The sad news brought general Braden to Christmas Island immediately. Shortly after his arrival, a board of inquiry began a search for the causes of the accident. But such was the destruction, and so completely burned and crushed were the pieces of wreckage, that the board was unable to assign any reason to the disaster beyond a wholly hypothetical conclusion that a certain relay must have failed. The particular one selected was the relay which shuts off the flow of propellants to the main booster motor when the second stage is ready to take over. It was assumed that this relay had functioned prematurely, thus depriving the ship of power at the most critical phase of the ascent.
Immediately the launching of ferry vessels was interrupted for a week, and every switching relay of every Sirius vessel was carefully examined. The old space men on Christmas Island muttered that the board of inquiry might have done better to call the thing an act of God, for they knew that relays are always the scapegoats in the rocket business when obscurity cloaks the unforeseen. Ever since the first liquid rocket flew, the relay has suffered criticism despite its reputation for reliability and its manifold uses in telephones, power stations and aircraft.
Considerable damage to the project was caused by the loss of Andromeda, chiefly in that four able men had perished. These men's vast experience in space would long be missed by the Space Forces, while their many companions and friends sorrowed greatly.
The absence of the ship itself was easier to compensate, for production of Sirius vessels was in full swing at United Spacecraft, and there was no difficulty in adding one more vessel to the line of production. It was, in a sense, fortunate that Andromeda had been a propellant carrier rather than ferrying dry cargo, for no scarce component of a Mars vessel had been lost.
But considerable damage had been done to the installations on Christmas Island by the shock wave engendered by the huge explosion.
The hangar where the returned top stages were overhauled and inspected looked as though a blockbuster had struck close to it. Fortunately there had been but one top stage in work at the time, but this was so badly distorted as to be fit only for the junk pile. In the repair shed, where baby boosters were overhauled, a traveling overhead crane had jumped its rails and descended upon two boosters that lay below it, damaging them severely. As though by a miracle, the working crews had survived without a scratch.
The nitric acid supply line from the harbor storage tanks to the launching sites was kinked by the shock in several places and leaked considerably. Several filling pumps and their motors were destroyed by acid corrosion.
A test of the complicated wiring system connecting the launching sites with the operating bunker showed a wide variety of malfunctions. It had to be laid up for extensive repairs.
The big assembly building near Andromeda's launching site, where the three stages of Sirius vessels were fitted together, had all its windows blown out, and several of the men working there suffered glass cuts.
Even at the relatively distant harbor, ceilings had dropped, windows had been broken, and door frames had been sprung.
Aside from the loss of Andromeda herself, there was several hundred thousand dollars damage and a delay of two weeks for the whole operation.
Andromeda's, however, was not to be the only accident to cause loss of life in Braden's ferry operation. Some three months later, Orion fell victim to a sorry fate. Orion had passed the transonic speed range and was approaching the velocity of 1,000 m/sec without incident. Suddenly the flight path began to fluctuate. Observers later reported that she had yawed to the left and that the contrail behind her fiery jet then became wavy. A few seconds later, the vessel broke apart. The aftermost portion blew up in an explosion whose shock wave was audible at the launching site much later. The smaller forepart of the ship continued upwards in a steep ballistic parabola, passed its maximum ordinate, and fell with still increasing velocity into the sea. There had been no radio calls from Orion.
Flight Control immediately dispatched aircraft and rescue boats to the point of impact given by the radar stations, but not a trace of the ship could be found before it was engulfed by the ocean. After several hours of search, a survivor was picked up in an exhausted condition by a rescue boat, his rubber raft having functioned in the nick of time.
Sergeant Kenneth R. Andrews had been the radio operator of the unfortunate Orion and reported the accident as follows. The gyroscopic steering gear of the big booster had malfunctioned for no ascertainable reason. Andrews had noticed a sudden sharp tilt of the vessel from her programmed heading, accompanied by a disagreeable centrifugal acceleration. This motion was arrested by a returning couple, followed by a swing in the opposite direction and three or four violent oscillations. The skipper had punched the emergency cutoff button in fear that the high angle of attack might rupture the whole ship.
Then he released the big booster which was at once decelerated and separated by its huge 'chute. He ordered the crew to don the helmets of their pressure suits and to attempt to abandon ship at maximum ordinate. Here the stagnation air pressure would be aminimum and thus offer the least hindrance to exit from the still upward-bound ship.
After receiving the order, there was but a minute before the maximum ordinate was reached. The preparations for abandonment took place hurriedly. Andrews himself was shot out by his ejection seat into the thin atmosphere like a champagne cork. This moved him well away from the ship. He allowed himself to fall from the 40 km altitude of the maximum ordinate to 5 km before opening his 'chute to avoid congealing himself.
Whether anyone else got out he could not report. The rescue planes and boats continued the search for two days without further results.
Operation Mars had three more victims.
Captain Henry Burck of the Hercules was to experience an adventure sensational even to a veteran spaceman. Hercules had been climbing for 207 seconds and it was time for the speed indicator to throttle the thrust of the baby booster and ignite the top stage, which would then force itself away from the baby under its own power. The impulse signal was given correctly, and the painful acceleration of the baby booster diminished, the cover plates detached themselves, the top stage ignited properly.
Then it happened! The magnetic disconnector between the stages malfunctioned and no separation took place! Burck immediately pulled the emergency baby booster release, but the booster did not fall off.
Then Burck cut off the propellants to the top stage motor and waited tensely. A few seconds later the already weak thrust of the baby booster died entirely and, as the last propellants burned, a jar ran through the vessel flinging the men forward. The decelerating 'chute of the baby booster had opened! And the propellant-laden top stage was still clinging to it like a leech!
The crew glanced nervously at the Captain who, feigning indifference, was cudgeling his brains for a solution.
The ship's instruments showed a velocity of 6,420 meters per second, an altitude of 64 kilometers, and an angle of elevation to the horizon of 2.5 degrees. The weight of the baby booster, now exhausted of propellants, was 70 tons. It clung insistently to the top stage. The open deceleration 'chute was calculated for this weight only and was expected gradually to reduce velocity in the thin upper atmosphere. The top stage, still loaded with propellants, weighed 130 tons, so that the little 'chute was now attached to a full 200 tons.