And on, and on, in a wild feedback process, as the S-NB’s instrument unit strove to bring the ship back to an unreachable flight path.
Where the hell was Conlig?
“Booster, Flight. Booster.”
Christ, Fred Michaels thought, watching from the Viewing Room at the back of the MOCR. I do not want this bird aborted.
It would be a very bad time to foul up.
The new Reagan administration was shaping itself up after its landslide, and Michaels was already gloomy about the future. He figured it was Ted Kennedy’s defection from Carter during the primaries that had done for the peanut farmer, although Michaels suspected Carter’s time might have been up anyhow. And here came Reagan, rattling his saber at the Russians over Poland and Afghanistan, and promising to get the hostages out of Iran… Maybe Reagan would be gung ho about space; nobody knew.
Meanwhile Michaels had lost a close political buddy in the White House, and his Kennedy card was looking a little worn.
Anyhow, the Apollo-N flight had so far gotten NASA some extensive coverage — some of it even favorable, as it showed the elaborate precautions the Agency was taking over its nuclear materials. It had even crowded out the “Who Shot JR?” hoopla that was fascinating everybody. Michaels did not want to turn those front pages into damning coverage of another Apollo disaster; not now, not ever…
Bert Seger, a few rows back from Michaels in the Viewing Room, knew this was NASA’s most controversial flight since the military crews of Skylab A. There had been a march and protest rally by campaigners at Kennedy today, people with kids, and banners saying REMEMBER THREE MILE ISLAND. The Cape security people had kept them well away from the launch site, and from the main public viewing areas. But Seger, hotfooting it back from Tyuratam for this launch, had had to work his way past it all.
Seger had been cocooned in the project for years. He’d found the anger he’d witnessed in those massed faces, on the news programs and on NASA’s closed-circuit loops, startling, deeply troubling.
Of even more concern to him was the grumbling he’d heard from inside the Agency. Some of the astronauts, that loudmouth Joe Muldoon, for instance, had been getting a little too vocal about the flight-readiness, or lack of it, of NERVA. Fortunately, however, Muldoon was safely out of the way, on the other side of the Moon.
But Muldoon and the others had planted seeds of doubt in Seger. Had he been pushing too hard? If anything went badly wrong today, then after bulling through the protests, NASA might, after all, smear nuclear fuel all over the eastern seaboard.
Yesterday, in the Operations Building at Kennedy, the Apollo-N crew had given Seger a small, informal photo, in a brass frame. It showed the three of them in their space suits, smiling, and was signed by them all. The inscription was: To Bert — In Your Hands.
“Booster, Flight. Booster, damn it.”
Donnelly’s voice was persistent in Conlig’s headset, like a buzzing insect. It made it hard to think.
The mission rules were clear enough. In the event of a failure like this at such a point in the launch, Conlig, as Booster, should push his abort switch. The little icon representing the Saturn continued to deviate from its path. But…
But the deviation wasn’t as bad as it had looked at first. And there clearly wasn’t any tumbling.
The S-NB was a smart bird. It could exert a lot of control over its trajectory by gimbaling its engine bells. It looked as if the booster was doing all it could to keep to its target path. The trajectory was still under control.
Conlig forced himself to reply to Donnelly. “Uh, Flight, Booster.”
“Jesus Christ, Booster. Go.”
Conlig took a deep breath. “Flight, Booster. We seem to have good control at this time.”
Then calls began to come in from the other controllers: Guidance, flight dynamics, the systems guys in the row behind Conlig. Apart from the oscillation around the trajectory, everything was performing nominally.
Donnelly said: “You sure, Booster?”
Are you really sure you have this bird under control? Are you sure you shouldn’t ask for an abort?
Are you sure you know what you’re doing, Conlig?
Conlig felt as if the room, the world, was closing in around him; the headset seemed to burn on his ears, and the little Saturn icon on the plot board was like an image of his own wavering determination.
I should abort. But the thing is flying.
“You sure, Booster?” Donnelly pressed.
“Data indicates it, Flight.”
“Roger.” I’ll trust you, Conlig.
Conlig stared at the icon, willing it to keep on climbing, up toward orbit.
He knew it was in nobody’s interests to abort if they didn’t have to.
The burn lasted two and a half minutes. Apollo-N was boosted five miles higher and another 250 miles downrange.
Then the S-NB stage shut down its NERVA engine.
Jones read off the DSKY display before him. “Natalie, you can tell the boys at Marshall that their rascally bird performed beautifully. Except that we’ve ended up in orbit ass-backwards.”
“Roger,” York replied laconically. “I’ll relay that, Chuck; thanks.”
Mike Conlig was aware of Natalie sitting, as capcom, just a few yards away from him.
I should have aborted. But I didn’t. I got away with it.
He didn’t turn; he didn’t want to meet Natalie’s eyes.
Donnelly felt some of the tension drain out of him.
He went around the horn, polling his controllers; they all reported a ship that was, in spite of everything, reasonably close to nominal. We got through it. How, I’ll never know.
Bert Seger knew they had been lucky. He determined to poke a hot stick up the asses of those guys from Marshall over this. The S-IC had pogoed. The Saturn first stage should not be letting them down, not after more than a decade of experience, not after so many flights.
Seger walked into the MOCR and leaned over Donnelly’s station. “I want you to make damn sure you’re confident about that NERVA engine of Marshall’s. Otherwise, bring those guys straight back down.”
Friday, November 28, 1980
APOLLO-N; LYNDON B. JOHNSON SPACE CENTER, HOUSTON
They shoved their pressure suits into net bags and crammed them under their couches; Jim Dana was wearing only a pair of Beta-cloth coveralls over his long johns.
He was a hundred miles up, a thousand miles downrange from the Cape, and covering five miles every second. There in his center couch, his feet pointed up at the stars, he was peering at his home planet through the Command Module’s window.
He couldn’t get over how beautiful the sunlit Earth was. It was a wall of color and light, gently curving, which divided the universe in two; cloud lay across land and ocean in brilliant white plumes, like feathers.
Ben Priest, to Dana’s right, was grinning at him. “How do you feel?”
“Like I was born to be up here.”
Chuck Jones unbuckled his seat belt and pushed himself out of the left-hand couch. He floated up toward the instrument panel. “Hot dawg,” he said. “We is in orbit, gentlemen. Welcome to the astronaut corps. Now all we’ve got to do is figure out if we can stay here.”
Priest and Jones set to work on checking out the craft’s flight path and velocity estimates with the ground stations and instrumentation aircraft. Dana could hear Jones humming as he worked. Meanwhile, Dana’s job was to make sure the guidance platform was aligned.