Perigee (20 page)

“Rob, I need to hijack your CapCom for a sec. You’re welcome to listen in.”

“Umm, okay…” He didn’t know what to make of her being in here when she should have gone home hours ago. “We just have some current-day planning items to uplink first. Can you give us a few minutes?”

“Sorry, no. Their plans are about to change,” she said curtly, handing him a memo on Agency letterhead:

TO: MISSION OPERATIONS PERSONNEL

FROM: RONALD R. BLEDSOE

SUBJ: ISS SPECIAL TASKING

EFFECTIVE IMMEDIATELY, BLUE TEAM FLIGHT DIRECTOR AUDREY WILKES IS LEADING A SPECIAL-PURPOSE PROX OPS MISSION INVOLVING ISS AND DOCKED VEHICLES. ALL STATION AND CREW ACTIVITIES ARE NOW SUBJECT TO HER DIRECTION UNTIL FURTHER NOTICE. YOUR FULL COOPERATION IS EXPECTED AND APPRECIATED. ADDRESS ANY QUESTIONS TO MY OFFICE OR TO JSC DIRECTOR DR. ABBOT.

RONALD R. BLEDSOE, DIRECTOR

MISSION OPERATIONS

Pursing his lips, he clipped the memo into the flight director’s log and made a few notes. Once finished, he nodded towards the cable news feed now displayed in a corner of the wall screen. “Wouldn’t have anything to do with current events, I suppose?”

She smiled. “You always were a sharp guy, Rob.”

37

Aboard the International Space Station (ISS)

Hastily completed in 2011 after years of stalled construction, the ISS was now crewed with a full complement of six astronauts and cosmonauts. They swapped out in six-month rotations, now dependent on the aging Russian Soyuz system for rides to and from orbit. The European Space Agency was now handling the bulk of resupply missions with their “Jules Verne” class of robotic tugs; ESA had been talking about turning it into a manned space vehicle for years, but the wheels of industry turned slowly in Europe.

The United States, for all its dynamic entrepreneurism, hadn’t fared much better the last several years. The death of the Shuttle and Orion programs had occurred during particularly hard economic times, and contracts for private companies to supply the station had never made it past early promises. NASA had insisted on so much oversight that their potential vendor base had dried up and gone its own way, selling short tourist rides into space. There were up-and-down cargo missions to be had, but crew transportation never made it past the talking stages.

So, the mostly American-built station continued to rely on Russian equipment just to get there. It was a touchy relationship at best.

As it was, the U.S. insisted on keeping their astronauts in command of the Station. After being designated a National Laboratory, they at least had some legal standing to do so.

The current commander was Simon Poole, a former Navy submariner. After decades of pulling astronauts from the ranks of test pilots and scientists, the Agency had finally started listening to some of their psychologists: any long-term space missions could benefit most from the people who’d actually done similar things.

If anything, sub drivers had it worse, he’d sometimes thought. Crews on the strategic nuke boats, or “Boomers,” often found their normal 90-day tours extended, spending the entire time underwater with absolutely no outside contact. At least up here they could occasionally email their families. And there were windows.

Finally, if conditions grew dire enough, home was just a day trip away on a Soyuz lifeboat.
If something went really wrong on a sub
, he’d reminisce,
we’d have been lucky to make it back to the surface
. That would have probably involved getting just close enough to hopefully get everyone out the escape trunks, left to swim the last few dozen feet to the surface. Things could get out of hand on a sub just as fast as in space, he’d come to realize. So does one prefer to drown at bone-crushing depths or asphyxiate in a freezing vacuum?

Otherwise, Poole found life on Station a lot like the old days. He grew used to the taste of the food, the smells, and the constant background hum of life-support machinery. He’d also managed to grow a full beard, a luxury the Navy had long allowed its sub drivers on cruise.

Dealing with some of the personalities was more of a challenge. The Navy employed agonizingly thorough psychological exams to select their sub crews. NASA claimed they did likewise for spaceflight crews, but from what he’d seen the evidence was unconvincing. It didn’t help that the Agency hired too many astronauts in the first place. There was simply no realistic chance of all of them getting even one mission. Throw highly-educated, naturally competitive people into an environment with very little real work to do and problems ensued rapidly.
If they’re serious about sending people to Mars, they’ll have to do better than this.

And for that goal, he also knew the public relations machine would have to get past its institutional fear of nuclear propulsion. He’d lived in very close proximity to reactors for twenty years, and had no patience for what he saw as yet another irrational cultural phobia. Far more people had died in coal-mining accidents than they had ever lost on nuke boats, and for comparatively mundane reasons.

It was simply the most practical way to do long-duration missions all the way around, he thought. And if the day ever came, it would make a lot more sense for the Agency to recruit astronauts from the submarine service than those hotshot zoomies they’d been catering to for the past fifty years.

He had already been up several hours, roaming the complex just as he’d been accustomed to as a nuke boat skipper:
it’s always my watch
. The crew had just finished their morning wakeup routine and was getting ready to receive the daily plan from Houston.

Renee Watson, a “scientist-astronaut,” swam purposefully down the corridor looking for him. She was on comm duty with Houston this morning, which clearly irritated her.
Whatever undergrad-level experiment she’s running
, he thought,
always takes precedence over actual crew duties.
It was one more budding psychosis for him to manage.

“Simon, you need to come down to the control block,” she said, actually sounding serious. Maybe she was finally starting to think like a crew member—that would make for a good day, at least.

“What’s wrong?”

“Nothing with the station,” she assured him. “Houston needs you on comm. Flight director asked for you personally,” she said. “But they’re totally screwing up our activity plans.” Her customary irritation hadn’t taken long to show itself.

Maybe not so much
, he thought. Clearly she felt there were better things to do than relay messages to the Station commander. But something was up. He pushed off for the main control block, making one smooth pass through two open hatchways. Floating up to the comm station, he slipped his toes under the foot restraints to secure himself.

“Houston, CDR. How copy?”

There was a crackle and hiss, followed by the telltale
beep
of a radio transmission from Houston.

“CDR, Houston. We have new priority tasking for you. I am bringing Blue Team flight director on freq now. She needs to speak with you directly.”

“Understand Houston. Standing by for Flight.”
That’s strange
, he thought, then asked one of his European crewmates watching over systems behind him: “Gerard, anything going on I should know about? System problems, new orbital junk?”

“No system anomalies. One new transient uplinked from J-SpOC overnight,” the Frenchman replied. “A failed satellite launch, possibly. Our orbits intersect in ninety-seven hours but altitudes are clear.”

Beep.

“CDR, this is Flight Director Wilkes.”

He knew her fairly well from his own stint as a CapCom. “Morning, Aud. Shouldn’t you be home in bed right now? Over.”

Beep.

“They’re telling me the same thing down here, Simon. Have you seen yesterday’s news feed yet?”

He looked back at Gerard, who shrugged his shoulders. There had been nothing for a couple of days, though the crew had customarily been too busy to notice or care.

“Negative, Houston. Why don’t you fill us in?”

Beep.

“Stand by for uplink on channel Alpha. Stay on freq, I’ll provide the color commentary.”

About ten minutes elapsed. Audrey gave him a few minutes to watch the video, and then filled him in on what they were going to do about it.

Gerard spoke first. That certainly explained the new transient. “What is your phrase, ‘mushroomed’? Kept in the dark while they cover us with…manure?” This seemed like information they would’ve wanted to share sooner.

Poole floated in stunned silence as he absorbed her plan, and then reached for the station’s intercom system. There were only six crewmembers, but the complex was so big that there was no telling how strung apart they might be. “All hands assemble in the wardroom in five minutes. Repeat, five minutes. If you’re not there, you’re wrong.”

It was starting to feel like he was back on the boat, all right. “Sweepers, sweepers, man your brooms!” he joked excitedly and pushed off for the common area.

…

Calling the cramped space a “wardroom” was being charitable, but naval traditions had been taking over since the first crew expedition. The station commander back then had made it a priority to mount a big brass ship’s bell by the main entry airlock.

Like everything else onboard, it was a multi-functional area. A small table, just barely large enough for six people to gather around, shared space with galley, entertainment and exercise equipment.

Gerard came in right behind Poole, having already heard the conversation with Houston. His face gave away nothing, stereotypically detached French. Poole knew better: the man was a talented engineer and had been an invaluable systems expert over the last few months.

Sergei Petrov, one of the Russian Soyuz pilots, came in next. His counterpart, Natalia, was close behind; they were the first married cosmonauts to fly as a crew. Setting them up together in shared quarters had been difficult, as it was not something the complex’s designers had ever planned for. But in Poole’s opinion, this was an important experiment for any future long-duration missions.

Max Becker, a German ESA astronaut, floated in after a few minutes. He was wiping his hands clean of dirt, as it was his day to work in the hydroponic gardens. Another useful experiment; it would be far better for long-haul crews to grow their own food from seeds instead of hauling it all into orbit pre-processed.

Renee Watson brought up the rear, which was about as Poole had come to expect. Her face was pinched up; they were once again interrupting something terribly important. She’d have to get over that real quick, he thought. What he was about to tell them would be their entire reason for existence the next couple of days.

Poole stuck his Velcro boots onto what passed for a floor at the head of the table. Floating there, he crossed his arms as the rest of the crew took their accustomed places. Even this bunch of prima-donnas eventually found their own pecking order, he observed.

“I just got off comm with Houston, and they’ve got a problem.” He hoped someone would notice the pun, but if so they were silent about it.
So much for opening with some levity
. They were a notoriously humorless bunch.

“Okay then, I’ll just let them do the talking for me.” He pulled a tablet computer free from the bulkhead, and brought up the news feed from the ground for everyone to see. It only took a few minutes to get the story across, and for the speculation to begin. Everyone clearly had their own ideas about what may have caused it, which overcame the offense of Houston withholding an otherwise important news story from them for the last two days.

“Runaway engines? How the hell does that happen? This isn’t the Fifties, for crying out loud.”

“Negative-feedback fly-by-wire, possibly. Airbus had a similar problem some years ago,” said one of the Russians.

That brought a disdainful snort from Max. “Most unlikely. Those stories are…how do you say…baloney? Old wives tales.” The French and Germans could always be counted on to furiously protect their state enterprise.

Poole saw it was time to jump in. “Okay people, settle down.
How and why
doesn’t concern us. What to do now, that’s the issue at hand.”

Renee was nonplussed. “What to do? If Houston’s concerned about orbital debris, they’ll send up a plan to re-boost. That thing can’t be much of a collision threat, anyway.”

He shook his head. “I’m afraid that’s not the point, Doctor. They’re not debris.”

“Then would you mind getting to the point, Commander? Otherwise I fail to see how this concerns any of us. This is tragic, a senseless accident of someone’s overgrown ego to be sure. But just because it’s in space doesn’t make it our problem,” she sniffed.

“You’re half right. We’ve no responsibility for this at all. But we
are
the only ones in a position to do something about it.” He turned to the station engineer: “Gerard, can you bring up our orbits on the monitor over there?”