Whittenberg never saw the rest of his crew again, except for his tail gunner. They landed not far from the coast, the young enlisted man suffering a fractured leg on impact. For eleven days they evaded capture, the big black officer carrying the young Louisiana airman on his back. The North Vietnamese, who had become very astute at tracking down American pilots, combed the area thoroughly while Whittenberg communicated via his survival radio with Navy search-and-rescue helicopters. The Navy choppers were able to drop some supplies, but couldn't risk exposure long enough to make a pickup. Finally, Whittenberg radioed for a raft, which was dropped to them on their final night. He carried his gunner to the coast and into the surf, then inflated the raft and started rowing. Just before dawn he popped a flare, and a Sikorsky Sea King plucked them out.
His entire crew received the Distinguished Flying Cross. Except for himself and his tail gunner, the award was made posthumously. How many airmen and B-52s had been saved that day by his actions was impossible to tell. All Whittenberg knew was that writing letters to his crew members' families afterward was the toughest thing he'd ever done in his life. He almost left the Air Force after that.
But he stayed. And his reputation grew. As squadron commander, then as wing commander. Then the stars started rolling his way. Every unit he'd touched was goosed to its top proficiency. During a duty tour in Washington he took time out to get a master's degree in international relations from Georgetown University, and after that he was named Superintendent of the Air Force Academy — a posting that made four stars almost a sure thing. It became everybody's foregone conclusion that he would eventually be CinCSAC–Commander in Chief, Strategic Air Command. It had been his dream. But just when the apple seemed his for the taking, the new President came into office, along with a latter-day gunslinger for a Vice President, and the two of them turned the Pentagon topsy-turvy to find just the right "Space Czar" for "their" space program. The computers kept spitting out Whittenberg's name. And so he landed in Cheyenne Mountain. He now wished he'd wound up anyplace else.
"All right," Whittenberg said. "I make it five minutes past OMS burn. Anything happen on your end, Chet?"
"Negative, sir," lamented McCormack through the speaker box. As Commander of Flight Operations, he considered the men on board Intrepid "his" astronauts.
Whittenbeig turned to Michael Dowd and asked, "How about it, Bull? Any deviation of their orbital path?"
The chief of staff's nickname, Bull, came partly from his linebacker build and pugnacious appearance. And his rough features reminded people of the bull on a package of Bull Durham chewing tobacco. All that was missing was a ring in his nose. He made one last query into the phone to the Spacetrack duty officer in SPADOC, then hung up and said, "No change in orbit, General."
"Very well," said Whittenberg, while rubbing his temples. "Of all the options Sir Isaac has outlined for us, I have decided that we will proceed on the premise that the Intrepid is dead in the water and cannot maneuver, but the crew is alive. We are to mount and execute a rescue operation with the priority of first saving the crew, then salvaging the payload. Since time is of the essence, we will not wait for the Spyglass pictures, but start immediately.'' He paused just a moment to let everyone absorb his comments, but no more than a moment, then turned to his deputy chief of staff for operations. ' 'Okay, Sir Isaac, what's our status?"
Like any four-star command structure, the SPACECOM staff was huge, but out of its giant organization chart an inner circle of advisers had emerged upon whom Whittenberg relied heavily. Lamborghini was the former fighter pilot who had an intelligence officer's instinct for finding the right answer; Bull — the two-star chief of staff — was Whittenberg's surrogate, who raised hell, jumped up and down, pounded the table, and made sure the staff's work was cranked out on time; and Sir Isaac, the operations man, was a one-man "brain trust" who spoke with a quiet, detached air. He'd never been a pilot, but he knew more about launch systems and the shuttle than anyone else inside or outside SPACECOM.
There were a few moments of silence as Sir Isaac fired up his meerschaum pipe again and contemplated the ceiling. Then, without consulting any notes, he said, "Of the shuttle fleet, Atlantis and Christa returned from the SDI platform just nine and twenty-one days ago, respectively, and are in the turnaround pipeline. Neither one could launch for another three weeks at the very least." He paused to release a puff into the air. "Discovery is slated to enter the Rockwell hangar at Palmdale in two days for scheduled maintenance, just as the Antares comes out. The Constellation in on the pad at the Cape, scheduled to launch in eight days for deployment of an Anik communications satellite and a COSMAX astronomical telescope."
Sir Isaac didn't say what everyone already knew — that the Columbia had long since been retired, and the new administration had ordered up four new shuttles to get their "Final Frontier" program on track. When the President announced to an open-mouthed press corps that his fiscally conservative administration was going to buy four new orbiters at a price tag of $2 billion apiece, the former auto executive couldn't help joking that he'd gotten a fleet discount. Yet in the same speech he'd also announced the newest shuttle would be named Christa, in honor of the teacher who'd died aboard the Challenger, and for whom he'd wept on that fateful day.
"So all we have in the gate is the Constellation?" asked the Bull.
"That's correct," replied Sir Isaac. "The soonest we could get the Constellation off the pad would be seventy-two hours, give or take, depending on Intrepid's flight path at the time. I haven't run a rendezvous flight plan through the computer yet. But if we do use the Constellation that presents us with two problems."
Whittenberg already knew what they were, but wanted them verbalized anyway. "Continue," he ordered.
"Yes, sir. Since the Intrepid is in a polar orbit, we'll have to extricate the Constellation's payload. It's way too heavy for a polar launch. That means we'll have to send up the Anik and COSMAX later, and that screws up the scheduling pipeline for at least a year."
Sir Isaac was referring to one of the basic limitations of orbital mechanics. The earth rotates from west to east at about 900 mph. This provides equatorial launches, traveling east out of the Kennedy Space Center, with extra lifting power — sort of like jumping from a running start. Unfortunately, this "rotational boost" is lost when a shuttle is fired into a polar orbit — which is sort of like jumping from a standing position. As a result, equatorial launches from Florida could handle payloads almost twice as heavy as polar launches from Vandenberg Air Force Base in California.
"Also," continued Sir Isaac, "there's another problem with going out of Florida. We've only launched a few satellites into a polar orbit from the Cape, and that was back in the sixties. As I recall, those rockets were launched due east over the Atlantic, then were put through a dogleg maneuver that sent them south. There's no way we could execute a dogleg maneuver with the Constellation. It would require too much propellant. If we launch the Constellation from the Cape it will have to go directly south and pass over populated areas during its ascent. I suppose such an action would require Presidential approval of some sort."