Ryan M. Patrick
Lag Delay
The characters and events portrayed in this book are fictitious. Any similarity to real persons, living or dead, is coincidental and not intended by the author.
ASIN: B0CRP1SDFF
This book has been through a Pentagon prepublication security review.
EPIGRAPH
For my wife, who somehow puts up with me.
PROLOGUE
“Ten, nine, eight,” the OuterTek webcast presenter said as Captain Michael DePresti watched the numbers at the bottom of his launch console count down towards T-0.
Everything had been building towards this moment for the last three years.
As the ILIAD mission’s Shrike Heavy rocket government mission integration manager (GMIM), DePresti had worked his ass off to integrate the NASA payload headed to Venus. The rocket that it sat atop was nearly three miles away, at Launch Complex-39a outside the floor-to-ceiling windows of the historic control center that had commanded the Apollo and Shuttle missions of years past.
The sun was setting behind them and the Atlantic Ocean, a deep blue expanse to the east, stood as a beautiful backdrop to the most exciting moment in spaceflight: a rocket launch.
His heart pounded at a million beats per second in his chest.
“Seven, six, five,” the presenter continued.
DePresti took a deep breath. It had not been an easy journey to get here. Keeping NASA, the Space Force, and OuterTek in line had seemed impossible at times. Still, this was probably the most exciting moment of his life.
“Four, three…”
He snuck a peak at the graph pinned to the top-left monitor at his quad-screen console, a line chart continually updated with live numbers from the rocket.
Just an hour before, he had been alerted by his Aerospace mission assurance lead that a string of sensors on the rocket’s second stage were giving odd readings. The man, an older Ph.D. following along from Space Systems Command’s (SSC) STARS facility in El Segundo, had explained to DePresti that there wasn’t much danger to the rocket — the numbers were all in-family from previous launches.
However, these parts, mostly thermistors and pressure sensors, gave different values than expected from SSC and Aerospace’s rigorous pedigree review prior to the launch campaign. The sensitive payload needed to remain in certain temperature, pressure, and cleanliness ranges in order to prevent damage. If the sensors didn't work as planned, the billion-dollar mission’s success was in jeopardy.
DePresti wasn’t convinced of his team’s assessment. There was no reason the numbers would be anything other than expected, especially with a mature launch vehicle like the Shrike Heavy. If the sensor values remained in-family, the launch could proceed as planned. If any of them jumped, the rocket’s flight computer would abort at T-1 second and the launch vehicle would remain on the pad.
DePresti swallowed a lump in his throat. He was okay with a recycle and another launch attempt in a few days once all of the consumables had been replenished, but his parents had flown in from Philadelphia to watch the launch from a site just south of LC-39a on the nearby Banana River. Their flight back was tomorrow morning, and if the Shrike Heavy remained on the ground, they would miss his launch.
“Two, one, ignition.”
The Shrike Heavy’s twenty-seven main engines ignited their blend of RP-1 and LOx in a carefully planned sequence. The blast from the faraway pad was so brilliant that DePresti had to shield his eyes with his hand. He looked up at the graph showing the second-stage sensors in question. They were still within the system’s limits, but still not what he had expected to see.
“Liftoff.”
The giant rocket — the most powerful in the world — lifted off of the pad on its twenty-first mission.
Hoots, hollers, and cheers went up from around the firing room.
“We are off the pad,” the presenter said with a thousand-watt grin.
“Liftoff,” DePresti echoed to himself with a smile of his own.
He high-fived his boss — Colonel Chad Hawke, seated at the console next to him — and returned to his monitor.
This mission wasn’t over yet.
This was one of the most complicated mission profiles that any rocket could fly. The Shrike Heavy’s second stage would place the Aering-built ILIAD payload, consisting of a relay satellite and landing module containing two humanoid robots and their associated ground support gear, in a temporary transfer orbit, then at just the right moment do an intense burn that would place the stage on a hyperbolic orbit that would hopefully put them around Venus in just a few months. A lot of things needed to happen for the payload to arrive there safely.
He used his phone to text his girlfriend, an Aering engineer who would be one of the future remote operators of the robots. But, she didn’t respond, likely busy with her own part of the mission.
DePresti put his cellphone down and made a landline call to the Aerospace lead, located at a hangar at the neighboring Cape Canaveral Space Force Station. The other man should have been in the room with him but had been pushed to an overflow location due to higher-priority VIPs. “Are you watching this?” he asked.
“You bet I am,” the other man said. “It’s one hell of a launch.”
He smiled. “Any concerns?”
“No, everything looks okay from here,” the Aerospace man said. “We’ll continue to monitor that string on stage 2.”
“Thanks,” DePresti said. He ended the call.
The rocket was completely out of view of the windows, so he tracked its progress on the webcast and via a live trajectory feed on his computer. Thankfully, using his four monitors, he could keep track of the sensors he was worried about on one while watching it ascend on another.
Most of the team was still taking it all in. Col Hawke and a few OuterTek executives were in the process of making plans for a post-launch party. Other side conversations popped up around him, but he kept his focus on his console.
For the most part, their jobs were done. The rocket did all of the work. The team remained in case of an anomaly to the launch system.
A few minutes later, the side cores shut off and separated using small quantities of explosives. They started their trajectory back to a pair of landing sites located at the far south end of the geographic cape.
The center core continued on with the second stage and payload on top of it.
DePresti started cycling through the different video feeds available at his workstation. There was a view of the bottom of the rocket, showing the curvature of the Earth as it ascended. Another one showed the payload inside of its fairing, and yet another displayed the interior second-stage LOx tank, the blue-purple liquid pulsing in a mesmerizing fashion.
He made another call back to the Aerospace lead. Everything was still good, the engineer insisted. No concerns about the payload or launch vehicle. Everything was proceeding as planned.
DePresti let out a sigh of relief, releasing all of the pent-up pressure built up inside of him. All of the hard work that he had put in was finally paying off.
The Shrike Heavy was well past max-q, the point of maximum aerodynamic pressure on the launch vehicle, and had passed the Karman line into outer space.
The next step was stage separation. The main booster separated from the second stage and began its oath to an autonomous landing barge located out in the middle of the South Atlantic.
A few minutes after that, the ground team prepared to jettison the fairing that encapsulated the payload, the two halves of which would then float down using parachutes to be captured by specially equipped ships downrange near the barge. After that, the payload would be exposed to the cold vacuum of space.