Ocean of Storms: A Timeline of A Scientific America

Great update once again and this is gonna make the Russians very very anger and it ain’t gonna be good maybe a possible missile like crisis Well glad the permanent moon base construction is ongoing and will soon be a thing
 
Was the MiG 105 properly disassembled and crated? Wouldn't want it to be damaged in shipment.
Labor charges optional.
 
He rounded the next corner and spotted the tube station. The entrance signs calling to him like a lighthouse in a storm.
Piecing things together, it looks like Kuchenko's taking a bit of a convoluted path. To me the most obvious route from Heathrow to the Soviet (now Russian) Embassy in London would drive right by the Holland Park and Notting Hill Gate tube stations, from which he could then directly take the Central Line east 3/4 stops to Marble Arch, with it then being a 4 minute walk to the United States' Embassy.

Then again, I suppose such a convoluted path is probably necessary to evade his pursuers.
 
Piecing things together, it looks like Kuchenko's taking a bit of a convoluted path. To me the most obvious route from Heathrow to the Soviet (now Russian) Embassy in London would drive right by the Holland Park and Notting Hill Gate tube stations, from which he could then directly take the Central Line east 3/4 stops to Marble Arch, with it then being a 4 minute walk to the United States' Embassy.

Then again, I suppose such a convoluted path is probably necessary to evade his pursuers.
it's also a matter of Soviet operational security. They probably weren't going to take a direct route to the embassy in order to eyeball any tails who are looking to set up a snatch-and-grab. At least in the Soviet mindset.
 
it's also a matter of Soviet operational security.
Yeah, that makes sense.

I think I may have been spoiled for 'chase through area in London' by Gibson and Sterling's The Difference Engine, which has one detailed enough that I pulled up a map and followed it as I was reading.
 
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It may be a little early, but I was surprised no one commented on the easter eggs I threw in to this latest chapter.

Maybe I should start offering prizes.

Then again, this isn't Jeopardy.
 
It may be a little early, but I was surprised no one commented on the easter eggs I threw in to this latest chapter.

Maybe I should start offering prizes.

Then again, this isn't Jeopardy.

"Ivan" helped design the polar probe I take it :)
(Oddly the forums didn't alert me to the updates so I'm having to track back and check the updates... It DID tell me Bill posted though so there is that :) )

Randy
 
Ok, going back a bit... When the astronauts were discussing the latest "Bond" film there was a part where one astronaut noted they "landed on the Moon just like a runway on Earth" to which the other laughed and noted a certain lack of reality to the idea. I laughed too, but something in the back of my mind kept bugging me in that I swore I'd "heard" that as a concept put for seriously by someone with no lack of credabilty. Totally looking for something else but:

Starts on the bottom of page 848 of the first link and the author is one you may have heard of, one Krafft Ehricke, (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Krafft_Arnold_Ehricke) and he's totally serious. You land by 'lithobraking' on a long slideway using a locally produced material and skids mounted on the bottom of your spacecraft. Ehricke went as far as to introduce a new field of study called "harenodynamics" which studies the 'fluid-like' of regolith for such a landing method!

Now while it sounds crazy, (and more than a little "That's scary and I'm Fearless!" :) ) it actually makes a lot of sense as it is a very propellant efficient way to land on the Moon. You use almost no propellant to land trading friction for velocity over about a 10km 'runway' of cleared regolith and even if you don't use it for people it would work for bulk cargo quite well.

And interestingly enough you may not even need the 'skids' as one early spacecraft concept, the "Lenticular Reentry Vehicle" or LRV (more specifically the Langly and Convair designs rather than Bell or NAA, http://www.astronautix.com/l/lenticularvehicles.html) were found to be perfectly capable of 'belly-landing' on their heat sheild on most 'flat' surfaces. (Water was a nighmare as any 'wave' would tend to toss and tumble the lander)
(Works with capsules too: https://books.google.com/books?id=m... Reentry Vehicle Land Landing Concept&f=false)

So maybe we shouldn't 'laugh' all that much at Hollywood.... Nah, give em hell, they just got lucky :)

Randy
 
Ok, going back a bit... When the astronauts were discussing the latest "Bond" film there was a part where one astronaut noted they "landed on the Moon just like a runway on Earth" to which the other laughed and noted a certain lack of reality to the idea.

Fascinating concept. For the record, I was referencing the Bond movie "Moonraker" which I'd rewritten a bit for the OoS timeline. This time I was putting it more akin with the 2nd Austin Powers movie.

Just didn't want anyone chasing down a film that wasn't available.

On the subject of pop culture in OoS, I'll be dusting in bits here and there, but I think some if not all of you will be particularly interested in what I do with the Star Wars prequel trilogy. I hope to have something interesting on that within the next month or two. Consider this a tease for it.
 
Fascinating concept.

Ain't it though :)

For the record, I was referencing the Bond movie "Moonraker" which I'd rewritten a bit for the OoS timeline. This time I was putting it more akin with the 2nd Austin Powers movie.

Got that and it made total sense to me. Having said that I 'may' have been influanced by that when I wrote my post in "James Bond is the prequal to 2001" since I ALSO have Drax with a "Moonbase" (which the ESA is paying him to build btw :) ) and still planning on 'resetting' the world. (In the second half I didn't post it turns out SPECTRE is undergoing a power struggle and on Mr. Zorrin is ALSO planning on doing something similar and riding it out under the ocean, because I like to complicate things : ) )

On the subject of pop culture in OoS, I'll be dusting in bits here and there, but I think some if not all of you will be particularly interested in what I do with the Star Wars prequel trilogy. I hope to have something interesting on that within the next month or two. Consider this a tease for it.

We'll get you for this ;)

Randy
 
XXXV: The Last Man In Skylab
The Last Man In Skylab

12 January 1984

Johnson Space Center

Houston, TX

29° 33’ 47” N 95° 05’ 28” W


“So it’s in a tumble?” Thomas Wheaton asked.

“When you say tumble, that makes it sound a little worse than it really is,” said Linda, the young engineer from the station office.

“It’s flipping end over end?” Wheaton asked.

“Technically, yes,” Linda said.

“It’s in a tumble,” Wheaton said.

“Only a few times per orbit.”

“A slow tumble is still a tumble. I deal with people who don’t make the distinction,” Wheaton said.

“That’s fair,” she replied.

“Do we know the cause?”

“The control moment gyros,” she said.

“Linda, you went to engineering school, so you’re a lot smarter than me. Can you explain the next part with small words so that I can go tell people who know even less about this than me?”

She nodded, “They’re big spinning pieces of machinery. They keep the station stabilized while it goes around the Earth. Skylab has three. One seized up back in ’79. We lost another around Christmas.”

“What caused the failure?”

“Well, being four years past its expected lifespan couldn’t have helped.”

“Okay,” Wheaton said.

“The last one is doing all it can, but because of the tumble, it’s not getting as much power as we would ordinarily from the panels. That’s causing issues with the computer…”

“I get the picture,” Wheaton said. “So, can we save it?”

“Well…” she hesitated.

“Is it that we don’t know how?”

“No! We could definitely save it if we had to.”

“Well, the only reason we don’t do something around here is because of money, engineering or politics. I’m betting this one is money?”

She nodded, “This was not something the bean counters had planned for. And the consensus is we can expand what we’re doing at Skydock and get what we need.”

“That sounds about right. Skylab is, what, eight years old?”

“Nine,” she corrected him.

“That’s still well past the planned service life, right?”

“About double.”

“Okay, so what are we thinking?” Wheaton asked.

“Right now, it’s looking like a salvage flight.”

Wheaton stopped walking. He turned and looked at the engineer who had been keeping pace with him to the public affairs office.

“Salvage? Like a sunken ship?”

“We want to dock with a Clipper, get the experiments out. The Clipper would come home with everything and we’d send two of the crew to Skydock with the Apollo-R.”

“Split the crew?”

“Yeah. Team of four. Two flight crews. One goes back with the Clipper, the other two will fly the CSM from Skylab to Skydock.”

“Why?”

“Because the reason we’ve been able to keep astronauts at Skylab without a Clipper is because we’ve got Apollo-R docked to it. When we launched Skydock, we didn’t have any old Apollos left. So we only have people on board when they’ve got a Clipper there to bring them home. If we want to keep anyone in space long-term…”

“And we definitely do,” Wheaton chimed in.

“Then we’ll be needing a lifeboat for Skydock,” she finished.

“Is Skydock going to be able to handle the extra activity?”

“What do you mean?” Linda asked.

“We’re sending a lot of cargo to the Moon this year,” Wheaton said.

“Not my department,” Linda said.

He shrugged, “Mine either. Are they into scheduling yet?”

“Not yet, but we can’t afford to wait for long,” she said.

“It’ll get worse?”

“Much worse,” Linda confirmed.

“What’s going to happen to Skylab?”

“It’ll crash?”

“Are we sure?”

“Yeah, it was always going to crash someday,”

“Do we know which day?” Wheaton asked.

“It depends a lot on what we do to it when we’re salvaging,” she said.

“Okay, do we know where?”

“Probably the Pacific Ocean,” she said.

“How do you know?”

“I don’t, but if you’re going to crash anything into a random spot Earth, there’s about a 50-50 chance it’ll land in the Pacific anyway.”

“So you’re just playing the odds now,” Wheaton said.

“Right,” Linda said.

“What’s gonna happen to the other two crew? The ones who go to Skydock?” he asked.

“We’re looking at Low and Borden. They’re trained on Skydock procedures. They’ll push the freight for us until we’re ready to bring them down with a Clipper later,” Linda said.

“So they might be in for a bit of a wait,” Thomas asked.

“Well, they say there’s no such thing as a bad day in space,” Linda said.



13 February 1984

Astrovan

Kennedy Space Center

28° 35′ 10.61″ N 80° 39′ 4.61″ W


Ken Borden had been the last astronaut to ride in the first van. When Constellation 8 launched back in 1980, there had been five men in space suits packed in to that little white van that had carried every Apollo crew to their Saturn rocket. Now he rode in the newer, shinier “Astrovan” on the long, twenty-minute ride out to the launch pad. He tried not to think about the fact that the inside of this van was just about as roomy as his accommodations for the next four months.

Fortunately, he had quite a distraction as Boston Low, his best friend in the astronaut corps, had given him some surprising news.

“So, you’re telling me you broke up with Lizzy because we’re going on a mission?” Borden said.

“No. Not because we’re going on a mission. We’re gonna be up there til May; I don’t want to meet her parents; and I’m getting a little bit sick of her.”

“That’s cold, brother,” Borden said.

“It’s practicality. I tried a long-distance thing when I was at Annapolis. It did not go well.” Low said.

“Ice cold. No question. God, man, it’s Valentine’s Day tomorrow.”

“Tack that on as another reason,” Low said.

“So, what, did you just call her from quarantine last night?”

“Nah, that would have been harsh. I told her last week, before we left.”

“How’d she take it?”

“About like you’d expect.”

“That bad, huh?”

“Shut up. It had to be done,” Low said.

“It really didn’t,” Borden said.

“What do you mean?”

“We’ll be gone long enough, she might have just gotten sick of waiting for you. She’d definitely have guys trying to hit on her. Chances are she would have found another guy.”

“You think she’s going to find someone better than me?” Low said.

“You broke up with her the week before Valentine’s Day, dude. She could swing a dead cat at Skeepers and hit three guys better than you,” Borden said, “But what do you care? Focus up, rook’. We’re goin’ flyin’.”

Low sat with that thought until they made the last turn and they got a look at their ship.

Adventure was a beauty in black and white. The third Clipper off the line, she carried green racing stripes down her fuselage and wingtips, officially done to distinguish her from her sister ships. Borden figured it was more likely done so that the gift shop at the Visitor’s Center could sell different versions of the same toy.

Her nose pointed skyward, Adventure was poised and ready for her third trip out of the atmosphere.

The vapors trailing off of the Centaur and Pegasus stages gave the whole thing a surreal look. The sunrise was just enough illumination to make the whole stack look alive. This was a ship ready to fly. The dawn was bringing energy to the entire continent, but Adventure was already topped off and ready to go. In a few hours, she would blaze a fiery streak into the frozen black.

Boston Low had been an astronaut for three years now. He’d seen Clippers in the VAB. He’d seen them on the launch pad. He’d even flown a chase plane during a landing last year. But in all of his time in the astronaut corps, he’d never seen a ship ready to fly that had a seat on board just for him.

All earthly thoughts faded out of his mind. This towering white dragon beckoned to him. She would carry him to the top of the sky. All he had to do was hang on.



15 February 1984

Skylab

Orbital Inclination: 50°

Altitude: 272 mi


It was disorienting to be sure, but that was always a hazard of the job. Yesterday, Boston Low had gotten his first taste of long-term zero gravity. His stomach was not as big a fan as the rest of him. The steak and eggs breakfast had been far less appetizing in reverse. But the bout of nausea had passed quickly and his stomach had finally come around on the idea that gravity wasn’t coming back for a while.

Then the docking had given him a whole new bout of space sickness.

The problem was that Skylab was tumbling in a full circle once every twenty minutes or so. The rendezvous was easy, but attaching Adventure to the slowly spinning space station was an exercise in physics and hand-eye coordination. Not being in the left-hand seat was frustrating for any astronaut, but for Boston Low, it had been damn near unacceptable. He had no control over the lurching and pulsing of the final maneuvers and when they finally completed the docking, there was a slight sideways pull that shifted the contents of the equipment racks and his internal organs ever towards the starboard side of Adventure.

Now, thankfully, he found himself in Skylab’s interior, where the cylindrical walls offered no floor or ceiling. The persistent tumble allowed him to orient his feet to the “bottom” of the station and gave just a barely perceptible hint of gravity. The doctors had suggested correcting the tumble as soon as possible, but a survey of Skylab’s resources indicated that would not be likely. Instead, Low and his crewmates set about quickly securing the various experiments that had been humming along unattended in Skylab’s orbital solitude.

The low power meant that the lights turned on and off almost at random, and the environmental controls provided air, but did not even attempt to make the temperature comfortable. Low didn’t need to look out a window to know if Skylab was in sunlight or shadow. The station’s overworked systems told him quite effectively.

The four astronauts continued stripping the station of all its prizes. The hardest one to maneuver was a sealed aquarium that they could just barely fit into the docking hatch on Adventure. The cylindrical tank harbored several varieties of sealife that the experts downstairs were curious about. Aquaculture was one of the sustaining life support ideas that had caught on in the aerospace community. The other models involved growing large quantities of lettuce and vegetables, or a truly nauseating system that would make yogurt in space. Given the options, he preferred seafood. Low handled the experiment with kid gloves.

Experiments were priority one. After that, they loaded up every data tape and notepad, anything that carried information. Later in the afternoon, they loaded up the Apollo-R with any consumables that could travel. Mostly meal packs and a few bags of water. Even with all that, Adventure still had some room left, so they packed in a few personal effects, mementos that the previous crews had left behind. Low snagged a small model X-Wing and a Captain Sulu action figure and pocketed them. He’d take them both to Skydock and make sure that, if something happened to Earth, at least something would survive of its two greatest franchises.

“Get in rookie, we’re goin’ flying,” called Borden, poking his head out of the UDB’s hatch.

They sealed the hatches that led to Adventure and to Skylab. Borden and Low monitored the air pressure as Adventure undocked and backed away. The Clipper and all of its pilfered treasures would linger for another day in orbit and then head back to Cape Kennedy. Apollo-R with Borden and Low had a very different destination.

There were a few umbilicals to separate, but the overall procedure wasn’t too laborious. With carefully planned movements, Borden undocked the Apollo-R from Skylab, with the UDB attached to the top of the CSM. The universal docking bay would be needed if Skydock was going to host an old Apollo spacecraft.

Borden pulled back to a respectable distance and he and Low both grabbed cameras to watch America’s proudest space station resume its lonely tumble. Low had only spent a day on board, but he felt melancholy as he watched the big beast spin away, doomed to a fiery death over the world it had watched over and studied.

“She sure was a good ship,” Borden said.

“Farewell, Skylab, and we thank you,” radioed Buzz Aldrin, echoing the valediction that had honored every American spacecraft since Aquarius. Buzz had come down to Houston for the occasion. He had helped to save Skylab at her beginning. It felt appropriate to have him bid her goodbye at her end.

No one liked to see a ship that had carried astronauts be doomed to a kinetic fate.

With the last rites performed, Borden and Low fired the aged, dormant SPS and were pleased to see that she was as responsive as she had been five years before, when she arrived at Skylab.

The brief series of burns that would bring the old ship to Skydock were relatively simple to calculate. Just an extension of the basic principles of orbital mechanics that Newton had pioneered centuries ago. You could find the equations on the blackboards of any school with an aerospace engineering course of study. Still, in a curious way, Borden and Low were setting a record. This was the first transfer from one space station to another in history. The first spaceflight where neither beginning nor end involved any sort of object one could land on.

While Skydock and Skylab orbited at around the same altitude, their inclinations were so different that the transfer had required Apollo-R to reach a much higher orbit. As they approached the inclination transfer point, an empty patch of space that was only interesting to mathematicians, Low was able to take in a view of the entire Earth for the first time in his life. Borden allowed the rookie to gape while he put in the necessary commands for the SPS to fire once again.

“Houston, Apollo-R, we’ve completed burn two and we’ll button up for the night. Our compliments to everyone at North American. They sure built this ship to last.”

“Roger that, Apollo-R. Your transfer orbit has you rendezvousing with Skydock in twenty-eight hours. Feel free to get comfortable, and we thank you for flying Isaac Newton airlines.”

The vectors having been delta-ed and the cold equations honored, Borden and Low relaxed and enjoyed an evening meal.



20 February 1984

Skydock Space Station

Orbital Inclination: 29°

Altitude: 250 mi


If Skylab had the look of a friendly barn silo, a quiet pastoral home in space, then Skydock was its big, ugly, industrial cousin. The string of tin cans had the sleek look of a Japanese bullet train, but the business end of the station housed the trusses and big white robotic arms that gave it more of a “giant angry robot” vibe.

“Here’s where the fun begins,” Borden said, starting the cabin depressurization.

Low took a deep calming breath as the air was sucked out of Apollo-R’s cabin. This next part was going to get a little crazy. Borden, skilled pilot though he was, was not armed with X-ray vision and could not stare through the UDB that was attached to the CSM’s nose. Docking was very much a visual exercise and therefore another solution needed to be found. Skydock was unoccupied at the moment, but it had a lovely set of Canadarms that would be very useful to an incoming vessel with limited vision. The solution was obvious, but no less harrowing.

Boston Low prepared to jump from one spacecraft to another.

Jumping was a dramatic misnomer. Not only would he have safety lines that led back to the CSM, but he was also at a very close range. Low shimmied out of the Apollo’s hatch and could see one of Skydock’s outstretched arms no more than twenty feet above him. He gave a small kick to the center seat of the CSM and his safety lines spooled out dutifully.

Low reached the arm and wrapped all of his limbs around it like a drowning man embraces a life preserver. Ken Borden remarked that the panting over the radio reminded him of a similar scene from 2001: A Space Odyssey. While the danger was mostly in Low’s mind, that did nothing to lower his heart rate.

He secured his feet into the rig on the end of the arm and untied the safety lines that connected him to the Apollo. Following a preprogrammed set of commands, the arm slowly brought him around to Skydock’s airlock. In the five minutes that it took to swing him around, he felt sympathy with Fay Wray as the big, mindless giant delivered him to its core.

Borden, back aboard the Apollo backed away to clear the arms. He was flying blind, but was hyper aware of his surroundings.

Low went through the process of powering up Skydock. For the second time this week he was the sole occupant of a space station. Going through the checklist took over six hours, but by the end, he was ready to take control of the robotic arms and bring Borden and his clunky little vessel to a secure position on this newer, more advanced, spacecraft.

In the little cupola on “top” of Skydock, he felt quite powerful. He could work both arms from here and had a view that took in the Earth and the station itself.

With Borden carrying out his instructions carefully, Low guided him to a position where he could grab the UDB with Skydock’s right-side arm. When the grip was secure and the little space potato was in his grasp, he breathed a sigh of relief. Borden sealed the hatches and backed away, allowing him to swing the UDB around to the topside docking port on Skydock. When the connection was made, Borden was able to approach from the side. Now this station could play host to an Apollo lifeboat, two Clippers and even a Soyuz if the need should arise. With her arms functioning and docking ports available, Skydock was ready to become an orbital waystation for cargos and travelers going back and forth to the Moon.



17 March 1984

Skydock Space Station

Orbital Inclination: 29°

Altitude: 250 mi


“Houston, Skydock, top of the mornin’ to ya,” came the cheery call from Judy Resnik back on the ground.

“Good Morning, Houston. Happy St. Patrick’s Day,” replied Ken Borden.

“How’s life aloft this fine day,” Resnik said, continuing with the bad Irish accent she’d adopted.

“All’s well. No complaints,” Boston Low said, biting into a sausage, fresh from the microwave.

“Are you enjoying Orwell, Ken?” Judy asked.

“So far, I’m just glad 1984 isn’t turning out like 1984,” Ken said, echoing the Super Bowl advertisement that had been so popular this year.

“It’s not the brightest look at the future,” Judy agreed. “How far along are you?”

“Well, this guy Winston has found love with this girl Julia. Based on what I’ve read so far, I think they’re going to have a lovely little happily ever after,” Ken said.

That seemed to catch Resnik unaware. She took longer than usual to reply to him.

“Hey, I got a sports section down here, you guys interested?” she said.

“Hit us, Judy,” Boston said.

“Let’s see here. Last night the Rockets lost to the Colonels, 100-83,” Resnik said.

“Tough break,” Ken said.

“Yeah, the Rockets can’t seem to get it together this year. They got Ralph Samson, the guy from Virginia. He’s like a force of nature.” Boston said.

“They gotta get him some help,” Ken said.

Boston asked, “How’d the Pacers do, Judy?”

“Uh… they won. Beat out Buffalo 101-98. That must have been a close one.”

“Sounds like,” Boston said.

“It’s shaping up to be the Lakers and the Celtics. They’re both pretty dominant this year,” Judy said.

“Well, the Lakers have Magic and Kareem,” Ken said.

“Tough to beat that,” she said.

“What about football, Judy?”

“Uh, the USFL. Hang on a sec. Looks like in the Friday night game the Mustangs beat Tampa Bay. Tomorrow they’ve got a full slate of games in the afternoon.”

“Any chance we can get a game beamed up here?” Ken asked.

“I’ll talk to some folks. See if I can pull some strings for you,” Judy said.

“If it’s available, see if you can get the New Jersey game,” the Newark-born Ken Borden asked.

“Oh… looks like that one’s not gonna be available, Ken,” Judy said.

“We can’t get the feed?” Borden asked.

“No, actually, they’ve cancelled New Jersey’s game on Sunday. They moved it to their bye week,” Judy said.

“What for?” Borden asked.

“Huh. Uh... the owner died. Gosh, wow, yeah.”

“The real estate guy?” Borden said.

“Yeah, gosh, he was pretty young. I pulled the obit section. They’re saying it was liver cancer. He was 37.”

“Liver cancer? Yeesh,” Low said.

“Lot of that going around lately,” Borden said.

“Not to sound cold, but, is there a different football game we can get tomorrow?” Boston asked.

“Flight director is giving me a thumbs-up. We’ll find you something,” Judy said.

“Thanks, we’ll enjoy it on our huge 12-inch black and white TV,” Boston said.

The three shared a laugh.

“Hey, how’s our little freighter doing today?” Resnik asked.

“Let me take a look,” Boston said.

Boston Low pushed away from Skydock’s pantry and floated up to the cupola, pushing aside the inactive controllers for the robotic arms. He looked out over the side of the station and saw the large cargo freighter that was attached to the trusses.

The freighter was basically a frame with side-mounted rockets at either end. Two pairs of rather large landing legs were attached to the rocket pods, allowing for the big freighter to settle gently on to the lunar surface and rise again. Between the engine pods, the freighter held two cylindrical cargo containers. Between the pair of containers was rigging that allowed the tanks to be lowered to the surface by winches. It was an ungainly mess of a spacecraft. On Earth, it wouldn’t have even stood up under its own weight. But it wasn’t on Earth and never would be.

She had been built last year, by a series of flights involving Clippers and Trucks. It had taken more than a dozen spacewalks to get the components together. The ship was the first spacecraft to be primarily assembled in orbit. Though the Russians disputed that with their Дальше ship that had met its end over Venus.

The freighter’s most impressive feature was its size. The cargo containers she was hauling were delivered by Cargo Clippers and each tank was more or less the size of the unmanned ship’s cargo hold.

These particular tanks contained, amongst other things, a small nuclear reactor and a prototype unit that could manufacture oxygen from lunar regolith. Both had undergone massive testing back on Earth, but soon, within the next couple of years, they’d be used in the field by astronauts.

Last fall, the freighter had successfully delivered a large water tank and a container of parts and structural gear to the Apollo 21 landing site.

Ten years ago, Tom Stafford and Phillip Chapman had spent a few days on the rim of Shackelton Crater. They’d set up some solar panels and deployed a couple of small robotic probes. And for a short time, on day four, Chapman had attached a little snowplow to their rover and had cleared out a flat patch of ground in the shadow of some of the outlying hills. It had taken up a couple of hours’ worth of time, but now, a decade later, that bit of work was proving to be one of the most important accomplishments of the Apollo program.

In early November of the previous year, the freighter had landed right on that patch of smooth ground. The lunar environment, having no atmosphere or flowing rivers to change its landscape, had perfectly preserved Chapman’s little landing area. In a rugged area of crater rims and boulders, the cleared off spot had been a perfect place to put down a pair of large containers.

Now the ship had returned to Skydock to pick up another load for the lunar South Pole. A week ago, Patriot had delivered a pressurized rover that could house up to six astronauts for a few days, or a pair of them for a long-term exploration. Later this month, a pair of carts would be brought up that could scoop up regolith for the oxygen generator.

In the meantime, the big, lumbering freighter waited stoically for her second cargo and for the arrival of her big nuclear engine. Zeus III was kept in a safe parking orbit over five hundred miles above the atmosphere. Since the Russian disaster a few years ago, the agency preferred to keep NERVA motors away from astronauts until they were needed.

Excalibur is looking good this morning,” Boston reported to the ground.

NASA had originally wanted to name the ship after Leonardo da Vinci. It had been a popular choice among the scientific community and there had even been some patches designed for the ground crews that put together the freighter’s components. Unfortunately, the name had been unveiled at the end of season one of Star Trek: The New Voyages. The series had been a lightning rod among sci-fi fans and had delivered some excellent stories of the adventures of Captain Hikaru Sulu and his proud ship, the USS Excalibur.

Bowing to public pressure, the space freighter had been renamed, making the original da Vinci patches quite a collector’s item in the future.

“Hey, speaking of Excalibur…” he said.

“Yes, I’ve got all of the episodes you’ve missed recorded,” Judy said. Talking down to Boston like a kid brother.

“Just making sure,” he said.

“You’re gonna love the one where they meet Captain Thelar and the USS Lexington,” she said.

“Hey, hey! Don’t ruin it for us,” Borden said.

“Alright boys,” Judy said.

Boston Low pushed off from the cupola and squirted a sphere of water from the dispenser. He couldn’t resist the urge to play with it a bit before swallowing it down whole. His breakfast completed, he pocketed his fork and moved aft to check on the station’s batteries.

As he and Ken went about their routines, they chatted with Judy on the air-to-ground-loop. This was a Saturday and both in orbit and on the ground, the schedule was a bit looser.



12 April 1984

Skydock Space Station

Orbital Inclination: 29°

Altitude: 250 mi


“Skydock, Houston.”

“Houston, Skydock.”

“Fellas, we had a request from the Flight Director. Can you switch over to 22.4 for us?”

“22.4, Houston, over?”

“Affirmative, Skydock,” came the reply from the ground.

Ken took a beat to look over at Boston.

“Uh. Roger that, Houston. Switching over in thirty seconds, mark,” Ken said. He adjusted the radio controls accordingly. Boston abandoned his work of replacing the water filters and floated over to Ken. It was a meaningless gesture considering their privacy on board the station, but it still felt right for a covert conversation.

“What’s up?” Boston asked.

“22.4 is what they use for secure comms. Spy sat acting up maybe?” Ken said, venturing a guess.

Boston responded with a shrug.

A moment later they heard the voice of John Young, the new head of the astronaut office.

“Ken, Boston, this is John,” said the ninth man to walk on the Moon.

Boston mouthed a “holy crap” at Ken and got a nod in reply.

Ken, as the mission commander, spoke for the pair of them, “Yeah, we read you, John. What’s going on?”

“Sorry for the cloak and dagger procedure here, but what I’m about to say isn’t public knowledge yet.”

“Okay.”

“Dale Park and Rick Monaghan were in a car crash last night out in California,” John said.

“My God,” said Boston.

“Are they okay?” asked Ken.

“They survived. Dale is a bit shaken up. He hit his head. Rick is in a bad way, though. His leg is broken. He’ll be on crutches for the next six weeks,” John said.

“The Eagle testing,” Ken said.

“Exactly. Both of you have been trained on Eagle hardware and procedures. You’re qualified. It’s looking more and more like you’d be our best option. If we were to keep Intrepid’s timetable, we could fit her out with some more gear and consumables. It would let us extend her mission through early July,” John said.

“Which means extending us through early July,” Ken said.

“For now, this is a request, not an order. I know this isn’t quite what you’d planned, but it’s a chance to keep our timetable and get the both of you some flight time in the new lander. If you’ll help us out, I won’t forget it when it comes to assignments in the future,” John said.

“That’s certainly a tempting offer, John. Can you give us a little time? Maybe let me get on the loop with Martha and talk it over with her?” Ken asked.

“I’ll make some arrangements. I’ll have it setup and I’ll get the details to you in the next hour or two.”

“Roger that. Boston and I will talk about it up here in the meantime,” Ken said.

“Okay, we’ll switch back to primary comms now,” John said.

Ken moved the controls accordingly and they both took off their headsets.

Ken shrugged, “What do you think?”

“New hardware and more time up here? Where’s the dotted line?” Boston said.

“Yeah, it’ll be fun. Martha isn’t going to like it though,” Ken said.

“Astronaut wives are the most unsung heroes of the space program,” Boston said, pushing off to resume his work.

“So, you’ve got no advice?” Ken asked.

“If I did, would you really want to take it?” Boston asked.

“Fair point. Get back to work, rookie,” Ken said, watching Boston float into the next module.



17 June 1984

Eagle 1 – Lunar Shuttle Test Flight

Orbital Inclination: 29°

Altitude: 278 mi


The black CRT with the green text might have been state of the art, but, no matter how many times he saw it, on a spacecraft, it just reminded him of the ship from Alien.

Ken Borden had had a chance to run a couple of simulator missions in the old Apollo LEM’s from ten years ago. The cockpit had been cramped and he’d spent the afternoon bumping into his fictional LMP as they’d gone through some maneuvers and a landing and ascent. It had been a fun day of training, but ultimately it hadn’t given him much insight into this current situation.

He and Boston sat in the command seats of the Eagle prototype. She was the first fully-functional model to roll off the line in California. Delivered to Skydock two weeks ago, they’d spent a fortnight checking her systems and refamiliarizing themselves with the controls. Their last simulator time had been in December, but they were still ready to go.

The test program had been worked out more than a year ago. A series of burns designed to test the propulsion and life support systems through a simulated series of landings. Mission parameters called for the Eagles to perform up to three landings and launches. This translated to a series of burns of varying lengths, followed by intermittent pauses. The orbital mechanics, being what they were, the flight plan kept the Eagle in the same orbital inclination as Skydock, but its altitude varied with each engine burn.

With the third landing simulation completed, Ken and Boston now found themselves with one final burn to finish the program.

“Houston, Eagle, we are ready to confirm the burn parameters for the final firing. Eagle’s computers have got their data. We’d like to put it side by side with yours and if we all agree, we’ll be in good shape, over,” Boston said.

Ken had been in charge for the last two data comparisons, so he let Boston run the show this time while he stretched his legs.

The cabin had six seats. In an emergency, they could pack in ten people, but they’d have to dump every bit of excess cargo in that spot. The cabin could be confused for a miniature version of a commercial airliner interior. The “ceiling” was lined with cargo containers that would be packed to the brim on the way down and fairly empty on the way back up. Entry and exit were done via a docking hatch at the rear and another on top, just like the old days. On the exterior, a ladder could be lowered from the hatch when the Eagle reached the lunar surface. The ship had four exterior cameras that could send their feeds to a CRT in the cockpit.

The life support and propulsion systems were under the fuselage and gave the craft a bulbous, spindly look. The classic LEM design had been updated but not overhauled. The ascent and descent engines were replaced with one, more reliable system. The overall design was bigger, of course, bulkier, but it had a much longer service life. The ship wasn’t designed to house astronauts for extended periods. Just like a commercial plane, the plan was to get there, get out and then do it all over again next time.

Solar panels, a mainstay of every spacecraft design after the near-disasters of Apollo’s 13 and 22, supplemented the fuel cells and the OMS thrusters could, theoretically, provide up to sixty percent of the downward thrust of the main engine in an emergency. This would likely not allow an Eagle to abort to lunar orbit, but would, hopefully, allow it to find a stable place to land, thereby allowing those aboard to survive until being rescued.

Ken looked around and pulled at the collar of his suit. He didn’t relish the idea of waiting in this small space with five other astronauts for a day or more while the base sent out a rover to retrieve them. With any luck, like so many anticipated contingencies, that situation would never come to pass. With the space program, as with the rest of life, anticipating a problem often prevented its emergence. The situations that created the most danger were the ones that were never previously considered.

Boston waved him back over to the command chairs. Ken swung his legs over the top of the left hand seat and slithered down into the chair.

“How we lookin’, rook?”

“The numbers check out,” Boston said, holding a clipboard up to the CRT to let Ken compare Houston’s data to Eagle’s.

Ken peered back and forth and checked the delta-V parameters. “Should be fine, yeah.”

“We’ve got thirty minutes ‘til we light it up. You want to get some food?”

“Nah, I’ll wait ‘til we’re back home. You go ahead though, I’m gonna read,” Ken said.

“You still on Orwell?” Boston asked.

“No way, I finished that a while back,” Ken said.

“What are you reading now?” Boston asked.

“Brave New World.”
 
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