of the power it was designed for. This was enough to sustain operations, but it limited a lot of long-range potential. It was decided that the astronauts would make a go of unfurling that wing, but first, they had to get the station up and running.
The beep brought him out of his reverie, “Apollo, Houston. You are go for repair. Repeat, go for repair EVA. Recommend you secure cabin pressurization.”
“Roger that,” Buzz replied, nodding to Joe who hit the appropriate switches.
The pumps began withdrawing oxygen from the cabin and Rusty handed Joe the most sophisticated device NASA could come up with for deploying a stuck solar panel: a ten-foot telescoping pole with a hook on the end.
Commander Aldrin took the stick and maneuvered around, bringing the CSM to the side of the space station.
In the center seat, Kerwin began to open the hatch behind his head. The vacuum in the cockpit allowed for a smooth and silent opening of the hatch. Rusty checked the safety lines as Joe stood up and shuffled himself halfway through the hatch, looking every bit the space cowboy.
“Okay, Buzz. I can see the seam,” Joe said.
“How’s it look?”
“I think this might be debris.”
“Let’s hope,” Buzz replied.
Debris was the easy solution. If the problem was just a bit of debris jamming the solar wing, then they could clear it easily and try the deployment motor again. It would save a lot of effort and maneuvering if they could avoid pulling the wing out manually.
Schweickart reached over and took Joe Kerwin’s legs in a big bear hug. It was better than another safety line and allowed him to see what Joe was seeing through the open hatch. Buzz in the left-hand seat, had to content himself with the view out of window 1.
Kerwin swung the pole carefully, like a model builder applying a decal. He felt the end wobble as his hand movements transferred down the length of the shaft. He tightened his grip and the momentum caused his arms to shiver. At the edge of frustration, he let the pole go and for an instant was surprised to find that it floated under his fingertips, sharing his weightless condition.
Joe felt the urge to wipe sweat from his forehead, then felt quite the fool as his hand tapped his faceplate. He let out a deep breath and took hold of the tool once again. He found a corner of the bit of metal that was caught in the crease of the wing’s slot. It looked like a bit of foil, but who could be sure. He gave a gentle tug as the hook caught purchase and the debris slipped off, tumbling towards him, but with a slow drift away from the station that ensured he would never catch it.
“There we go. Looks a lot cleaner now.”
“Come on back in, Joe. Let’s see if we can do this the easy way.”
“Roger that,” Joe said, retracting the hooked rod and preparing to return to his seat.
Rusty got Joe situated and together they shut the hatch, but didn’t bother to repressurize, knowing that the job wasn’t done. Aldrin thrusted to the right and slowly the CSM drifted away from Skylab’s chassis. When he’d reached a respectable distance, the commander called in his request.
“Houston, we’re clear now. Can we try the deployment again? Maybe we’ll have better luck this time.”
With their eyes glued on the stuck panel, the crew noted with anticlimax that the deployment failed. The wing shifted barely an inch before jamming again. There was no clear sign of what prevented the deployment, but the only solution to the issue would be a manual one.
“Okay, let’s do this the old fashioned way,” Joe said, taking the retracted pole into his grasp once again.
Shrugging as best he could in the spacesuit, Kerwin went through the hatch opening procedures once again. Rusty resumed his grip on Joe’s legs as Buzz maneuvered the CSM to its prior position.
Apollo 9 had transformed Rusty Schweickart. He had a privilege, unique even amongst astronauts, of experiencing a delay in the midst of a spacewalk. He had spent over five minutes on the porch of the
Spider, waiting for Dave Scott to fix a malfunctioning camera. Five minutes with nothing to do but take in the most beautiful sight known to mankind, the perfect Earth. It was an experience that had awakened his mind to unheard of metaphysical possibilities.
Through today’s delicate operation, Buzz and Joe were busy, but Rusty was, once again, relatively unoccupied in the middle of a spacewalk. With a firm grip on Joe’s legs, Rusty had little more he could do than look up through the open hatch to the Earth beneath him. Beyond the chassis of Skylab, he had a clear view of cloud cover over the Adriatic. A moment later he looked down and saw the Greek coastline and the seas that had troubled Odysseus millennia ago. It was a view that was only known to gods and astronauts.
In this moment of incredible clarity, Rusty Schweickart felt infinite.
* * *
With the last of the panels unfurled and the hatch and crew secure, Buzz Aldrin was ready to move into his new orbiting accommodations.
“Houston,
Apollo. We’re secured and pressurized. We’re ready to dock if all is well on your end,” he said, trimming the RCS jets to end stationkeeping with
Skylab.
Houston confirmed the go order and then went quiet, the better to allow Buzz to focus on the task at hand.
Rusty pulled the scope from under his seat and aimed through his window to the docking target on
Skylab. As he twisted to get the focus set, he felt the slight kick from the RCS thrusters. Buzz was taking them in.
“Give me the range, Rusty,” Aldrin said, cheerful and workmanlike.
“50 feet out. Looking good from here,” Schweickart replied.
Aldrin translated a bit to the left and got the target in the reticle. The black and white half-bullseye was clear and he felt that perfect satisfaction of a tool in a groove.
“Twenty, almost there,” Rusty said, impressed with the pinpoint accuracy of Aldrin’s stick-work.
“Here we go,” the commander said.
The gentle bump a moment later was not followed by the expected mechanical snaps that the crew had expected. Instead of an arrested motion, the crew of Skylab 1 could feel their spacecraft bounce off the
Skylab’s primary docking port and slowly move away.
“Oh, you’ve got to be kidding me,” Aldrin said, in disbelief that his luck could be this bad.
“What is it with you and bad docking ports, Buzz?” Kerwin said, stifling a laugh at this echo of Aldrin’s troubles on Apollo 12.
Aldrin rubbed his head and sighed, “All right, let’s try this again.”
“You want to go around to the side?” Schweickart said, nodding his head to starboard in the direction of the secondary docking port on Skylab.
“Not just yet. Let’s give it another go,” Aldrin replied.
He shook his head and pulsed the RCS.
Five attempts later, after disassembling the docking probe, checking it for faults and putting it back in place, Buzz was willing to concede that the issue might be with
Skylab’s latches.
With reluctant acceptance, he maneuvered around to the secondary docking port, mentally noting to make a thorough examination of the station’s docking ports his first priority tomorrow. Hard-dock was achieved on the first attempt, which all but confirmed his suspicion that the problem was not with his spacecraft, but with the station itself.
As they finished the close-out procedures and systematically turned off all of the Apollo’s systems, Buzz felt an excitement that he’d not known since his time on the Sea of Tranquility. He was about to begin a 60-day mission in the largest spacecraft that NASA had launched. Since his days at MIT, he’d dreamed about an orbiting space laboratory. Now he would be its first commander.
“Guys, if it’s okay, I’d like to have a couple of minutes alone inside first,” Aldrin said, trying to be polite in his request for privacy.
Rusty and Joe smiled and nodded their assent, “Sure thing, Buzz. We’ll give you a few minutes.”
“Thanks,” Aldrin said, pushing his way through the tunnel, entering
Skylab for the first time.
He swam through the docking adapter and bounced gently through the airlock module. At the base of it, the walls expanded out from his position and he found himself at the center of the main chamber. He looked through the main chamber to the galley and experiment bays at the far end. The joy of weightlessness came to him in a way he’d not previously felt.
The vomit comet, back on Earth, could give you about 60 seconds worth of weightlessness. He was about to get 60 days’ worth. All of Apollo’s other hardware was a little too cramped to experience the joy of free-floating. He had heard great things from the guys who spent time on
Olympus, and he had been anticipating this moment since he’d been assigned to lead
Skylab’s first crew.
Buzz stretched his arms wide and sprang his toes off the wall. He sped into the cylinder and for the first time, knew what it was to truly fly. Buzz Aldrin wheeled and soared and swung and, in that moment, felt the total freedom that was the birthright of birds and the envy of all men.
For the second time in his life, Buzz Aldrin felt the complete euphoria that could only be known to those who had touched the face of God.
* * *
After a month of residence in the station, each astronaut agreed that the best place to spend free time was at the portholes that provided a view of Earth. The second-best place was still a matter of some debate.
For Joe Kerwin, he had chosen the feed from the telescope mount as his personal patch of territory for a free moment’s contemplation.
The solar telescope was by far his favorite of the onboard experiments. Buzz had been having fun with welding in microgravity and Rusty was fascinated by the crystal growth experiments, but Joe’s niche was astronomy.
Houston had asked him to keep a vigil on the scope today. The general consensus was that an area on the Sun’s southern hemisphere was due for some activity in the coming days. He had set the telescope’s focus after breakfast and had been checking every half-hour or so to see what was happening.
Kerwin inserted a new film canister and checked the feed from the scope. He was preparing to turn and get some lunch when he saw the event out of the corner of his eye.
A coronal mass ejection. A purge of plasma from the Sun’s surface that leapt out into the solar system, prepared to wreak havoc on the children of Sol. Even shielded by the scope’s filters, the power that he beheld was an awe-inspiring sight. The fires of creation, the fury of a star in its prime. Nothing built by the hands of men could compare.
Only discovered a few years ago, the Sun’s ability to fire off planet-sized amounts of plasma was still a subject of much speculation amongst the astronomers. The recordings that he would make today would, with any luck, provide some answers for this most impressive of solar activities.
With a sense of pride, he began to take measure of the event. From early observations, he confirmed what the scientists on the ground had suspected. The event would be devastating to any astronauts caught in its path, but the coronal mass was on a trajectory that was almost perpendicular to the Earth’s position. There was no threat to Skylab or her crew.
Just the act of calculating its size gave him comfort. It created a feeling as though he had some measure of dominion over this inferno. This pillar of fire that would have engulfed not just his spacecraft, but his entire planet, were it closer. Just as children could put names to the great skeletons of the dinosaurs, and felt a kinship with them, so too did Joe Kerwin feel that he and the Sun shared in a momentary secret, a discharge of power that could not be truly comprehended by any who had not seen it first-hand.
Here he bore witness to the overlord of the solar system. The titan of fire and light that powered his world and gave it life. Joe Kerwin partook of that most precious and powerful byproduct of space exploration:
Awe.
10 October 1974
Manned Spacecraft Center
Houston, TX
29° 33’ 47” N 95° 05’ 28” W
With a casual comfort, Jack Crichton rapped on the doorframe to the largest office in the astronaut division.
“Deke, you about ready to go?”
Slayton nodded, pushing some paperwork to the side of his desk and rising from his chair. He grabbed a bag as he passed by the door. Crichton fell into step behind him as they made their way out.
“Did you hear from Alexei?” Deke asked.
“Yeah, he called. He landed a couple of hours ago. He’s going to have lunch with us tomorrow before the shindig at the White House. Wants to introduce us to some of their guys before we’ve got press swarming all around us.”
“Good deal.”
“You gonna be okay with all the cameras and whatnot?” Crichton asked.
“я буду в порядке.” Slayton replied.
“You’re getting good with that,” Crichton said, genuinely impressed.
“How about you?”
“Все еще работаю над этим,” Jack said, struggling to overcome his accent.
“Have they got us staying at the usual hotel? I know it’s close to headquarters, but it was pretty rough last time.”
“Nah, we’re staying at a different place. Apparently, we weren’t the only ones to complain. They’ve got us somewhere new.”
“What’s the hotel?”
“Let me see…” Jack checked the itinerary, “Some place called the Watergate.”
“Hmm, never heard of it.”
“Me either.”
“Let’s hope it’s good.”
