1. Home
  2. Creative
  3. Expedition Clueless

Off the Planet

  1. Launch day
  2. Houston, we have a hangover
  3. Mischief-making
  4. The Last Supper
  5. All aboard
  6. Final countdown
  7. Crispy critters
  8. Poekhali!
  9. On twin pillars of fire
  10. Barf time
  11. Orbital dreaming
  12. Appendix

Launch day

Shuttle prelaunch event timeline
Time Event
10:24 a.m.: ET fueling begins
10:49 a.m.: Crew wake-up
11:04 a.m.: Breakfast
12:53 p.m.: Final astronaut medical checks
2:04 p.m.: Lunch
2:19 p.m.: Begin NASA TV launch coverage
2:49 p.m.: Crew Photo *
3:19 p.m.: Weather Briefing (CDR, PLT, MS-1)
3:19 p.m.: Don flight suits (MS-2, Expedition Crew [MS-3, MS-4, MS-5]) *
3:29 p.m.: Don flight suits (CDR, PLT, MS-1) *
3:45 p.m.: Suit-up photo *
3:59 p.m.: Walkout/Depart for launch pad *
4:24 p.m.: Arrive at White Room and begin ingress *
5:44 p.m.: Close crew hatch *
6:34 p.m.: Start T-minus 20 hold
6:44 p.m.: Resume countdown
6:55 p.m.: Start T-minus 9 hold
7:40 p.m.: Resume countdown
7:44 p.m.: Planar window open
7:44 p.m.: APU start
7:49 p.m.:  Launch *
  • Asterisk (*) indicates televised events (times may vary slightly)
  • All times Eastern

Attired in their olive Strizh pressure suits, Sergei, Temir and Yurii stepped onto the painted squares marked inside with white Cyrillic letters on the concrete tarmac at Baikonur: KK for commander, VP for pilot and BI for flight engineer. Behind them stood the four crew mission specialists. Sergei straightened and snapped off a salute to the general standing at attention in front of him. “Comrade General, my crew and I have been made ready, and now we are reporting that we are ready to fly the Buran mission.”

“I give you permission to fly,” said the general in the ritual answer. “I wish you a successful flight, and a gentle landing.” In the distance the Buran-Energiya stack could be seen, towering over the endless Kazakhstan plains, soon to soar into the clear blue sky above ….

“You know, Yura,” said Sergei morosely, using his friend’s nickname, “If things had been different, I would have been flying the Buran shuttle to the latest Mir.”

“Da, that’s just wishful thinking, now,” Yurii replied as they trudged across Space Shuttle launch pad Complex 39B after disembarking from the Astrovan, trailing behind the rest of the Shuttle crew. All carried olive-colored helmet bags. An AH-64 Apache helicopter gunship hovered protectively overhead; it had accompanied the Astrovan on the way to the launch pad.

They spoke quietly in Russian. The pair was, along with their American commander Joe, being taken up to the International Space Station to replace the Expedition Crew currently residing there.

“Oh, cheer up, Seryozha,” – Yurii lightly punched his friend on the shoulder – “at least we’re going up into space at last!”

Sergei smiled despite himself. “I think NASA will be glad to see the back of us.”

“I don’t think they’ve got over us being arrested.” They both spluttered with barely-suppressed laughter. During their stay in Houston, they had visited a nightclub and managed to start a drunken brawl. Yurii, already inebriated and looking for a fight, began chatting up another patron’s attractive lady friend. The man, considerably larger than Yurii, threatened him and called him a “little Commie bastard”. Taking offense to that, Yurii taunted him; the enraged Texan threw a punch at Yurii, and soon it was a free-for-all.

The cosmonauts (somewhat bruised and battered but otherwise triumphant) had spent a night in the local lock-up before being bailed out by NASA and RKA management and furiously reprimanded (not for the first time, they were punished by having a week’s pay docked – not that this had much of an effect on their behavior). The agencies managed to persuade the police to drop charges, and paid the nightclub’s owner for the damage caused. The incident even rated a mention on the Houston Chronicle website.

Red Menace: Cosmonauts arrested after nightclub brawl

by James Oberg

Houston – Two Russian cosmonauts were taken into custody last night after allegedly inciting a brawl which caused an estimated $1500 in damages to the Lone Star nightclub. According to witnesses, the fight is believed to have erupted after an altercation between one of the cosmonauts and a regular patron over the latter’s female companion. The cosmonauts were charged with public intoxication and disorderly conduct.

Houston police released the pair on bail this morning after NASA and the Russian Space Agency interceded. After negotiations with the nightclub’s owner, both space agencies have agreed to pay repair costs in return for the owner not pressing charges.

The cosmonauts, Yurii Zolotyov and Sergei Konstantinov, are currently in training as part of an Expedition Crew for the International Space Station. According to one insider at NASA, who did not wish to be identified, the pair are notorious trouble-makers. “No-one knows how they managed to get onto an Expedition Crew,” the source said. “They’ve done nothing but wreak havoc since they got here.”

NASA and the RASA said that the cosmonauts had been “disciplined,” but declined to make any further comment on the incident.

“We are famous, already!” Yurii grinned, recalling the newspaper article.

“Notorious, more like.”

It wasn’t the first time the pair had been in such trouble; they had gained notoriety in Zvyozdyi Gorodok, Star City – location of the TsPK, Yurii Gagarin Cosmonaut Training Center – for similar escapades.

Joe glanced back at them irritably. “He doesn’t look happy.”

“He never is. I don’t think he likes us,” observed Yurii.

“At least he can’t understand us.” Despite several months of language training, Joe still struggled with Russian and could only speak a few sentences; it was not an easy language to master. Sergei and Yurii had learned to speak some basic English earlier in their respective careers; the last few months had seen them improve somewhat, though they naturally preferred to use their native language. “I won’t be obeying that silly Angliiski-only rule, for sure.” ISS crews were supposed to speak only English to Mission Control, but the rule was regularly flouted. The cosmonauts planned to ignore any other rules that didn’t suit them, as was their way – especially any of NASA’s Flight Rules.

“He hasn’t forgiven me for that T-38 ride,” added Sergei. “I’ve never seen a guy throw up so much ….”

Their reminiscences were interrupted as they arrived at the elevator in the middle of the scaffolding that would take them up to Gantry Level 195. As well as Joe, there were four Shuttle astronauts; all crowded into the elevator, watched by the attendant launch technicians.

Sergei yawned, feeling disorientated and still a little hungover. He and Yurii, anticipating boredom during the crew’s enforced quarantine, had stocked up on their vodka supplies ….

Houston, we have a hangover

Sergei groaned as the bedside digital alarm clock went off at 10:49 a.m.; he couldn’t remember where he was for a few moments and his head felt like someone had inserted a chisel into his skull and started mercilessly pounding away with a hammer to split it open. Hangover! He needed an aspirin or three.

He poked an arm out of the bed sheets and flailed around until he hit the off button. Then the realization intruded: We’re going into space! He struggled out of bed and, still half-asleep, pulled open the door of his room. Clad in a moth-eaten pair of grey pajama pants, he shuffled into the corridor of the crew quarters in which the Shuttle astronauts were residing before launch day. He turned sharp right to the next door up from his and opened it without bothering to knock. The room was still in darkness; its occupant showed no signs of life.

“Wake up, Yura!” he said cheerfully, going over to the bed and shaking the lumpy form under the blankets. Yurii hadn’t bothered to set his alarm. “Yuroshka! Get up! It’s launch day!”

His Russian crewmate Yurii, face buried in his pillow, stirred and grumbled an incoherent curse. He was also somewhat hungover from their secret commiserative vodka party of the previous night – of which the American Shuttle crew would have assuredly disapproved had they known – but managed to force his eyes open. “Shit, my head! Let me sleep for a bit longer ….” Sergei grinned then jumped on the bed, eliciting an indignant yelp from Yurii. After a few minutes of tussling, Sergei resorted to pulling off the bed sheets to encourage his friend up. He turned on the overhead light and both yelped again painfully as the glare hit their eyes.

Sergei went over to the window and drew the blind aside to peek out, squinting as the late morning sun assaulted his eyes. The day appeared fine apart from some scattered cumulus.

“You go shower first; I’ll sleep a little longer ….” Yurii mumbled, holding his head in his hands, blond hair tousled. His grubby T-shirt hadn’t seen a laundry in several weeks. Sergei headed back out the door and into his own room. He went into the small adjoining bathroom for a shower and shave, luxuriating in the last hot shower (or shower of any description) he would have for the next six months.

Stepping out, Sergei wiped the steamed-up cabinet mirror with a bony hand and looked bleary-eyed at his rather pallid, hollow-cheeked reflection. His thick black hair, damp from the shower, stuck up at all angles and his dark Slavic eyes were a little bloodshot. When not hungover, he was considered rather cute by women, as was fair-haired, blue-eyed Yurii. Sergei was the taller and skinnier of the pair, and was much more reticent than his friend, who usually was the one who got them both into (and out of) trouble. Things had been thus since their school days in the suburb of Kaliningrad, Moscow (renamed Korolyov in July of 1996). They had, though, gone their separate ways for a decade or so when Sergei joined the Air Force and Yurii began his career at RSC Energiya – the S. P. Korolyov Rocket & Space Corporation – as an engineer. Yurii was also a world-class gymnast, and had competed in the Olympics.

Sergei had been accepted as a cosmonaut-candidate in the 1997 Air Force group; Yurii had become one the year before in the 1996 Civilian Engineer group. They both, like the other cosmonauts, represented Rosaviakosmos, the Russian Space Agency. The pair, along with Joe, had undergone 20 months of training in Moscow, Houston and Canada for this ISS expedition. This would be the Russians’ first space flight, and Joe’s third.

Completing his shave, he grabbed a couple of aspirins from the medicine cabinet and swallowed them with some water, then, after dressing in jeans, sneakers and his blue polo-neck Expedition T-shirt, went into Yurii’s room with some more, giving Yurii a none-too-gentle kick. Yurii, who had reverted to a prone position, shook his head, groaned “I’m going to throw up ….” staggered onto his feet and into his bathroom, from whence came the sound of retching. Sergei rolled his eyes and lay back on Yurii’s bed, waiting for Yurii to finish his other morning ablutions, and feeling his initial good mood dissipate.

I wish we were going to Mir, I wish I could fly Buran, I wish …. Sergei had felt increasingly depressed during this last training stint in Houston. Training for the Shuttle mission had been a pointed reminder of the cancellation of the Russians’ own Shuttle program, a pain that had not, for Sergei, faded with time.

As well as being homesick in this alien land, Sergei and Yurii were awed and intimidated by the American space program, such a contrast to their country’s struggling one. NASA had sent probes to the furthest reaches of the solar system and its Hubble space telescope had produced the most spectacular images ever. Its many Space Shuttle missions and control of the International Space Station ensured that NASA continued its dominance of the realms beyond Earth, just as the USA dominated the world itself. It’s what Russia could have been, but our leaders squandered all of this …. Sergei shut off that line of thought; he was despondent enough already.

Mischief-making

Sergei glanced around the spartan bedroom. A TV set rested mutely on a bench top; aside from the NASA TV channel, there was little else of interest screening but much the same mindless crap as on many Russian TV channels. Five days ago, the Space Shuttle crew had departed Ellington Field near JSC Houston for Florida on a two-and-a-half-hour flight covering nearly 1450 kilometers in four T-38 Talons. Since then, they had stayed in these crew quarters on the third floor of the immense five-storey Operations & Checkout Building, part of the sprawling Kennedy Space Center. Each crewmember had their own room with amenities.

The white needle-nosed trainer jets served as astronaut taxis and trainers; pilot-astronauts were expected to put in at least four hours per week in the agile craft. Sergei used that as an excuse to fly in them every chance he got, cajoling and bribing the ground crews – he was still a fighter pilot at heart and grabbed any opportunity to fly fast jets. I won’t be doing that in orbit. Back home, he and other pilot-cosmonauts flew the L-39 Albatros trainer operated by the 70th Detach Air Wing (Special Destination) at Chkalovskii air base.

Sergei had piloted one of the T-38s with Yurii as passenger; no one else wanted to ride with him after the terrifying flight he had given Joe where he performed his favorite “kamikaze” stunt, which he had liked to do when flying MiG-29s and Su-27s. This involved diving fast and vertically at the ground, pulling up at the last moment, rolling and speeding along inverted just above the runway, then rolling upright and pulling up again in a steep climb. Sergei was not used to the T-38’s flight characteristics – it had less thrust than the aforementioned Russian fighters – and banged the twin tailpipes on the runway as he pulled up with Joe screaming at him. Needless to say, he got a severe reprimand … (“I thought Joe needed ‘cheering up’,” Sergei said later to Yurii, “but I guess it didn’t work.”)

He restricted himself this time to a couple of loops and barrel rolls – until the commander snapped at him over comm, “Stay in formation, Konstantinov, or I will have you grounded!” After disembarking with the others at the KSC Shuttle Landing Facility, there was a brief informal press conference and photo session with the crew standing in front of the T-38s.

They later attended another, more formal press conference, the three of them seated uncomfortably behind a grey podium beside a NASA Public Affairs Officer, an attractive computer-generated image of the completed ISS displayed on the wall behind them. The various media representatives seated before them asked the usual predictable questions. The specialist space writers had reasonably intelligent queries, but the hacks from the general papers – who were probably at the conference under duress – came up with, “Are you looking forward to going into space?” Duh.

Sergei had been asked, “How do you, as a Russian astronaut, feel about flying on the Shuttle?” He and Yurii exchanged exasperated glances – if there was one thing they hated, it was being called an astronaut, as uninformed foreign reporters were wont to do (and even some NASA officials).

“Kosmonavt!” he corrected the reporter, barely suppressing his irritation and refraining from adding, There is a difference! “I feel privileged to be going on Shuttle,” he continued with a sentence he had memorized, “and to continue co-operation between our countries.” Yurii choked back derisive laughter.

Sergei later grumbled to Yurii, “How does he think I felt? We should have been flying on Buran!”

Two days ago there was held the L-1 (launch day minus one) pre-launch briefing for various domestic and foreign dignitaries, and space agency representatives. The crew did not have to attend this; instead, the briefing involved a slide and video show that introduced the crew, the mission’s objectives and detailed the science and payloads. Which wouldn’t have been so bad, but each of the Shuttle and Expedition crew had to record a five-minute video beforehand in which they blathered on about the noble goals of the ISS and space program (or, finding creative ways of spending taxpayers’ money); the “exciting” (only to the scientists) science experiments; the “challenges” (i.e. endless bickering and disagreements) of the international partnership; and Mankind’s Destiny in Space (irrelevant to everyone outside the spacefaring community).

Sergei had mumbled something in his broken English about “The major idea of our flight is, you know, to continue work and science of previous Expedition. It is my dream to be in space and I am, uh, happy to be here ….” Yurii parroted much the same inanities: “There are many tasks for our work on board Station … I will perform some science experiments. And I will be responsible for right-working system, basically.” The Public Affairs Officer had earlier stressed anxiously to them that they should “emphasize the science” whenever asked ISS questions. “There’s a lot of politicians and others who would love to see the Station program canceled, and we have to justify the billions we’re spending,” he elaborated. Yurii and Sergei had little interest in the “science stuff,” but went along with the ploy.

Both Russians had later accessed the KSC website to see how they (and Joe) appeared in the streaming videos – and collapsed in hysterical laughter. They had both been firmly told not to look at the camera, and appeared self-consciously awkward. “At least we’re good-looking,” Yurii grinned.

Along with Joe, they also each underwent an individual pre-flight interview for their Expedition’s NASA web page. Both Russians, bored with the ordeal, spent more time flirting with the bedazzled female interviewer than answering her questions.

As on earlier visits, they had partaken in a Terminal Countdown Demonstration Test activity, which involved emergency egress training and a simulated countdown exercise. The egress training had been fun; it involved clambering out of the Orbiter and into seven slide-wire baskets, the cable extending 366 meters to concrete bunkers. Yurii and Sergei managed to herd Joe into one and, before he could react, “accidentally” released the hand brake, sending him plummeting all the way down. Joe had not been happy, and shot the Russians fuming looks during yet another media interview session that followed that day’s TCDT. For this, they stood arrayed in a row, the Shuttle commander in front of the microphone, the immense Shuttle stack looming in the distance beyond them.

Because of their mischievous behavior, Yurii and Sergei were ostracized by the Shuttle crew. One now-notorious incident involved them taking an unauthorized after-hours dip in the huge 32-by-62-meter Neutral Buoyancy Lab with a couple of female NASA employees they befriended. The pool at the Weightless Environment Training Facility (named after a deceased astronaut, Sonny Carter) – part of the Johnson Space Center – was normally reserved for Shuttle and Expedition crews’ underwater EVA simulation training. The clear blue water proved an irresistible temptation.

Some years ago, Sergei read about so-called “freedivers” who dived to great depths – up to 150 meters or more – on a single breath, without any scuba diving equipment. Of course, Sergei, who was an excellent swimmer (he was rated first-grade and had won a few championships during his senior school and Air Force college years), had to try it out. He now did so when he could in the twelve-meter-deep Gidrolaboratoriya pool at Zvyozdyi Gorodok (he sneaked in out-of-hours) – this used for Russian Orlan-M spacewalks. He also tagged along on other Expedition Crews’ Black Sea survival training to practice in deeper waters, bringing his own wetsuit, flippers and scuba mask. It was certainly easier on his limited income than scuba diving (though he had also trained in the latter).

“I do freedive,” Sergei told the two young women as they treaded water, wanting to impress them. “I go to fifty meter in Black Sea!” He referred to his latest personal best record, attempted during an “Expedition Clueless” survival training outing some months earlier. The pair, both floating in the water with Yurii, looked disbelievingly at him. “So I now go to bottom of Gidrolaboratoriya.” With that, he upended, using his long flippers to propel himself the thirteen meters down. He reached the bottom in around ten seconds, then glided along the length of the pool to the ISS American segment simulator resting on the pool’s floor before heading upwards again about a minute or so later. He surfaced, gasping for air and grinning at the women, who looked suitably impressed. Yurii rolled his eyes and said, in Russian, “Show-off!”

Unfortunately the arrival of security guards interrupted their fun, and the pair consequently received the bawling-out of their lives from Management (the women were let off with a caution). Naturally, it made little impression upon “Double Trouble”.

The NBL was also used for emergency bailout training, where the crew, in their bulky orange ACES pressure suits and helmets, slid one by one down a rope from a mock-up of the Orbiter’s cabin into the pool, deploying their survival rafts. Yurii had deliberately dropped from the rope right on top of Sergei (who had already inflated his raft) in an attempt to sink him. A full-scale water fight ensued, to the exasperated annoyance of the others in the crew.

More fun was to be had at JSC during training sessions in the Virtual Reality Lab, a heinously expensive, state-of-the-art facility whose budget probably surpassed that of the entire Russian manned space program’s. Along with Joe, they practiced such activities as manipulating the SSRMS or robot arm outside the ISS. Virtual EVAs could also be simulated through wearing headsets and tactile gloves, though none of the three were assigned for U.S. EVAs in EMU suits during their mission (they had not done any EMU training in the NBL). Yurii and Sergei disliked the American suits anyhow, preferring the Russian Orlan suits they were familiar with.

During their last VR session the Russians persuaded the VR operators to set them up for a simulated EVA. They had earlier seen the IMAX Space Station 3D movie, whose opening scene featured such a virtual EVA (they hadn’t thought much of the documentary – “Too much of NASA,” Yurii griped). Joe and the NASA computer personnel then watched in open-mouthed disbelief as the pair gleefully mucked about, flinging themselves off the ISS’s modules, using the simulated SAFER backpacks to zoom around all over the place. This degenerated into yet another playful fight, with some grappling, punching and swearing until Yurii smashed through a virtual photovoltaic array. Sergei crashed into the Destiny Lab and bounced off, sailing away into deep space, exclaiming in mock terror, “Houston! I come unstuck!” The overworked VR processors themselves crashed after a few minutes, thus ending the session. Joe, face buried in his hands, nearly died of embarrassment as one trainer exclaimed, “These retards are cosmonauts?”

Departing the VRL, Joe hissed at them, “Why don’t you grow up and act like professionals?” They grinned at him and shrugged, quite unrepentant.

Sergei now recalled the “Code of Conduct” for prospective space tourists that had been drawn up by the ISS partners after Dennis Tito’s controversial flight in 2001. NASA, furious at Russia’s defiant stance over sending Mr. Tito up, had insisted on creating these rules. They applied to professional astronauts and cosmonauts as well.

The general suitability decision process for space flight participants involves an assessment of the candidate’s past and present conduct in order to predict probable future actions that may adversely impact the ISS program. The following list defines some of the factors that would be considered as a basis for disqualification:

– “Principles Regarding Processes and Criteria for Selection, Assignment, Training and Certification of ISS (Expedition and Visiting) Crewmembers,” November 2001

Yurii laughed derisively upon first reading the Code of Conduct. “‘Notoriously disgraceful’! We are disqualified, already! We will just ignore this crap.”

Sergei and Yurii – dubbed “Double Trouble” by Joe – were the bane of Zvyozdyi Gorodok, the training center for Russia’s cosmonauts forty kilometers east of Moscow, where they were known as Dvoinya, the Twins. Many suspected they had been the masterminds behind an elaborate prank some months ago. A green substance had been dumped one night into the water pipeline which supplied the New England-style duplex houses built for NASA employees in a compound at the center. (Many residents there – Yurii and Sergei included – regarded the Americans as an occupying army. “Once we invite them in, we’ll never get rid of them,” was Yurii’s observation.) Those in the houses found their taps running a hideous green liquid when they were turned on, and they were convinced there was some sort of toxic spill (a not-unexpected occurrence in Russia) – until the liquid was tested and found to be harmless food dye, purchased in bulk at the local supermarket. NASA officials raised a ruckus, but the pranksters had never been caught.

Other more modest pranks – both in Zvyozdyi Gorodok and Houston – included putting a few pebbles in the hubcaps of the cars of various NASA personnel whom they disliked, letting down tyres, pouring water in fuel tanks, or sticking a potato in the exhaust pipe so the engine backfired noisily when started. Said personnel had quickly learned to keep their cars secured in garages at night (though Yurii was adept at picking locks …). Yurii and Sergei considered their pranks to be their little partizanskaya voina campaign.

One of Yurii’s favorite tactics was to attempt seduction of the wives of other cosmonauts and astronauts who had insulted him. Sometimes he was successful – and he was on the hit-list of several vengeful husbands. Sergei suspected that they were being sent into space again in part to keep them out of mischief – Faint hope! – and before all-out war erupted.

Joe was similarly not one of the more popular members of the astronaut corps; he had been the butt of others’ jokes during his time there. And they only assigned Joe to us because no one else would go with us. The three were made aware of the others’ derisive nickname for them one morning when entering the Space Vehicle Mockup Facility at JSC for a mission training session. Along one wall, against a backdrop photo of the Earth from orbit, were displayed photos and brief descriptions of each Shuttle crew. Some wit had placed an adhesive label reading “Expedition Clueless” (and Ekspeditsiya Nedalyokii in Cyrillic) over their Expedition designation number. “I think they just jealous,” Sergei said to Joe, in an attempt to console him.

The Last Supper

Yurii finally emerged from the bathroom, showered and shaved but still looking rather pale. “Feeling better, are we?”

“Oh, shut up!” Yurii snarled; he had drunk much more than Sergei last night and was now regretting it. He downed the aspirin that Sergei had left out for him.

As Sergei had, Yurii pulled on jeans, T-shirt and sneakers, then made their way out their room and down the hallway to breakfast.

The rest of the crew, already seated, gave the Russians rather disdainful glances. “Look what the cat dragged in,” one muttered to muted snickers, then the Shuttle crew continued with their conversation. The Russians didn’t understand the idiom, but the astronaut’s tone was clear enough. Sergei gave him the three-finger “Serbian salute” – an insulting gesture lost on the astronaut, who wasn’t Slavic.

“Dobroe utro, Joe!” said Sergei to the brown-haired, hazel-eyed pilot-astronaut who was their Expedition commander.

Joe mumbled an unenthusiastic “Mornin’.”

“And dobroe utro, Katyusha!” Yurii grinned at the honey-blond-haired Shuttle pilot, the only female in the crew. “Katyusha” was the Russian diminutive of her name. She blushed, glanced at him irritably, muttered “Morning, Yurii,” then looked away. Both Russians had made advances to her some months ago, but she had firmly rebuffed them, and mostly ignored them since.

“She spoke to me! The Ledyanaya Korolyova spoke to me! I think she likes me!” exclaimed Yurii in Russian with wide-eyed mock amazement to Sergei, using the nickname – Ice Queen – they had given her.

The ascending Expedition Crew had the places of honor facing the crew photographers and officials at other dining tables – Joe was in the center, Sergei to his right and Yurii on his left. Two Shuttle crewmembers were seated at either end of the rectangular, blue-cloth-covered table: the pilot and commander to Sergei’s right, the two mission specialists to Yurii’s left. The Shuttle crew wore jeans or slacks with white, blue-collared polo-neck T-shirts; the Expedition Crew’s shirts were sky-blue with a navy-blue collar. All shirts were embroidered on their left pocket with the mission insignia.

Someone with a morbid sense of humor had dubbed this ceremonial breakfast the “Last Supper”.

The traditional cake was brought in with due ceremony; the grey-haired Shuttle commander – whom the cosmonauts irreverently referred to as Dedushka, Grandfather – stood and made a brief speech. NASA photographers then took several photos of the crew grinning (or grimacing) at the cameras, the cake in front of them. Yurii and Sergei, trying not to fidget impatiently, managed to force something resembling smiles onto their faces.

The Expedition Crew had posed for their official NASA photo in their orange pressure suits some weeks ago – and it’s not a bad photo, either, thought Sergei, though Joe’s expression in the portrait was somewhat strained. The backdrop featured a photo, taken by one of the Shuttle flights, of the ISS from behind (Sergei had selected it as the Russian segment was nearest the camera). The cobalt-blue of the Earth’s atmosphere below the Station contrasted strikingly with the crew’s orange suits. On Energiya’s website was the Russian version of their crew photo, with them wearing white-and-blue Sokol pressure suits seated in front of the Russian and U.S. flags.

He hated to admit it, but NASA’s astronaut portraits were generally more flattering than the ones taken by Energiya. The latter had, over the years, seemed to specialize in taking unflattering photos of scowling cosmonauts with bad haircuts – a cause for much merriment amongst Yurii, Sergei and other younger cosmonauts (though there were some howlers amongst earlier NASA photos, too, Sergei had discovered, after looking at the JSC biography website). Fortunately, Energiya’s portraiture technique had improved in recent years – Yurii and Sergei’s photos seemed to be popular, if the number of wide-eyed fans coming up to them at conventions with the pair’s individual and crew photos to sign was any indication. (Unflown cosmonauts were usually not regarded as cosmonauts and, in deference to superstition, most did not send out signatures until after their first flight, but Yurii and Sergei were shameless in promoting themselves.)

The astronauts began hoeing into the sponge cake which was iced with the flight crew’s insignia. Yurii and Sergei both opted for a slice of cake and a cup of coffee (with milk and sugar); neither felt up to eating much and they wanted as little in their stomachs as possible, anyhow. It would be a long wait seated in the Shuttle for launch, and they would be less inclined to throw up on first experiencing weightlessness (Yurii had done his share of the latter already).

The cake was quickly demolished. Sergei and Yurii pushed back their chairs, muttering “Excuse us, please,” then headed back to their rooms. “Ah, they can go to hell,” growled Yurii as he exited, shooting a backwards glare at the Americans.

Joe, to their surprise, arose and followed them. “Come join us, Joe,” Sergei invited him, but Joe shook his head and disappeared into his own room, shutting the door. The other astronauts remained in the dining room, discussing the upcoming launch and no doubt making derisive comments about “Expedition Clueless”.

Final medical checks came next, so all made their way to the medical infirmary for poking and prodding. This finished at 12:53 p.m. There was just over an hour until lunch time, then the afternoon would be spent suiting up.

There wasn’t much to do but brood, so the Russians went back into Yurii’s room. Sergei turned on the TV to the NASA TV channel, the camera view showing the Shuttle stack on Launch Pad 39B, the Fixed and Rotating Service Structures surrounding it with a complex network of scaffolding. Buran, the canceled Russian space shuttle, had similarly resembled some white winged creature being prepared for release from the framework that bound it to Earth.

At night, the launch complex was floodlit. Sergei and Yurii had gazed at it from a distance two evenings ago during the traditional gathering at the Beachhouse, a dilapidated shack used as a prelaunch retreat for astronauts and their families. The Russians met and charmed Joe’s elderly parents, who had flown in from Michigan, and his married sister. But the pair had no family there to farewell them off, so they wandered down the beach after a while with the requisite bottle of vodka.

Yurii had tried one of his gymnastics floor routines on the sand, but, being somewhat inebriated, had landed flat on his back instead of his feet after attempting a back handspring back tuck, winding himself. “They have won,” Sergei said, beginning another melancholy lament about American supremacy as he sat on a sand dune ignoring Yurii’s groans, disconsolately watching the sunset. “They won the Cold War and have taken over our space program, and now we are nothing. We should have been flying in Buran ….”

Yurii slumped onto his bed, snuggled under his quilt and soon dozed off, sleeping off the remainder of his hangover. They would not be able to lie down for the next six months in orbit. Sergei sprawled on the couch, switched on and stared desultorily at the TV until lunch time came up. He prodded Yurii awake. “Yura! You want anything to eat?” Yurii mumbled “No, just some fruit juice.”

“I’ll bring some back here,” said Sergei, and retraced his steps to the dining room again. The friendly kitchen staff gave him a glass of apple-blackcurrant juice, and orange juice for Yurii, asking Sergei if he wanted any sandwiches, but he politely declined. Some of the other crew had gathered at the table for lunch; there was no sign of Joe. Sergei had no desire to join them, so he headed back to Yurii’s room with the juice.

The official crew photo was set for 3:45 p.m., so Yurii and Sergei had to trudge back to the dining room once more, after changing into their blue NASA flight suits – both had a Russian flag patch on the left arm. “We will wear a path in the carpet,” remarked Yurii wearily. They stood with Joe to the left of the others and tried to look cheerful. Then all filed out, making their way back to their rooms to undress again so they could put on their white cooling garments, each of which the suit technicians had placed in a neat pile outside its wearer’s door.

“Don’t know why we can’t put these on in the first place,” grumbled Yurii to himself, only half-jokingly, as he struggled out of his flight suit – So many changes of clothes! – after retrieving the Liquid Cooling Garment. The fruit juice had worked its way through him, so he made a quick visit to the toilet. He then prepared to don the LCG. First, he had to put on a MAG – Maximum Absorbent Garment or, more plainly, adult diapers – then over this he pulled the tube-laced garment, through which water would circulate to keep its wearers from overheating. He looked at himself in the door-length mirror and grinned, imagining them all appearing in their underwear for the official photos. The cooling garments didn’t conceal much. He and Sergei had athletic physiques, and Joe was also in good shape, but one of the other astronauts was on the pudgy side.

Sergei, already clad in his LCG, came back in and grabbed the two empty bottles of Stolichnaya vodka resting on a small table and stuck them in a rubbish bin where several other bottles resided (they patriotically only drank Russian-made vodka). Hopefully, they would remain undiscovered by whoever cleaned the room until the Russians were safely in orbit. After wandering back to the O&CB, he and Yurii became increasingly maudlin with each glass consumed and had drunk several toasts “Za Mir! Za Buran!” He couldn’t recall who had passed out first, or how he had found his way back into his bed.

They normally would not have drunk thus before a space flight (at least, not the night before). On this Shuttle flight, though, they were mere passengers – “baggage with mouths,” to use a derisive phrase of Shuttle pilots – and they would have little to do during launch.

Yurii pulled on cloth booties to protect his feet. Before they departed the room for the last time, though, they sat down on Yurii’s bed for the traditional minute of silence which all cosmonauts partook in before a flight. Failure to observe this Russian custom would, it was believed, result in some calamity – expressed as Ne budet dorogi, “You will have no road”.

With a final glance around, they rose and padded out again. Their few possessions would be packed up and stored for safekeeping. Visas were also readied to be sent to countries where the Shuttle might make an emergency landing (and, more grimly, all made sure their wills were in order). The cosmonauts walked out to the suit-up room; Joe was already there along with Mission Specialist-2. The commander, pilot and MS-1 were receiving a weather briefing in a separate room and would suit up ten minutes later.

The cosmonauts and astronauts had two technicians to aid them with suiting-up. One of the techs wore white overalls emblazoned with the number 7; he was one of the close-out crew.

“Good afternoon, sirs, are you ready to fly?” said #7 in ritual greeting to the Russians, when it was their turn to be suited-up.

“Um, yes,” Sergei blinked, still not used to being spoken to so politely – he was more accustomed to military bawling-outs.

“All right, we’ve got all your equipment here. Would you like to check it?”

Sergei enjoyed the suiting-up process; there was a ritualistic aspect to it, as though he were, like the knights of old, being dressed for battle by his attendant squires. I probably would haveve been a knight in earlier times, he mused; he had liked, as a boy, to read tales of ancient and medieval battles and heroic warriors.

His and Yurii’s personal gear lay neatly arranged on a table. The technicians and cosmonauts inspected every item to ensure it was in place and undamaged. In one survival bag that fitted into a lower leg pocket went an earphone, Scop/Dex motion sickness pills, survival mitten, spare antenna, PRC-112 survival radio, SARSAT beacon and a signal mirror. Its companion contained two 12-hour stick chemical lights, day/night signal flare, a pen gun flare kit and flares, ACES packet tether, strobe light and the other survival mitten.

More survival gear, including two packs of sea dye marker, drinking water, motion sickness pills and a flashlight for signaling at night, went in other pockets of the bright orange model S1035 Advanced Crew Escape Suit. Instead of parachute-lanyard cutting knives, though, Sergei and Yurii had brought their own Spetsnaz combat knives. Sergei had bartered for these a few years ago with Andrei, a cousin of his who was in the Vozdushno-Desantniye Voiska or “Blue Berets,” whom Sergei sometimes went parachuting with. Andrei, in exchange, had been given a wild ride in Sergei’s MiG-29UB. The wicked-looking, black-bladed knives were high quality and much-valued. “These are real knives!” Yurii said scornfully to a technician who earlier protested the weapons’ inclusion, waving his knife around. The latter had decided not to argue further.

Cosmonauts were equally well-equipped with equivalent Russian gear for survival in Russia’s harsh and varied climate.

Now came the laborious process of hauling on the “Pumpkin Suit” and its associated equipment – gloves, comm cap, boots, thermal socks, radiation dosimeters, flashlight and any small personal items the wearer wanted to bring. Like the Russian Sokol pressure suits it was not a particularly comfortable garment to wear for extended periods, but was a great improvement upon suits of earlier times. Both Yurii and Sergei’s ACESs had a Russian flag patch stuck with Velcro onto the left arm. The Russians were zipped up, and the suits were pressurized for a leak test by plugging in a hose. They then opened a pressure-release valve in the suits’ chest areas to deflate them. The suit techs ensured the cosmonauts’ undergarments were not wrinkled or bunched so that no uncomfortable hot spots would develop during the two-hour wait for launch in the Shuttle.

Another NASA photographer hovered, taking more photos for space history as they fussed with the ACESs.

The rest of the Shuttle crew came in for their suiting-up, and Sergei and Yurii sat down to wait in comfortable recliner seats, weighed down by 36 kilos of protective gear. Joe and MS-2 ignored them. “Must be at war with Kelly again,” Yurii muttered, in Russian.

“He’s been grumpy all through our training,” said Sergei. “Don’t know why people bother getting married in the first place.”

“She’s a real bitch,” said Yurii. “Can see why he left her.” Kelly, a NASA strength trainer and rehabilitation coach, had lived with Joe during his training in Russia before going home in disgust; she couldn’t cope with the isolation and alien Russian culture, and complained that Joe neglected her. Their marriage was already in trouble. Kelly, being bored and frustrated, embarked on an affair with another astronaut whom she had been “rehabilitating” after his Station tour. Joe learned of this in due course through the NASA grapevine. An infuriated Joe then had an affair of his own with a nice Russian lady mission controller he had met while visiting TsUP, Moscow Mission Control.

The couple had divorced, but Kelly claimed Joe had abused her and the judge awarded in her favor. She continued on occasion to harass him for more alimony, being of a vindictive personality. The messy divorce had done little to further Joe’s career, the Astronaut Office still having a conservative outlook on such things. “I think this will be my last flight,” Joe gloomily told his crewmates.

“She got his house and his car,” noted Sergei. “He’s still pissed-off.” An embittered Joe had moved from their roomy Clear Lake house into a small apartment in the same suburb after the divorce. Sergei and Yurii had ended up helping him shift his possessions, Joe venomously cursing his now-ex-wife as he piled boxes and suitcases into the new car he’d had to buy. After paying off his legal bills, Joe had been close to broke – though not for long, as his military officer’s salary was generous. “But he seems happy with Olya.”

“I wonder if he’ll be wanting to marry again,” said Yurii. He and Sergei were dedicated bachelors, having no desire to be trapped in marriage and the dreary responsibilities of family life.

“We’ve a forecast temperature of 75 degrees, clear skies and light winds,” MS-1 was saying to the others. “The weather guys say launch conditions will be 95 percent acceptable.”

Another astronaut on the support crew would be flying a T-38 Talon and the Shuttle Training Aircraft – a modified Grumman Gulfstream-2 twin-engine business jet – to check weather conditions in the KSC area prior to launch. He, attired in a blue flight suit, accompanied the Shuttle crew in the Astrovan.

“Okay, folks, time to go,” announced #7. The Shuttle crew lumbered in file out of the suit-up room, down the hall and into the elevator – cheered on by crew quarters staff who had come to watch. Then down two floors and out onto the walkway that led to the Astrovan, blinking in the strong afternoon sunlight. In an ominous sign of the times, a couple of black fatigue-clad SWAT officers escorted the Shuttle crew, toting 9 mm Heckler & Koch MP-5 machine guns, their watchful eyes hidden by wrap-around sunglasses.

“I wonder who would try to shoot us?” Yurii remarked.

“Probably one of the husbands you cuckolded,” Sergei retorted, and ducked a punch Yurii aimed at him. He bumped into Joe walking beside him, who snarled, “Knock it off!”

Despite the general media’s disinterest in the space program, there was quite a crowd of reporters and spectators kept back by a guide rope; Sergei and Yurii winced as flashbulbs exploded in their still-oversensitive eyes. There was enough cheering and hollering to rival a football match. Some voices called in Russian; the cosmonauts waved at a couple of reporters from their own nation, as well as a handful of expatriate Russians working for the ISS program in Houston, come to KSC for the launch. A few girls also in the crowd called out to the two cosmonauts. Yurii waved at them and blew them a kiss, which elicited delighted squeals (to the consternation of those around them).

The crew’s families – wives and children, Katyusha’s husband and daughter, as well as parents and siblings – were there at the front of the barrier, watching with great trepidation their loved ones depart, memories of Challenger never far away. They could not approach closer for final embraces because of the crew’s quarantine restrictions.

There were no relatives to see the Russians off. Yurii had no family, and Sergei’s parents had not come over; they were getting old and could not speak English. “I don’t want you coming here anyway, Papa, it’s too dangerous after September eleven,” Sergei warned his father in one conversation, though Aleksandr Sergeevich retorted that Moscow wasn’t much safer, what with Chechen suicide bombers. Sergei instead phoned or e-mailed his parents every night. His father, who had served in the Air Force as an engineer before joining Energiya, would be anxiously viewing the launch from TsUP – Tsentr Upravleniya Polyotom v Moskve – Mission Control in Korolyov, to the north-east of Moscow. His mother said she would stay at home as she didn’t want to see him get blown up.

“Do you know they call this part the ‘Death March’?” muttered Yurii.

“That’s reassuring to know,” replied Sergei sardonically.

“Yes, all this high technology and they still don’t have an escape system. And the Angel Smerti over there is hoping we’ll explode.” They both looked at a dark-suited reporter standing near the families. Nicknamed the “Angel of Death” by NASA astronauts, the reporter described himself as a “disaster specialist,” writing obituaries in his computer’s word processor for the astronauts and cosmonauts about to be launched; ready to be published in a newspaper article should the worst happen. He would interview their families beforehand without telling them his real reason for doing so.

The ubiquitous technicians were on hand to assist the spacefarers up the steps of the Astrovan. The rounded silver Airstream transport bus – a modified mobile home seating ten people – sported the NASA logo with a red, white and blue stripe running around its exterior. The Russians similarly had their own buses – the Baikonur (silver with yellow markings) and Zvyozdyi Gorodok (blue markings) – to carry cosmonauts to the Site 1 launch pad at Baikonur. The prime crew rode on the ZG (wearing the licence plate 01 and a lucky horseshoe), the backup crew on the Baikonur.

Sergei gazed at the distant Shuttle stack for a moment, mentally overlaying it with an image of Buran.

“Guess they won’t be stopping the bus,” Yurii remarked.

“No, it’s not NASA’s image,” said Sergei. This was an oblique reference to a quaint little ceremony where, enroute to the Soyuz rocket launch pad, the bus carrying the prime crew stopped halfway. The cosmonauts disembarked, walked around to the rear right tyre, unzipped and merrily proceeded to anoint the vehicle. Yurii Gagarin had needed to relieve himself thus before his flight so, since then, everyone else had followed the ritual for luck. (Women were, for obvious anatomical reasons, spared participation in the ceremony.) “It’s too undignified for them.” The pair smiled at the mental image of the six men in their Pumpkin Suits all trundling out and, with a “Ready, aim, fire!” watering the wheels of the Astrobus.

The cosmonauts slumped into seats at the rear for the fifteen-minute trip. Sergei, still feeling woozy, groaned and rested his forehead against the back of the seat ahead of him. “I want to go home.”

“Tell me about it.”

All aboard

Shuttle Ascent Events
Events Eastern L-HH:MM Pre-Launch Events
  • Shuttle: Atlantis
  • Inc.: 51.6º
  • Throttle: 104
  • A/P: 137/36 sm
  • OMS: 143/121
  • Launch: 7:49
  • Window close: 7:54
  • SLF max wind: 18
  • Wind direction: 300
  • SLF crosswind: 8.52
  • X-wind: OK
 10:24:48 a.m. L-08:55 Fueling begins
3:59:48 p.m. L-03:55 Crew walkout
6:34:48 p.m. L-01:15 T-20 and holding
6:44:48 p.m. L-01:05 Resume countdown
L-MM:SS Terminal Countdown
6:55:48 p.m. L-49:00 T-9 hold begins
7:40:47 p.m. L-09:00 Resume countdown
7:42:17 p.m. L-07:30 Orbiter access arm retraction
7:44:47 p.m. L-05:00 Auxiliary power unit start
7:44:52 p.m. L-04:55 Liquid oxygen drainback begins
7:45:52 p.m. L-03:55 Purge sequence for hydraulic test
7:46:52 p.m. L-02:55 Oxygen tank at flight pressure
7:46:52 p.m. L-02:55 Gaseous oxygen vent arm retraction
7:47:12 p.m. L-02:35 Fuel cells to internal
7:47:50 p.m. L-01:57 Hydrogen tank at flight pressure
7:48:57 p.m. L-00:50 Orbiter to internal power
7:49:16 p.m. L-00:31 Shuttle computers control countdown
7:49:26 p.m. L-00:21 Booster steering test
7:49:40 p.m. L-00:06.6 Main engine ignition

The elevator stopped at Level 195. One-ninety-five feet, thought Yurii, trying to figure that out in meters. (– about 60 meters, he calculated.) Why can’t the Amerikantsy use metric like the rest of the world? NASA determinedly stuck to their Imperial measurements and used these in the U.S. segment on the Station (and on the Shuttle) while the other partners used metric, which could cause a few headaches. Crews thus had to be bilingual in both forms of measurement. Imperial was also used on the Shuttle.

They were greeted by #3, the senior suit technician, who welcomed each Shuttle crewmember with a handshake. They spoke little; being this close to the Orbiter, and its live rockets, was a daunting and humbling experience.

The crew would board the Orbiter two at a time – the flight deck Shuttle crew first, then the Expedition Crew on the mid-deck. They queued first to use the toilet on this level – Shuttle crew preferred not to use their MAGs unless they really needed to, and some found it impossible to “let go” anyway, conditioned by all that childhood toilet training. They had to unzip their pressure suits from the crotch to up the back, and required the discrete assistance of a technician to zip up again once finished.

After their turn, Yurii and Sergei looked out over the vast expanse of Cape Canaveral and the ocean beyond, bathed in late afternoon sunlight, the flat wetlands laced with alligator-infested waterways (the alligators a more effective deterrent to intruders than any guard dogs). The low white building of the Launch Control Center just over ten kilometers to the southwest housed viewing galleries for various dignitaries and relatives of the crew. Around five kilometers also southwest of Complex 39B, the towering, slab-sided white Vehicle Assembly Building dominated the landscape. The runway where Atlantis would land was a couple of kilometers to the northwest of the VAB.

The air was a mild 23 degrees Celsius, and puffy cumulus clouds were scattered about the sky at 2000 feet. I’ll miss going to the beach, thought Yurii. They had discovered the delights of the tropical beaches in the area – including the observation of suntanned bikinied ladies. The pair themselves even managed to get something resembling tans on their normally pale skins. Those won’t last long once we’re on the MKS.

Moscow was a thousand kilometers away from the nearest warm beaches surrounding the Black Sea. The Russians, though, had found the heat and humidity of summer in Houston and Florida almost too much to cope with, being more accustomed to Russia’s brutally cold climate. Not to mention the threat of hurricanes. At least we don’t have to worry about the weather in orbit! But we won’t be seeing home for another six months …. JSC Houston and KSC offered a pleasant lifestyle and working environment, but Sergei and Yurii felt homesick for their native land despite its problems.

“Two weeks in the Canary Islands after our flight,” said Yurii. “Can’t wait.”

“Yes, lie on the beach and look at lovely ladies!” As part of their rehabilitation, cosmonauts were sent to Las Palmas de Gran Canaria, one of the Spanish-owned Canary Islands group off the coast of Morocco. The Canary Islands Government covered the costs of their first-class accommodation and use of a gymnasium and public hospital for tests, in return for their specialists studying the cosmonauts’ adaptation to Earth after long flights. Before this, cosmonauts had gone to the Black Sea or Caucasus mountains, but the climate was more agreeable in the Canaries. “Poor Joe won’t be coming, though.”

“No, he gets stuck in Houston again.”

In the distance the roar of a jet engine became audible – an Air National Guard F-15 Eagle on patrol. A strict 56-kilometer “no-fly” zone was enforced around Cape Canaveral on launch day, and any unidentified aircraft not responding to a warning call would be shot down without hesitation. Security for Shuttle launches had been especially tight since September 11.

“It wouldn’t be too hard to destroy the Shuttle,” said Yurii, as they gazed in the jet’s direction, its sleek grey silhouette just discernible as it circled the area.

“For terrorists it would be the big prize,” Sergei agreed, feeling a brief longing to be in the jet. The Space Shuttle was the ultimate symbol of America’s technological superiority and national pride, and its destruction by terrorists with astronauts (and cosmonauts) on board would devastate the nation’s morale even more than the downing of the World Trade Center twin towers.

Around them were the hisses, clanks, groans and rumbles of the sleeping Shuttle. Much of this came from the rusty-orange SLWT aluminum-lithium External Tank; the super-cooled 143,000 gallons of LOX – liquid oxygen – in the top section of the tank, pressurized to 21 PSI, boiled off continually and needed topping-up. 383,000 gallons of liquid hydrogen resided in the lower portion, pressurized to 35 PSI at a temperature of minus 215º Celsius.

“If that goes off there’ll be nothing left of us,” Sergei noted, looking rather nervously at the huge ET. Even without the threat of terrorist action, the ET was as volatile as a hydrogen bomb primed to explode. “Atlantis was an ancient city which blew up and sank. Not a good name for a spaceship.”

“Try not to think about it too much, Seryozha,” Yurii grinned at him. “Hell, we all have to die sometime.”

“You really know how to cheer a guy up.”

Yurii, in fact, had been attempting to cheer Sergei up during much of their stay here, mostly by dragging him out to Houston bars and nightclubs and getting them both plastered. There were also other expat Russians to hang out and commiserate with.

“C’mon, Seryozha,” – Yurii put an arm around his friend’s shoulders – “aren’t you just the least bit excited?” Sergei only shrugged indifferently.

“Did you notice the girls from our ‘fan club’ at the death march?” Yurii asked slyly, nudging him.

“The ‘astronaut groupies’,” Sergei smiled, pronouncing the English phrase awkwardly. Ever since the days of the Mercury Seven there were women who regarded the astronauts as akin to rock stars and who, consequently, made themselves “available” (there were equivalent groupies in Zvyozdyi Gorodok), hoping to catch some of the spacefarers’ magical aura. They would approach astronauts and cosmonauts at conventions and press conferences, and hand them their phone or motel room numbers and a proposed meeting time on scraps of paper. Some spacemen – single or married – were happy to take advantage ….

The groupies also bombarded the NASA and Energiya websites with e-mail marriage proposals and libidinous suggestions for various spacemen (Yurii and Sergei being the latest), which were filtered out (much to the disappointment of the intended recipients).

“But,” Sergei went on, gloomy again, “we won’t be near any women for six months.”

Yurii grinned wickedly. “There’s always the women Shuttle astronauts.”

Sergei glanced at him, startled. “You’ve got to be joking. Definitely PNP.” They used this NASA acronym in a somewhat different context to its proper meaning. “They’re professionals,” – he emphasized the word sarcastically – “and we’d never stand a chance. You know what Amerikanki women are like about harassment ….”

Sergei had got himself into trouble during a “crew interactions” training session at JSC with Joe and Yurii. The female NASA psychologist was lecturing them on coping with “psychosocial stressors” resulting from the isolated and confined environment they would live in for six months. When she finished, Sergei said to her, “I am stressed that I not kiss women for six months on mission! I will kiss as many as possible before, starting with you, lyubushka,” then grabbed her shoulders and kissed her enthusiastically on the mouth as a grinning Yurii and horrified Joe looked on. (Yurii had spent the lecture daring the normally shy Sergei to do it.) The startled woman gave an indignant squawk and shoved him off, afterwards complaining voraciously to her superiors about “those Russian sex maniacs who tried to rape me”. Sergei, of course, had no such intention and was baffled by the fuss that ensured, involving the all-too-familiar reprimand from NASA and RSA officials. He and Yurii had received a stern lecture about “cultural differences” and “appropriate behavior”. They had not seen the woman since, though they had sent her some flowers by way of apology. The Russians remained bemused and unrepentant. “Why would any woman not want a good-looking guy to kiss her?” Yurii wondered.

“Hah!” Yurii snorted now. “They’re women. They couldn’t resist us! I bet I could –”

Close-out crewman #3 came up to them, interrupting their conversation. “You guys ready?”

“Yes,” said Sergei. They savored a last breath of fresh air in which they could smell the nearby ocean – they would only breathe recycled air for the next few months – then they followed #3 to the “White Room” at the end of the grill walkway leading to the Shuttle. At the end of the Room, which resembled a passenger jet’s walk-on ramp, the Shuttle’s hatchway was visible, surrounded by scale-like heat-resistant black FRCI-12 HRSI silica tiles. The rest of the close-out crew waited there to help the cosmonauts put on their parachute harnesses, then fitted their white communications caps. Their white helmets were taken out of olive carry bags and locked on to the suits’ neck rings; gloves were similarly locked on to the ACES’ sleeves. Two of the crew were NASA employees; the others worked for United Space Alliance, a private company operating the Shuttle. A closed-circuit camera in one corner of the room broadcast the White Room activities to the public via NASA TV. Both Russians spent a few moments mugging and waving at the camera lens. “Do svidaniya to our fans!” said Yurii, farewelling whoever might be watching.

Every part of the pre-launch process was tightly choreographed; indeed, the whole NASA space program was intimidatingly well-organized. The pair crawled one after the other on their hands and knees through the hatch into the Shuttle’s mid-deck where Joe was already seated and strapped in.

Four sat “upstairs” on the flight deck. The Shuttle commander, Steve, was in the left-hand front seat (I would be sitting there if I were flying Buran, thought Sergei wistfully), the co-pilot, Kathy, was on his right in seat 2. Behind her was MS-1, Jim, in seat 3, and next to MS-1 sat MS-2, Chad, in seat 4.

The ascending Expedition Crew occupied the mid-deck. Sergei, designated MS-3 for the flight up, sat in seat 5 next to the port access hatch. Beside him, and a little behind him, sat Yurii, MS-4, in seat 6; and Joe, MS-5, sat next to Yurii in seat 7. Seat 8 on the starboard side was currently empty; the returning ISS commander would recline there.

Behind them a 40-inch diameter hatch with an inset window led to the exterior airlock. Atlantis, Discovery and Endeavour all had exterior rather than internal airlocks as the ISS Shuttle docking system connected to this.

Another astronaut, a woman a little younger than they, was there to assist them into their seats, as she had done yesterday. These launch assistants – Astronaut Support Persons – were nicknamed “Cape Crusaders” or “C-squares” for short, and this job was much-coveted amongst astronauts not assigned to a flight. As well as assisting the astronauts, the C2 had been conducting the pre-ingress switch list: checking switches to make sure they were correctly configured. She was #2 of the close-out crew. Her white coverall protected against contamination and hid her figure (to “Double Trouble’s” disappointment).

Sergei went first; it was an awkward scramble in his bulky suit to settle into the vertically-reclined port seat, walking across what would be the aft bulkhead in orbit and trying not to step on any switches. The C2 handed him his communication cable and oxygen hose and he plugged these into his suit. She helped secure him to his Personal Parachute Assembly, which doubled as a back seat cushion, and strapped him in. “Just what you always dreamed of, to be served by a devushka,” said Yurii in Russian to him from behind her, making an obscene gesture involving poking his index finger through a hole made by his other hand’s index finger and thumb. Sergei pulled a face at him.

The C2 flushed, sensing they were discussing her, and gave an extra-hard yank on the restraint harness which made Sergei grunt. She shoved his oxygen unit into a cradle beside his seat. Static hissed in his ears as the radio cable extending from his helmet was plugged in to a crewman communications umbilical outlet, and the woman instructed him through her headset, “Put your visor down, please.” Sergei reached up with his gloved hands and closed his visor.

“Okay, Sergei, can you give me a radio check, please,” said the C2 briskly.

“Launch Control, this is Sergei, MS-3,” he said by rote in his heavily-accented English, depressing the push-to-talk xmit (transmit) button on the headset interface unit clipped to the radio cable. “How you read?” Two responses from Launch Control at the Cape, then one from Mission Control in Houston, confirming that air-to-ground channel 2, both intercom channels, and the air-to-air channel were functioning: “Reading you loud and clear, Sergei,” said an astronaut serving as Capcom who relayed instructions between controllers and crew. Launch Control monitored all procedures up to SRB ignition, then Houston took over.

There was a separate com button on their HIUs enabling them to talk over the intercom to the flight deck crew and each other when their helmet visors were locked.

Sergei reopened his visor then, looking to his right – his helmet could swivel on its neck ring – he watched the whole process repeated with Yurii as he was strapped in between Sergei and Joe, and taken through a comm check. Yurii then lifted his visor and gave the C2 his most charming smile. “Don’t we get a goodbye kiss, lyubushka?” He used a Russian term of endearment.

The woman blushed even redder and was of a mind to punch him, but then she relented – they and the rest of the Shuttle crew, like all before them, faced the dangers of launch and the hazards of surviving in a hostile environment. And the two Russians were rather cute. She screwed up her face and gave Yurii a quick peck on his cheek; he could smell her floral perfume. “Don’t forget me!” added Sergei. She stretched up and gave him one too, then, somewhat flustered, hastily backed away, removed all remaining ground-only items from the Orbiter such as protective plates and switch covers, and exited through the side hatch. Crew ingress and seating had taken around fifty minutes. The technicians then closed and sealed the hatch at 5:44 p.m.

Sergei and Yurii exchanged a “high-five,” one of the gestures they had picked up while over here. Joe had said nothing during their flirtatious exchange with the C2 but now gave the pair his most disapproving glare. “That is not professional behavior,” he snapped at them. The events over the last few months in his messy personal life had left him in an almost permanent black mood. And his crewmates, who were over a decade younger than he – Joe had been born in 1958, Sergei in 1970 and Yurii in 1972 – made him all-too-aware of encroaching middle age.

“Lighten up, Joe,” said Yurii beside him. “She second-last woman we see for months. At least you get away from Kelly.” Joe harrumphed, crossed his arms and proceeded to ignore them.

Final countdown

Like the other crewmembers, the Russians had kneepad checklists strapped to their right thighs to follow the pre-launch procedure. They had no part in this process as passengers, but liked to follow the procedure anyway – as best they could, given that they could barely follow the Americans’ rapid English, made even more incomprehensible by the NASA acronyms that were practically another language in themselves. The cosmonauts had been driven nearly mad trying to remember the acronyms, of which there were literally thousands. The Russian space program used acronyms too, but not to that extent. “It’s a pathological disorder,” Yurii grumbled.

They found the prelaunch checks mesmerizing to listen to, like some arcane religious chant. Whether flying a light aircraft or a spaceship, all pilots went through the same ritual.

“Commander understands a T equals zero no earlier than seven-forty-nine. Everyone hear that?” The commander announced the expected launch time, using Eastern Standard Time, which was five hours behind the Greenwich Mean Time used on the ISS.

“My arse does,” Yurii muttered, squirming in his seat under his tight four-point harness. They were beginning to feel the strain of lying in the hard, uncomfortable seats on their backs.

The checklist countdown times did not accurately reflect the real time, as there were built-in holds of ten and forty minutes, enabling various launch personnel to perform various tasks and deal with any problems which might manifest themselves.

“Guys, we’re about to test cabin pressure,” said the commander over their headsets. Everyone felt their ears pop as the pressure was increased to 16.7 pounds per square inch, breathing a nitrogen-oxygen mix. “Control, we show cabin pressure as nominal.” During the flight, the pressure would be sustained at 14.7 PSI or one hundred kilopascals, the same as at sea level.

The Orbiter’s on-board S-band voice communications system was configured so it could transmit and receive by radio at liftoff – before this, communications were linked to the ground by physical wires.

Sergei fidgeted restlessly in the thinly-padded launch seat. He was positioned next to a hardware stowage rack, and he felt like it was pushing him to the right.

He hated being a mere passenger, not in control. I could fly the Shuttle as good as the commander, he thought, a little resentfully. After spending many hours wading through several hundred pages of a Shuttle Systems manual, he and Yurii managed to charm a female Shuttle simulator instructor into giving them a few out-of-hours sessions in the Space Vehicle Mockup Facility – she had been unable to resist their combined appealing expressions. They persuaded Joe to accompany them and act as pilot. Yurii had been the flight engineer and Sergei, of course, sat in the commander’s seat, after some negotiating with Joe. (“I never fly Buran,” he said, looking at Joe with mournful dark eyes. Joe let himself be persuaded.) He had coped with every emergency scenario she could throw at him. But the sun would grow cold before a foreigner – especially a Russian – was permitted to pilot a Shuttle flight. At least I was commander when flying the Soyuz. And then, wistfully, If only I could have flown Buran ….

Sergei was eighteen when the Buran shuttle made its first and only unmanned flight on 15 November, 1988 – six days after his birthday, in fact. How he dreamed of being at its controls! He eagerly collected newspaper clippings and his father, an engineer at Energiya who had worked for a time on the project, had sneaked out some posters and technical drawings for him.

But the happiest event had been when his father had, a few months before the launch, taken him one day to Site 112 at the Baikonur cosmodrome in Kazakhstan, the immense building complex where the Orbiter and huge Energiya rocket were integrated; a manager friend of his father’s gave them a guided tour. Sergei was stunned by the vastness of the building and the graceful white Orbiter perched on top of the huge booster – unlike the American shuttle, Buran and Energiya were integrated horizontally and transported to the launch pad by rail – it took four diesel engines to push the stack’s 3500 tons. Sergei was even permitted to sit in the cockpit – though such photos were forbidden for security reasons, the manager looked the other way as Sergei’s father snapped a photo of him in the commander’s seat. The manager later took one of both of them standing in front of the Orbiter. He still had those photos – he was bringing them up to the ISS with him, in fact – somewhat tattered but much treasured, as was his memory of that day.

Sergei later became a fighter pilot in part because it would help him garner skills for flying the Orbiter. But his dreams – and those of many others – were crushed when the Buran program was scrapped by the cash-starved Russian government in 1992, and the once-independent space program was forced into a demeaning dependency upon American funding through the Shuttle-Mir program to keep functioning. And now, even Mir is gone … and the Buran that flew into space was destroyed in that roof collapse …. The Buran Orbiter had been put into storage in its hangar at Baikonur, sitting on top of the Energiya booster rocket, in the vague hope that it might fly again one day if finances improved. But in May 2002 the tall roof had collapsed, killing eight workers on top who were refurbishing it. The spacecraft below was partially crushed and badly damaged. Two others that had been completed – Buran’s back-up and Baikal – languished in storage elsewhere, with still no funds to fly them. To think we were once first in the space race … those traitors betrayed us.

He opened his eyes and glanced behind him to see Yurii looking at him. “I can guess what you’re thinking about.”

Sergei sighed, and began another of his gripes. “You know, the day we started co-operating with the Americans was when we made a pact with the Devil ….”

“Control, IMU alignment complete,” the commander’s voice interrupted over the intercom at T minus fifty-one minutes as he went through another check. “We show two-eight degrees, three-seven minutes, three-zero point two-six seconds north, by eight-zero degrees, three-seven minutes one-five point eight-nine seconds west.” The Inertial Measurement Unit told the Orbiter’s computers where it was located in three-dimensional space. On CRT screen #2 it was displayed as 28°37′26″ north latitude and 80° 7′15.09″ west latitude – the location of Complex 39B.

This checked that the destruct signal paths to and from the Range Safety detonators on the SRBs functioned correctly; also that the Shuttle’s range safety receiver responded appropriately to the sent commands.

A minute later: “Control, boiler switch is on; nitrogen supply switch on.” This activated the water-boiler, which provided a heat sink for the Orbiter’s hydraulic subsystem and APU. Sergei ran through the sequence in his head: the three BOILER CNTLR (BOILER CONTROLLER) SWITCHES – ON. BOILER N2 SPLY (NITROGEN SUPPLY) SWITCHES – ON.

“I hate having no windows to look out of,” Yurii groused. Down here they only had the cabin walls and storage lockers in view. There was a small window set in the entry hatch, but its protective inner cover was slid closed for the launch.

“We don’t in the Soyuz, either.” The Soyuz spacecraft was encased in a protective shroud when sitting on top of its rocket waiting for launch. Sergei and Yurii had undergone training in the Russian spaceship simulator, but were yet to make a flight.

“At least we have something to do in it.”

“If we could fly in Buran we’d be up the front.”

“Not in this lifetime,” sighed Yurii.

A thought occurred to Sergei. “Do you realize they’re recording our conversation?”

“Ooops,” Yurii grinned. “Well, they can kiss my arse!” he said dismissively, in Russian. (Mission Control recorded the voices of crew and the ASP as a matter of routine, to aid later investigations in case of an accident – as had been done with the Challenger disaster.) After pressing the push-to-talk intercom buttons on their HIUs, Sergei and Yurii now let loose with a barrage of Russian obscenities which would have made a sailor blush. Let the Americans translate that!

“Konstantinov and Zolotyov, cut it out!” snapped the commander over the comm link, stumbling over the foreign surnames. He had no idea what they were saying as he had no knowledge of Russian, but, judging by their tone, it was nothing polite.

“Da, Dedushka,” said Yurii cheekily. Joe glowered at them.

After a few moments of strained silence, the crew resumed its countdown. “Performing GLS mainline activation at T minus forty-five minutes,” noted Steve tersely. “Also ORB/SRB LDB redundancy checks.” Sergei looked up the acronyms on his checklist – he had scrawled their meanings in Cyrillic handwriting. The Ground Launch Sequencer had now taken over all launch functions previously performed manually from the control room; it could, for example, halt the process if any malfunctions were detected. The Launch Data Buses conveyed information between the Orbiter and Solid Rocket Boosters – the important information being the separation of the boosters from the ET – and these had backups in case of failure.

“GLS pre-sequencing has started, and final cabin leaks are complete. Performing cabin vent.” CABIN VENT SWITCHES (BOTH) – OP (OPEN). A klaxon alarm sounded as the excess air pressure was let out.

“Performing PASS/BFS transfer prep.” The Primary Avionics Software System’s program would copied to the Back-up Flight System in case of failure. The GPC mode 5 STBY (stand-by) light would illuminate on control panel O6, above the commander’s and pilot’s heads. BFS CRT SELECT 3 + 1 POSITION BFS CRT DISPLAY – ON. As part of a continuing Shuttle fleet upgrade, the three 1980s-vintage cathode ray tube screens had been replaced in the early 2000s by the Multi-Function Display Subsystem: nine color flat-screen liquid-crystal displays on the main flight deck, and two on the aft flight deck. Atlantis was the first to undergo these upgrades.

The commander and pilot had two flat screens each in front of them: designated CDR-1, CDR-2, PLT-1, PLT-2, these displayed an electronic “eight-ball” Attitude Direction Indicator, Horizontal Situation Indicator, Mach speed meter and altitude/vertical velocity indicator. The three screens replacing the CRTs were still designated CRT-1, CRT-2 and CRT-3 as they displayed the same data as the old CRTs, while the two screens beneath these were Multi-Function Displays 1 and 2. CRT #4 lay on the aft flight deck, as did another MDU which replaced the on-orbit maneuvering instruments.

On CRT #3 was displayed the backup flight system guidance navigation and control memory, and the commander entered ITEM 2 5 EXEC on the 32 pushbutton keys of the computer keyboard. The commander and pilot had one of these each on panel C2 between them.

“Control, this is Atlantis. GPC, BFS complete. Over.”

“Roger, out,” the Capcom acknowledged.

“OMS GN2 pressurization.” The Orbital Maneuvering System’s gaseous nitrogen tanks were pressurized for launch; the nitrogen operated the valves that allowed hypergolic propellants to enter the OMS engines in flight. OMS ENG SWITCHES (BOTH) – ARM/PRESS. “Just under an hour-and-a-half to go, folks,” the commander noted, factoring in the planned holds.

Yurii looked at his kneepad checklist. Most of the actions the commander was announcing were performed by numerous engineers and other personnel in the Firing Room, who monitored all the Shuttle’s systems (the commander, being a pedantic sort, liked to read out each and every procedure listed). The procedure just mentioned was the jurisdiction of the Orbiter Test Conductor Prime (seated at position AB4 in Firing Room Row AB) who conducted and integrated all Orbiter testing activities prior to flight, and the COOSs – Oxidizer System Engineer and Fuel Systems Engineer at Console 7/8 – who controlled the OMS engines which enabled the Shuttle to maneuver in space. Yurii and Sergei had sat in on a launch a couple of months ago with one of the Russian Interface Officers (a Russian cosmonaut was making his first flight on board the Shuttle), and were impressed and intimidated by the complex choreography required to enable a Shuttle launch.

Remembering that, Yurii said, “You know, Seryozha, some cosmonauts might now only ever fly on the Shuttle – they’ll never fly in a Russian spaceship at all.”

Sergei grimaced. “Yes, we all work for the Kosmicheskaya Mafiya now. They saved our space program, but we lost our independence.” The derisive – and pointed – nickname of “Space Mafia” for NASA was used by many in Zvyozdyi Gorodok, though not within hearing range of any NASA employee. Like many, Sergei and Yurii believed that NASA had got hold of Russian space technology and expertise for next-to-nothing and that the “partnership” was a conspiracy to subvert the Russian space program to that of NASA’s – they were, essentially, the junior partners in the ISS program. NASA made that clear in that Expedition One Press Kit. Sergei had nearly choked with indignation when first reading a section of the Press Kit:

In addition to serving as a research laboratory, the ISS will sustain and strengthen U.S. leadership in other areas. It will provide opportunity to enhance U.S. economic competitiveness and create new commercial enterprises …. The ISS will maintain the U.S. leadership in space exploration that has inspired a generation of Americans and people throughout the world …. Education and inspiration will couple to maintain U.S. economic leadership by raising a new generation of science-, math-, and technology-savvy children who will invent 21st century products and services.

– NASA Expedition One Press Kit

“Leadership”! They mention nothing about Russian achievements. Who was first in space, after all …?

Admittedly, America was providing most of the funds for the ISS program. Once we were feared, now we have become a joke, thought Sergei bitterly, recalling the endless derisive articles about Mir and the Russian space program in the Western media. We once had the advantage of long-duration space flight – as a boy he had watched, entranced, TV broadcasts from the succession of Salyut space stations during the late 1970s and early 1980s – but now we have lost even that. We’re selling off our technology and heritage to anyone who will pay, and taking bored rich tourists on joyrides. “I wish I were going up first in the Soyuz.”

“At least we are getting to go into space at all.”

“Main engine controller pre-flight BITE check,” said the pilot. The OTC and CCMEs – Main Engine Controller Engineers at Console 11/12 – oversaw this Built-In Test Equipment test.

“PASS-BFS transfer now in process.” The OTC and CDPSs – Data Processing System Engineers at C 11/12 – monitored this.

At T minus twenty-five minutes came a final voice check. “Control, this is Atlantis. Commander’s voice check, over.” Mission Control responded with the usual “Roger, out.” The pilot followed with her own voice check. The Capcom added, “Steve, the weather’s cleared up around the primary TAL, Zaragoza, so it looks like today will be a ‘go,’ so far. There’s still low cloud and showers around Morón, so that’s off-limits. Weather remains clear for the secondary TAL site in Morocco.” The primary Transoceanic Abort Landing site had been designated as Zaragoza in Spain, 634.8 kilometers to the north-east of Morón Air Force Base at the southern tip of the continent. The secondary TAL was Ben Guerir, Morocco. Over a hundred NASA personnel were sent to each site before the launch.

“Great, maybe we’ll get lucky and launch on the first try – fingers crossed,” replied the commander (and, secretly, he actually made that gesture). Launch delays were common due to weather or technical issues; frustrating, but necessary for safety reasons.

“I wonder what the people in Morocco would do if we landed in their country?” Yurii wondered bemusedly as he glanced at the sites mentioned on the checklist.

“Probably think we were from another planet,” Sergei grinned, envisioning the Arab and Berber locals’ reaction at a spaceship turning up in their backyard.

“RTLS altimeter settings configured,” said the commander, as he worked through his checklist.

At T minus twenty minutes – 4:04 p.m. – the NASA Test Director, who directed and integrated the flight crew and ground personnel, announced: “Countdown clock is halted at T minus twenty for ten-minute hold. Closeout crew are clearing pad.” Sergei imagined the ground crew – “pad rats” was their nickname – frantically scrambling off the gantry which would shortly be engulfed in searing rocket flames. They would head by bus for a roadblock five kilometers from the launch pad. Because it isn’t safe. Which means, Sergei realized, there are no other humans aside from us near the Shuttle if it blows up! It was hardly a comforting thought. The Americans are so obsessed with safety and regulating everything, yet they put us on a spaceship with no proven escape system! Sergei flew fighter jets with reckless abandon, but he always had the reassurance of an ejection seat should things go awry.

He recalled reading about the Nedelin disaster of October, 1960, where a ballistic rocket called the R-16 had been readied on the launch pad at Site 41 in Baikonur. The faulty launch system malfunctioned, and the rocket’s fuel ignited, blowing it up in a tremendous explosion. Ninety people, including Marshal Nedelin, were killed. A cameraman filmed the tragedy and a still from it was etched in Sergei’s memory: people running frantically away from the inferno, clothing on fire, and smoking heaps on the ground where burning bodies had fallen. Sergei wished sometimes that he hadn’t such a vivid imagination.

“Atlantis, this is Control. Ground crew is secure, over.”

“That’s good to know. Roger, out.”

Sergei dug around in one of his pressure suit’s pockets and pulled out an object a little smaller than his hand: a die-cast metal model of the Buran Orbiter, its white paint somewhat chipped but the red Soviet flag on its starboard wing and Cyrillic СССР – SSSR – abbreviation on the port wing stood out clearly. It was another memento of that long-ago visit to Baikonur. It was heavy and somehow comforting to hold, and he always took it up with him when flying; a sort of talisman.

Yurii looked at him and rolled his eyes. “I knew you’d find a way to smuggle that aboard.”

“This is one way Buran gets to go into space again. Did you bring Misha?”

Misha was a battered, black-and-white soft toy dog that had been with Yurii since his days in the orphanage, and he refused to part with it. “Yes, he’s right here.” Joe looked on with disbelief as Yurii pulled out Misha from a pocket of his ACES like a rabbit from a magician’s hat and waved it at Sergei. Joe muttered to himself, “I’m in a kindergarten.”

Sergei, bored and fidgety, reached into his left leg pocket and this time withdrew a small brown 55-gram packet of M&Ms – an American sweet he and Yurii had become addicted to during their training. Fumbling awkwardly with his gloved hands, he tore open the packet, spilling some of the chocolate-coated sweets, which rolled and bounced onto the rear bulkhead, disappearing into crevices. “Shit!”

Sergei then half-turned in his seat with one M&M in his hand, aiming at Yurii. “Yura! Catch!” said Sergei, tossing the sweet at Yurii’s opened mouth. His aim was off; it bounced off Yurii’s helmet visor and vanished like the others.

“Oh, for Chrissake …!” exclaimed Joe in exasperation. Ignoring him, Sergei tossed a couple more M&Ms, and Yurii finally managed to catch one in his mouth. “Bullseye!” exclaimed Sergei. He stuffed a few into his mouth, then shoved the packet back in his pocket for later consumption.

Joe, wearing a pained expression, rubbed his forehead with a gloved hand, feeling the twinges of an incipient headache.

“Cabin vent valves closed,” said the pilot.

“Loading flight plan OPS-1 into computer during planned hold,” said the commander. Sergei had practiced this during that simulator session: ERR LOG SWITCH TO RESET, and SPEC 9 9 PRO entered on the computer keypad. Any guidance navigation and control system faults would be displayed on CRT #1, and the launch trajectory on CRT #2. “Control, this is Atlantis; flight plan is loaded into the computer, over.” Operational Sequence-1, the ascent function, contained the program sequences from 101 to 106.

“Roger, out,” acknowledged the Launch Director, who had overall management of launch activities. The commander followed the same procedure to load the Operational Sequence into the Backup Flight System, and keyed in GPC MODE 5 – RUN. He then entered the flight plan into the backup system as OPS 1 0 1 PRO. This program controlled the Shuttle from T minus twenty minutes until lift-off.

The pilot had his own tasks: configuring cockpit displays for launch, and configuring the Main Propulsion System Helium System to ensure that the helium isolation valves used for in-flight engine purges functioned properly. He also co-ordinated with the Orbiter Test Conductor to ensure that Reaction Control System propellant levels were correct.

Yurii looked at the countdown checklist. Many other activities were taking place during this hold: the status of emergency landing sites was confirmed, controllers verified their console programs and any schedule programs that had fallen behind had this period to catch up in.

The “launch window” was also noted: a ten-minute window between 19:44 and 19:54 EST. This was the optimal time to insert the Orbiter into a trajectory that would allow it to dock with the ISS. If the window was missed they would have to reschedule the launch for a later date as the Orbiter would not have the fuel reserves to catch up with the Station.

“The countdown has resumed, and Launch Control have reported no anomalies,” the commander announced at 6:44 p.m.

“Hooray to that,” muttered Yurii.

“Performing fuel cell purge at T minus twenty minutes,” the commander went on. The fuel cells combined water and hydrogen to produce electricity while in orbit. “OPS transition is complete.”

Sergei glanced down the checklist to see what came next. Not long now, he thought, his stomach clenching nervously. He looked at Joe, who, as a pilot, was also clearly unhappy to be stuck down in steerage.

Four of the five IBM AP 101S General Purpose Computers (the fifth was a backup running different software) controlled almost every aspect of the Shuttle’s vehicle systems and avionics, and interacted with the Launch Processing System – a ground computer network at the launch site. Commands were sent by the LPS to the GPCs, which carried these out and responded to the LPS.

Helium was pressurized in the main propulsion system. MPS He ISOL (ISOLATION) A, B SWITCHES (ALL SIX) – OPEN. Then PNEUMATICS He ISOLATION SWITCH – OP.

Launch Control then announced, “Atlantis, this is Control. We will conduct the abort check, over.” In the cabin, the abort light cycled bright, dim, then off, three times.

“Roger, looks good, out,” the commander intoned. He added, “Fuel cell purge is complete at T minus thirteen minutes.” Contaminants that had accumulated around the porous electrodes in the cells from the chemical reaction were vented through purge valves.

The Solid Rocket Boosters’ Hydraulic Power Units provided hydraulic pressure for the SRB hydraulic system.

“Forty-five-minute hold,” said the commander at 6:55 p.m. and added, with lame humor, “If you’ve changed your mind about coming, it’s your last chance to leave.” The others laughed desultorily.

The NASA Test Director in Row AB would run through a checklist, verbally confirming with each front-room controller that his or her section was ready for launch. The Mission Management Team Chairman in the Operations Support Room, and the Launch Director in Row AA also polled their respective personnel.

“Charlie’s just landed and says the weather remains fine, with a SLF wind direction of three hundred degrees and crosswind of eight knots,” the capcom informed the commander, referring to the astronaut who had been flying the STA to check weather conditions around KSC. Heavy rain and high crosswinds (18 knots or above) could make landing dangerous, as well as damage the Orbiter’s thermal protection system – its 24,000 surface insulation tiles. Poor weather conditions at KSC or the other emergency landing sites thus canceled a launch or delayed a landing.

This was the Hazardous Gas Detection System, monitored by the engineers on Console 9/10.

The 45 minutes passed swiftly, the three men on the mid-deck absorbed in their own thoughts. Yurii absently rubbed at his right shoulder; he had strained it around three weeks ago during a gymnastics training session on the rings. No gym for six months, either. He would not be able to practice his routines in microgravity (they worked against gravity), and it would take him a couple of months to regain his balance and fitness after his long-term flight.

He had found a gym to work out in during his stay in Houston and had impressed the coaches and students there. He noted with some dismay that quite a few were immigrants from the former Soviet Union and republics – they now competed for the USA and trained American gymnasts. “Traitors,” Yurii grumbled to Sergei later. He had little regard for Russians who emigrated to the USA. “If they all keep coming over here, there will be no one left to compete for Russia.”

“Guess you’ll have to do it all by yourself, then,” remarked Sergei teasingly. But he understood Yurii’s concern. Since the Soviet Union’s collapse, there had been a hemorrhaging of talented Russian gymnasts and coaches to other nations (mostly America); they desired better pay and opportunities.

Squirming nervously in his seat, Sergei thought, We should get danger money just for flying on the Shuttle! But at least we get paid extra during our stay. Cosmonauts got paid an extra $100 or 3056 rubles each day they were in orbit, and a $1000 or 30,560 ruble bonus for each spacewalk. NASA military pilot astronauts like Joe received a standard military officer’s paycheck plus benefits, while civilian astronauts, on the Federal General Schedule pay scale, received between $56,257 per year for a GS-11 to $93,000 for a GS-14. Joe had been stunned at how low the cosmonaut’s basic salary – $250 per month or 7640 rubles – was compared to his. “But we get free housing – meals free too when training,” Sergei explained to him. It wasn’t much compensation, though – even a bus driver in Moscow could earn more.

“Resuming countdown,” remarked the pilot at 7:40 p.m. “Control, this is Atlantis. Event timer started, over.” This began the countdown to lift off.

The Ground Launch Sequencer, located in the Firing Room Integration Console, now automatically controlled all countdown functions.

The crew could hear a faint rumble as the walkway retracted. If they needed to bail out now, they could evacuate through the hatch (the walkway could be automatically or manually extended in fifteen seconds) and jump into slide-wire baskets which would carry them away from the launch pad to concrete safety bunkers. But if the ET blows up, we’ll be toast before we can get out of our seats, thought Sergei.

Various switches on Panel R2 were flicked to start the APU: BOILER N2 SPLY (ALL THREE) – ON; BOILER CNTLR (ALL THREE) – ON; BOILER CNTRL PWR/HTR (ALL THREE) – A; APU FUEL TK VLV (ALL THREE) – CL; AP FUEL PUMP/VLV COOL (BOTH) – OFF. Then APU CNTLR PWR (APU controller power) SWITCHES (ALL THREE) – ON. The following switches were checked: HYD CIRC PUMP (hydraulic circulation pump) – GPC (controlled by general-purpose computer); APU AUTO SHUT DOWN – ENA, APU SPEED SEL – NORM, APU CONTROL – OFF. Then HYD MAIN PUMP PRESS (ALL THREE) (MAIN PUMP PRESSURE) SELECTOR SWITCHES – TO.

“Atlantis, this is Control,” said the Capcom. Initiate APU pre-start procedure, over.”

“Roger.” The Auxiliary Power Units, powering the Orbiter’s three hydraulic systems that moved the main engine nozzles and aerodynamic surfaces, were prepared for operation.

“Control, this is Atlantis. Pre-start complete. Powering up APUs; looking good, over.” APU FUEL TK VLV (APU FUEL TANK VALVES) – OPEN. APU CONTROL 1 – START/RUN. HYD MAIN PUMP PRESS 1 – NORM. The hydraulic pressure 1 indicator read HI (green). The procedures were then repeated for APUs #2 and #3 on Panel F8. On R2: HYD CIRC PUMP (ALL THREE) – OFF; on F7 the hydraulic press light flicked off.

“Roger, Atlantis. Range Safety System is starting closed-loop test.”

“The Executioners are waiting,” said Yurii in a dolorous tone to Sergei.

Crispy critters

Yurii and Sergei had, when learning Shuttle procedures, been horrified to discover the duty of the Range Safety Officer.

“If the Shuttle veers off-course during launch,” the astronaut-instructor said, “and it is heading towards a populated area, the RSO will initiate the SRB detonation sequence.”

The two Russians exchanged glances. “‘Detonation sequence’?”

Their instructor cleared her throat and shuffled discomfortedly, and the other Shuttle crewmembers in the classroom remained quiet. “Uh, U.S. Air Force technicians from the 45th Space Wing track the Shuttle’s ascent by radar and, if it goes out of control, explosive devices on the Solid Rocket Boosters are remote-detonated to destroy the Shuttle – whether its crew have evacuated the Orbiter’s cabin or not. NASA doesn’t publicize this much, for obvious reasons.”

“So they will kill us deliberately?” asked Yurii.

“It’s a decision of last resort, one issued only at the 45th Space Wing Commander’s discretion. It’s considered preferable to, uh, sacrifice seven professionals who know the risks of space flight, rather than thousands of innocents on the ground.”

Both Yurii and Sergei could understand the rationale of this, but still ….

“Even the Soyuz has launch escape system,” Sergei pointed out. If the Soyuz rocket exploded on the pad, explosive bolts fired to separate the spacecraft’s descent module from its service module, and the rocket’s upper launch shroud from the lower. The escape system’s motor then fired, catapulting the module and shroud up and free of the booster to descend by parachute some kilometers away. Such an abort had occurred in 1983 on the Soyuz T-10 mission, with the two cosmonauts on board surviving intact (“Shaken but not stirred,” as James Bond might put it).

The instructor sighed. “An escape system was considered in the original design,” she explained, “but when the Shuttle development budget was cut, the escape system went along with it. The two test pilots for the first four Columbia missions had ejection seats, but these were taken out when full crews were flown.” She did not elaborate on this, but Sergei knew that to have an escape route for only two out of seven crew would have been regarded as unconscionable. The pilots would not have wanted to abandon the rest of the crew to their fate should anything go wrong – they would have to live with that for the rest of their lives.

She then went on to explain the makeshift escape systems that had been put in place after Challenger’s destruction. While on the launch pad, they could evacuate via slide-wire baskets, as had been practiced during egress training. But this route – involving struggling out of their seats in bulky pressure suits with the assistance of the close-out crew, and scrambling out the mid-deck hatch – would only be effective for a slow emergency, such as a toxic gas leak. If the ET or SRBs exploded, they would be seven crispy critters in mere seconds – or vaporized entirely.

If the engines failed before reaching orbit, the crew could attempt a RTLS, Return to Launch Site abort, where the Orbiter would be slowed and flipped over on its back before heading for an emergency landing site. This maneuver had so far only been tested in computer simulations, and there was no guarantee it would work in reality. They could also ATO, Abort To Orbit if able to and continue the mission or AOA, Abort Once Around – land after one orbit.

The crew could also bail out – it would be Sergei’s job, being nearest the entry hatch, to pull on the handles that activated the explosive bolts around it. He had already rehearsed this: remove both safeing pins from the T-handle box on the mid-deck floor near his seat, then squeeze and pull the handles. One activated the pyro vent valve, which evacuated the Orbiter’s atmosphere so it equalized with that outside. The other handle forward of it ignited the pyrotechnic charges that separated the hatch from the Orbiter. He then would extend the 9.8-foot telescopic escape pole, attach the lanyard assembly and make sure his crewmates evacuated. Sergei had done over two hundred parachute jumps (and broken a bone or two) in his Air Force and cosmonaut career to date, and was well-experienced, being a qualified instructor – the main reason for seating him near the hatch as Jumpmaster.

But the instructor admitted that the g-forces could be so great they would be pinned to their seats. If they did manage to get up, the Orbiter might not be able to achieve the wings-level attitude necessary for bail out – and then they might careen into the Orbiter’s sides or wing leading edge when jumping. Then there was the shock of wind blast, and of parachuting into the icy Atlantic Ocean ….

Sergei’s mind’s eye had played out the worst-case scenario:

“We have a major malfunction,” the commander says. “Prepare to evacuate.”

But the Shuttle, plummeting and shaking violently, makes movement nearly impossible; severe g-forces pin the crew to their seats. They struggle to unstrap their harnesses and fight their way against the buffeting towards the hatch Sergei has blown open, but –

“Control, this is Atlantis,” the commander yells frantically over comm. “We are attempting evacuation.”

“Atlantis, you are on a trajectory that will impact on a populated region,” Houston responds. “We are preparing to activate SRB explosive devices.”

“No! Please –” the commander screams.

“We are sorry, Atlantis,” says the Houston Flight Director. “May God be with you all –”

A muffled rumbling, then a flash as the SRB explosives ignite. The External Tank, filled with a volatile mixture of liquid oxygen and hydrogen, erupts in an immense fireball as fragments from the disintegrating SRBs pierce the ET. The crew’s last sensation is of tremendous, agonizing, unending heat. Sergei, gloved hands raised in front of his helmet visor in a futile attempt to shield his face, watches as the inferno rushing towards him melts and blows away his gloves, then the flesh of his hands –

Poekhali!

Sergei winced inwardly, recalling that rather grim lesson. He glanced back at Yurii; Joe also looked discomforted. We are expendable, he knew. Human sacrifices!

The crew of the Challenger had not died in the explosion of the ET; the crew compartment survived that, arcing upwards then plummeting into the ocean from a tremendous height. “They say they retrieved ‘remains,’ not ‘bodies’,” Sergei said to Yurii when discussing the disaster a few evenings ago. “When you hit a surface at that velocity, your body disintegrates. Two pilots in my squadron died that way. There were just a few pieces of them – body parts – left in the wreckage of their MiGs.”

“They never released an autopsy report for Challenger,” Yurii noted.

“The crew compartment hit the ocean from nearly twenty thousand meters. They were traveling at three hundred and thirty kilometers an hour by that time. Like hitting concrete. The impact turned them into human pancakes.” He slapped his hand flat on the table to emphasize his description ….

The LOX was flowing through the Main Propulsion System and back to the large storage tank some distance away. This cooled the system down slowly to 130º Celsius below zero so that it would not be shocked by the torrent of super-cold fluid at the time of engine ignition.

“Atlantis, this is Control. You are on internal power, over.”

“Roger that.”

Four minutes to go! The nervous anticipation was almost unbearable, the tension in the pilots’ and controllers’ voices evident. Yurii imagined the thousands of people at various viewing points around Cape Canaveral waiting, like pilgrims at some ancient religious ceremony, to witness the Shuttle crew’s departure into the realm of the gods. Like Sergei, Yurii was atheist, and space flight in the Communist era had been almost a substitute religion – one they both still preferred to the anachronistic Orthodox Church, which had been all too eager to get its claws back into the Russian people after the fall of Communism.

Those lucky enough to acquire bus passes so as to gain access to the Astronaut Causeway – the special viewing area within KSC grounds south of Complex 39B on the Banana River – would be informed of each step in the countdown over the loudspeakers: “T minus four minutes and counting ….”

There was a sequence of four engine system purges and propellant conditioning which prepared the SSME for engine start. Sequence 1 purged the oxidizer system and seals; S-2 continued this and included the fuel system; S-3 included propellant recirculation and S-4 indicated that the engine was ready to enter the start phase.

The closing of the ET’s liquid oxygen vent enabled it to be brought to its full flight pressure; it had been left open to allow the super-cold LOX to boil off and thus avoid over-pressurization.

The Orbiter’s aero surfaces – the elevons on each wing that controlled pitch and roll, and the tail rudder which controlled yaw – were moved through a pre-programmed pattern to their full extensions to condition the hydraulic system; a faint shuddering could be felt through the Orbiter’s frame. “Atlantis, this is Control. Hydraulic check complete.” Launch Control reported each automated procedure.

The three main engine nozzles were swiveled in tandem in their sockets before being moved to their launch position, ensuring that they were ready to control the flight path. LOX gases were venting out down the sides of each nozzle. “Atlantis, this is Control. Main engine gimbal complete, over.”

The body flap beneath the three main engine nozzles shielded them from the heat of re-entry, and provided pitch control trim.

The External Tank had a pressurized hold capability of three minutes and thirty-six seconds. “Atlantis, this is Control. Oh-two vents closed; looks good.”

The “beanie cap” at the top of the ET, which siphoned off oxygen vapor that would otherwise form ice on the ET’s oxygen vents, was retracted.

“Control, Atlantis. Report no caution and warning unexpected errors.” Kathy reported this as she cleared the caution and warning system memory for ascent at T minus 2 minutes 30 seconds, verifying to Launch Control that no unaccounted-for error messages had been logged. She reached down to her right to flick the memory read/clear switch on Panel R13U.

Fuel cells were switched to the Orbiter’s internal ones.

“Close and lock visors, everyone.”

Sergei glanced back at Yurii – as best he could in the bulky suit – extended his right hand behind him briefly (he still clutched the Buran model in his left), and Yurii clasped it. Yurii also reached for Joe’s. Joe, after a moment’s hesitation, responded. It was a brief, silent communion of men about to head off into deadly danger: of warriors preparing for battle. The moment passed, and they, with the rest of the crew, reached up with gloved hands to close and lock their helmet visors.

“Control, this is Atlantis. APU to ‘inhibit,’ over.” The commander flicked the apu auto shut down inhibit switch on panel R2 to prevent an automatic shutdown.

The External Tank’s hydrogen valves were closed, and the liquid hydrogen tank pressure began building up for flight. “Atlantis, this is Control. H-two tank pressurization okay. You are go for launch, over.”

“Roger, go for launch, out.” Everyone’s heartbeats accelerated at those galvanizing words.

“One minute to go, folks,” said the commander, his voice tight. They felt each second pass with exquisite precision.

The Multiplexer-Demultiplexers translated signals to and from the Orbiter’s systems into computer language, and vice-versa.

Now transferred to internal power, the Shuttle was cutting her ties with Earth, and preparing the Solid Rocket Boosters for ignition.

“Thirty seconds, down there.” Dedushka seemed to remember his “baggage with mouths”.

Sergei closed his eyes, thinking of the Soyuz rocket launches of other crews he had watched at the Baikonur cosmodrome. The whole process was quieter than this – but then the Soyuz was a smaller and simpler spacecraft. He felt an intense longing to be back there in a familiar environment, in command of his own mission, with the R-7 Soyuz-FG rocket poised to launch from the vast, lonely Kazakhstan steppe. He loved that ancient, windswept landscape – it somehow seemed an appropriate setting for the futuristic technology of space.

At least I’ll get to see Temyusha during our stay. Temir, a Kazakh cosmonaut, was a Soyuz commander like Sergei. The pair had attended the same military aviation college, later serving in a MiG-29 squadron together – and raising hell. As had Sergei, Temir successfully applied for a pilot-cosmonaut candidate position in 1997. Temir would pilot a Soyuz TMA “taxi” flight to the ISS with a French cosmonaut-researcher and American spaceflight participant.

“Atlantis, this is Control. APU start is ‘go’. You are on your on-board computer.” Atlantis’s on-board computers now controlled the countdown.

As with the main engines, both SRBs swiveled their engine nozzles in their sockets to set them to launch position. Everyone felt the Shuttle stack vibrate slightly.

“Rain birds away.” There was a remote thundering as 1 135 620 liters of water were dumped from a 88-meter-high tank on the pad’s north east side into the deep trench below Atlantis to dampen the intense acoustic vibrations reflecting around the Mobile Launcher Platform from the engines’ firing. Flowing at a rate of 3,406,798 liters per minute, there was only around 20 seconds of water available.

“Ten seconds,” said the commander. “Brace yourselves, folks.”

Orange sparks began scattering out the main engine nozzles prior to ignition, flares igniting to ensure that any hydrogen flowing through the engines did not accumulate near the nozzles.

“Five – four – we have main engine start ….” said Launch Control.

“Poekhali! Let’s go!” exclaimed Yurii – the word originally uttered by Yurii Gagarin at his launch, and by a cosmonaut on every launch since.

“There they go,” said the commander, his voice over comm drowned out by the tremendous thunder of main engine ignition as each came to life in succession, building up to the initial ninety percent thrust. A high-frequency, low-amplitude vibration traveled through the cabin and crew. The Shuttle stack shuddered violently as 375,000 pounds of thrust swayed it nose-down forward then back again – this was called the “twang”. The four hold-down bolts on the aft skirt of each SRB – each bolt 28 inches long and 3.5 in diameter – barely held the massive spacecraft in place. Starting each engine 0.12 seconds apart helped dampen the suddenness of this tilt and reduce overall stress on the Shuttle stack.

“Two – one – zero – SRB ignition ….”

Now the two SRBs ignited, the pyrotechnic device at their tops shooting a 147.6-foot tongue of fire down inside each rocket to light the solid propellant. The aluminum powder fuel began an unstoppable burn, and a mighty 2,650,000-pound inferno poured out their engine nozzles, their force overwhelming that of the main engines’. “Oh, shit!” Sergei yelped, eyes wide with terror, his voice lost in the din. The awesome vibrations made it impossible to focus on anything, impossible to think; it overwhelmed his whole being. It’s going to fall apart! Surely no craft could withstand such ferocity.

The two T-0 umbilicals feeding propellant to the tanks were released, the ground launch sequence terminated (initiating the onboard GPCs), and the onboard master timing unit, event timer and mission event timers were started – all in milliseconds. The ascent digital autopilot configured the main and SRB engines, and aero surfaces, in their launch positions. The main engines were now at one hundred percent thrust. The Shuttle stack strained against its bonds, eager for release.

The eight explosive bolts were detonated, and …

“Here we go!” yelled one of the astronauts.

On twin pillars of fire

Shuttle Ascent Events
Abort Data Eastern L+MM:SS Ascent Events Miles p/h
0:02:25: RTLS only 7:49:47 p.m. T+00:00 Launch (Vi)
7:49:58 p.m. T+00:11 Start roll program 927
7:50:05 p.m. T+00:18 End roll program 1002
7:50:19 p.m. T+00:32 Main engine throttle down 1193
7:50:35 p.m. T+00:48 Main engine throttle up 1418
7:50:48 p.m. T+01:01 Max Q (728 psf) 1657
7:51:50 p.m. T+02:03 SRB separation 3634
7:52:00 p.m. T+02:13 Start OMS assist 3750
7:52:12 p.m. T+02:25 Last pre-TAL RTLS 3887
0:02:37: TAL only 7:52:13 p.m. T+02:26 TAL available 3887
7:53:30 p.m. T+03:43 End OMS assist 5200
7:53:39 p.m. T+03:52 Negative return 5523
7:54:50 p.m. T+05:03 Last pre-ATO TAL 7501
0:03:20: ATO 7:54:51 p.m. T+05:04 Press to ATO 7501
7:55:34 p.m. T+05:47 Roll to heads-up 9001
7:55:58 p.m. T+06:11 Press to MECO 9887
7:56:41 p.m. T+06:54 Single-engine MECO 12 069
7:57:09 p.m. T+07:22 3G limiting 13 638
7:58:11 p.m. T+08:24 MECO command 17 524
8:34:47 p.m. T+45:00 OMS-2 orbit circularization

“Beginning terminal countdown,” said Launch Control from the Baikonur tower. TsUP, Korolyov Mission Control in Moscow, would take over at launch. “Ten, nine, eight ….”

“Baikonur, this is Berkut. Buran is go for launch,” said Sergei, as he made final checks of the Buran Orbiter’s systems from the commander’s seat.

“Acknowledged, Berkut,” replied Launch Control, using Sergei’s military callsign, which meant “Golden Eagle”.

Sergei glanced right at the Kazakh co-pilot, Temir, in his olive Strizh pressure suit, who grinned and gave him a “thumbs-up”. The Kazakhstan flag was a bright splash of yellow and sky-blue on his left arm. Behind Temir was seated the flight engineer, Yurii; he and Sergei both wore the red Soviet flag patch.

“Ignition of core engines at T minus eight seconds,” said Launch Control.

Cyrillic readouts scrolled down the three cathode-ray television screens set in the cockpit panel’s center. The Buran-Energiya stack trembled as the two mighty Energiya core stage rocket engines ignited.

“… three … two … one … ignition of Zenit boosters at T minus zero seconds … liftoff!” The Buran crew’s world was filled with thunder as the four liquid-fueled boosters added their thrust to the Energiya’s, the eight explosive bolts detonated and the Buran-Energiya spacecraft was released from Earth –

For those watching from the viewing area nine kilometers away, it was as though an asteroid had struck. The blinding orange-yellow inferno pouring from the boosters lit up the evening sky like a volcano in reverse, then they were hit by the crackling sound waves traveling outward from the Shuttle stack – even at that distance it overwhelmed them with its raw, primal power. They could only wonder what those inside that roaring dragon must be experiencing.

Atlantis leapt upwards like an express elevator, eager to be free of Earth. The crew was slammed back into their seats. The next two minutes would be the most dangerous portion of ascent.

Sergei had watched the first (and, as events sadly turned out, only) unmanned launch of Buran with his father at the Baikonur cosmodrome, on a stormy, windy, 4º Celsius morning at 6 a.m. The Energiya booster had been even more powerful than the External Tank, with a thrust of 7,844,848 Newtons – not including the four strap-on Zenit boosters. With these, its thrust was even mightier than that of the Saturn-5 Moon rocket’s. We could have gone to the Moon, or to Mars …. The forces generated by that launch were so immense they seemed to split the sky open. What would have it been like, to be in that cockpit …?

“Liftoff!” cried Launch Control. “We have liftoff of Space Shuttle Atlantis, continuing our partnership to the stars – and it has cleared the tower!” Seven seconds had passed. Mission Control in Houston would now take over the flight.

“Instituting roll maneuver at forty feet,” said a new voice from Houston Mission Control at T plus seven seconds. When the SRBs’ nozzles had cleared the tower lightning rod by twelve meters, the Shuttle began a 180-degree roll at ten degrees per second into a “heads down” position, initiated by the actuators on the main engines and SRBs gimbaling. This combined roll, pitch (78 degrees) and yaw motion would put it at the best angle – in the “trajectory envelope” – to minimize aerodynamic loads through the thickest part of the atmosphere. It also enabled the pilots to use the ground as a visual reference, and pointed the Shuttle in the desired eastwards heading for its orbital insertion.

The maneuvers were brutal on the crew, jerking them around roughly, and they were now grateful to be tightly strapped in their seats. The commander and pilot were hard-pressed to read the 2020 switch labels amidst the violent shaking; as one, with difficulty, reached for a switch, he would yell to his co-pilot to “Verify”. Only after both agreed would he flick the switch in question. Accidentally shutting down, say, the main engine switch would ruin everyone’s day.

The Alpha/Mach and Altitude/Vertical Velocity Indicator instrument displays on the commander’s and pilot’s MDU screens gave such information as the Shuttle’s angle of attack, acceleration in feet per second, vehicle velocity relative to the speed of sound, equivalent airspeed in knots, altitude acceleration and altitude in feet and nautical miles. On CRT #1, the desired ascent route and the Shuttle’s actual position were displayed on an ascent trajectory graph.

“Roll maneuver complete. Atlantis, you look fine,” said Houston at T plus eighteen seconds.

“LVLH,” MS-1 reminded the pilots. “Got that, Jim,” said the commander. At T plus thirty seconds the commander and pilot flicked on the Attitude Direction Indicator switches (ADI ATT SWITCHES – LVLH POSITIONS) to give local vertical/horizontal readings.

“Ten thousand feet and Mach point-five,” said the pilot to the crew. There was some jolting from the crosswind turbulence that was a feature of this altitude.

“Point nine,” noted the commander.

“There’s Mach one,” intoned the pilot.

“Going though nineteen thousand feet,” the commander noted. “A lot of wind up here today. Beginning to throttle down.” They were approaching “Max-Q,” where the Shuttle’s speed was still increasing but the atmosphere still dense and resistant. The main engines were temporarily throttled back to ease structural loads, then would be smoothly accelerated to the nominal 104.5 percent again. The main engines had been found to be more powerful than originally designed, and could operate up to 109 percent of their originally-rated thrust level.

“Houston, this is Atlantis. Main engines now at sixty-seven percent,” said the commander. “Velocity of seventeen hundred forty-nine feet per second, altitude of three point nine nautical miles, downrange two, over.”

“I’m switching to control-stick,” added Kathy. During the first stage, the Shuttle could be flown in fully automated mode, or in manual via the rotational hand controller with back-up guidance from the GPCs and feedback from external sensors. The Digital Autopilot used these manual or automatic commands to control the Orbiter’s main engine gimbals and SRB nozzles. The pilots essentially flew the computers, which in turn flew the Shuttle.

Many pilots chose to fly manual as they disliked feeling subordinate to a computer – the current crew was no exception. The Orbiter did need help from its human pilots on descent – to arm the switches for the Orbital Maneuvering System’s deorbit burn and to arm and deploy the landing gear (Buran, in contrast, had flown entirely automated).

“Atlantis, you’re looking good. You have three engines running normally. Three good fuel cells. Three good APUs. Four-point-three nautical miles altitude, three down-range. Out.”

“Roger, that. Elevons are now at null position,” said the pilot.

“Atlantis, Houston. You are ‘go’ for throttle up.”

“Roger, we’re throttling up at T plus forty-eight seconds,” said the commander as he increased the main engines to full power again.

“Atlantis, this is Houston. Continue at full throttle.”

“Acknowledged, Houston,” said the commander, sounding tense. It was not long after this point, at seventy-three seconds into ascent, that an O-ring on one of Challenger’s SRBs burned through and into the External Tank, which then erupted in a huge fireball. Commander Dick Scobee had said, “Roger, go at throttle up,” then a moment later came pilot Mike Smith with “Uhh … oh ….”

The tension was almost unbearable. There had been no fatal launch accidents since Challenger, but some near-misses – and it was only a matter of time before another tragedy. The odds shortened with each successive launch. The O-rings, though redesigned, were still dangerous – and they were just one of many elements. Luck, though, was with the Shuttle program once again during this first stage of today’s launch.

“Passing through Max-Q at one minute. Just over Mach two-point-four and thirty-five thousand feet,” noted the commander.

“Reading four-eighty-six on mine,” added the pilot, looking at her airspeed indicator which read 486 knots. It could display equivalent airspeed from 0 to 500 knots.

The Shuttle continued climbing, accelerating with every second.

“Mark velocity forty-four hundred feet per second, eighteen nautical miles altitude, sixteen downrange,” noted the commander at T plus one minute forty-five. Yurii scowled in confusion and looked at the metric conversion list he and Sergei had made and attached to their checklists. A nautical or sea mile was 6076 feet or 1852 meters. All these conversions are a headache. And all the acronyms!

“Atlantis, Houston. First stage performance nominal.”

“Okay, nominal.” The commander’s and pilot’s voices were high-pitched and strained against the gravitational forces they were enduring.

At T plus two minutes the boosters’ thunder began fading; they were burning out after having provided eighty percent of the total thrust during First Stage of launch. “Control, this is Atlantis. We have SRB burn-out at two minutes; twenty-four point nine nautical miles altitude, twenty point five down range, forty-two hundred twenty-one feet per second. Ready for SRB sep, over.” On the LCD screens the “PC<50” signal was displayed, indicating the SRB’s combustion chamber pressures were less than fifty PSI or 345 kilopascals. At launch they were four hundred PSI.

There was a muffled bang as separation thrusters blew the SRBs away from the ET; the reaction control system commanded a three-axis hold for four seconds to ensure the Shuttle remained steady. A brilliant flash was visible through the cockpit’s windows from the thrusters’ firing. The SRBs would continue on a separate trajectory, arcing and descending to the Atlantic via their deployed parachutes and ending up about 225 kilometers from the launch site, to be retrieved by two specialized recovery ships – the Liberty Star and Freedom Star – and reused.

“Houston, this is Atlantis. We have SRB sep at two minutes twelve seconds. Velocity of fifty-three hundred feet per second at twenty-five nautical miles altitude and twenty-seven point seven downrange, over.”

“Roger, we can see that, out.” The relief in their voices was obvious.

“Initiating OMS Assist.” Ten seconds after SRB separation, the OMS engines were fired for one hundred seconds to increase the Shuttle’s overall lift capability.

“Switching to software major mode one-oh-three.” This controlled the second stage procedures. He added, “Visors up, everyone.” The crew shut off the oxygen flowing into their suits and opened their helmet visors, making it easier for them to talk to one another.

The violent shaking now eased into a smooth glide as the Orbiter and ET continued accelerating through the second stage of ascent; their velocity would triple two times in the next six minutes. Sergei glanced back at his crewmates in the darkened mid-deck. “Still alive so far, huh, tovarishchi?” Both looked as pale and tense as he felt, but the worst was over now that the SRBs were gone.

He wished they could see the blue of the Earth’s atmosphere merge into the blackness of space, but all that was in front of them were the rows of white lockers and walls of the mid-deck. Maybe they could set up a video display – show the view from the cockpit.

Those left behind on the ground would be looking upwards into the dark sky, following the thick, tapering column of smoke topped by a bright point of light that was the Orbiter’s engines. They – whose taxes paid for all of this – would feel a longing to be on that spaceship, too; to be temporarily freed from the tedium of Earthly life. But most never would, and could only dream.

“Atlantis, this is Houston. You are negative return at three minutes fifty-two seconds and fifty-five point six nautical miles. Do you copy? Over.”

“Roger, Houston. Negative return, out.” Mission Control had informed him that the return-to-launch-site abort option was no longer possible due to height and velocity constraints.

The plume from Atlantis’s three main engines began expanding as the Shuttle climbed out of the densest part of Earth’s atmosphere, moving forward and around Atlantis. “Houston, we’re getting a real light show up here,” the pilot exclaimed. They were bathed in a pinkish, flickering light. “Pity you can’t see this, down below,” she added to the three stuck in steerage.

“Wish we could see you, Katyusha,” Yurii muttered, in Russian.

“Through Mach seven, and we have MECO in approximately two minutes, everyone,” the commander informed his crew, looking at the predicted time of main engine cut-off on the ascent trajectory display.

The Shuttle had now rotated from its 30º eastwards inclination to 90º off-vertical orientation – it was lying on its back relative to the Earth’s horizon.

“Atlantis, Houston. You are press to ATL, over.”

“Okay that.” Atlantis now had only one option if things went wrong: Abort to Orbit. It would enter orbit, but at a lower altitude than planned, and its mission objectives might have to be changed depending upon how much fuel it used in its OMS burns.

“Initiating lofting.” To gain additional velocity so its orbit didn’t decay, the main engines continued thrusting and the Shuttle was steered so it lost a few kilometers’ altitude. Its velocity, though, would be increased over the next couple of minutes to the required 25,663 feet per second.

“Houston, Atlantis. Initiating roll to heads-up at five minutes forty-seven seconds,” said the commander. The External Tank would thus fall away beneath the Orbiter after separation. This was a recent development which enabled the Orbiter’s antennas to acquire the Tracking and Data Relay Satellites earlier. Separation had previously been done with the Orbiter still underneath the ET, relying on its thrusters’ separation burn to push it away.

“Houston, this is Atlantis. We are press to MECO at six minutes eleven seconds.” He told Houston Mission Control he could reach orbit if a main engine failed. Forty-three seconds later he informed the ground that he was “Single-engine press to MECO” – Atlantis could still reach orbit even if two engines failed.

“Throttling down engines.” At seven minutes 22 seconds the pilots throttled down the engines so that acceleration forces remained under three g’s to ease the load on the Orbiter’s structure – and the crew. Yurii grimaced as he tried to lift his arms – they felt as though heavy weights were resting on them. His chest felt as though someone were sitting on it.

“We’re initiating pre-MECO, folks.” Ten seconds before MECO, the MECO sequence began. Three seconds into this the engines were commanded to throttle down at ten percent per second to 65 percent of thrust, holding this for 6.7 seconds.

“Atlantis, this is Houston. You are go for main engine cut-off, over.”

“Roger that, cut-off on schedule, out.” The muted thunder of the engines came to an abrupt halt as the ET’s fuel was depleted and they shut down. On cockpit panel F7 the three main engine status indicators lit up red. “Height of fifty-two nautical miles.” The lofting had dropped their altitude a little. MECO normally took place at 57 nautical miles, but by dropping the altitude a larger payload could be accelerated to the appropriate orbital speed as needed for the heavier ISS flights.

“Atlantis, this is Houston. Go for ET separation.”

The ET separation software now closed the liquid hydrogen and oxygen feed line valves, unlatched and retracted the 17-inch disconnects within the Orbiter’s fuselage, then armed and fired the pyro initiator controllers to separate Atlantis from its now-depleted fuel tank. Again, the reaction control system fired to hold the Orbiter steady so there was no roll, pitch or yaw during this phase. If the General Purpose Computers malfunctioned, the ET could be separated manually by pressing the separation switch on panel C3, but there was no such need today.

“Roger, we have External Tank sep at T plus eight minutes fifty-four seconds and velocity twenty-five thousand, nine twenty-seven feet per second. Altitude of fifty-six point six nautical miles, eight hundred sixty-eight downrange ….” said the commander. There was a clang and the Orbiter shuddered slightly as the ET was released after eleven seconds of mated coasting to begin the long tumble downwards to the Pacific Ocean, breaking up at around 56,388 meters. The bone-shaking roar of the previous nine minutes was replaced by an almost-eerie stillness. Atlantis was now traveling at a velocity fast enough to counter Earth’s gravitational pull and enter a freefall orbit.

“… Beginning minus Z translation, out,” the commander continued, reaching up to the RCS control switches on panels O7 and O8. Of the forty-four Reaction Control System thrusters placed in the Orbiter’s nose and rear, the negative or downward-pointing – four forward and six aft – RCS thrusters were briefly fired with a muffled whump to ensure the Orbiter moved up a safe distance at a 1.2-meters-per-second separation from the arcing, rotating ET. At this height – above much of the atmosphere – the RCS was effective.

“Translation completed.”

At this point, everyone felt the crushing weight of gravity leap off them and they became weightless, floating up against their harnesses. A few loose nuts, washers and screws emerged from various nooks and crannies where they had been inadvertently left behind during launch preparations. There was some sneezing as dust also drifted from panels; it wouldn’t clear until the air filters began operating. Sergei’s M&Ms that had got loose earlier also reappeared.

“Atlantis, this is Houston. You have forty minutes until direct insertion OMS-two burn at MET forty-five minutes, over.” There had originally been a preceding OMS-1 burn, but engineers in the late 1980s found a way of utilizing propellant more effectively, and it was now normally not required unless there was an underspeed.

“Roger, forty minutes, out.” Atlantis’s initial trajectory had placed it in an apogee of 220 kilometers and perigree of 57 kilometers for an orbital period of 88.9 minutes. When Atlantis coasted upward to its orbital apogee of 327 kilometers, a burst from the OMS would place it in the desired circular orbit, a higher apogee of 230 kilometers and perigree of 194.7 kilometers. From there it would do several trajectory burns over the next two days to reach the ISS’s altitude.

“Please advise when ET umbilical doors are closed, over.”

The pilots then shut down various units: APU AUTO SHUT ON – ENA. BOILER CNTLR – OFF. APU CONTROL – OFF. The Auxiliary Power Unit, no longer needed, was turned off. The computer program was now switched to software mode 105, which took care of the OMS-2 burn. They also closed the ET umbilical doors: ET UMBILICAL DOOR MODE – GPC/MAN (computer or manual). CENTERLINE LATCH – STO. L AND R DOOR – OP. L AND R DR LATCH SWITCHES – LAT ON PANEL R2. “Umbilical doors closed, Control,” the pilot told them. “Software mode now one-oh-five.”

Barf time

“Thirty-seven minutes till the OMS-two burn, everyone, so feel free to unstrap yourselves,” the commander announced. Everyone reached up to unlock their helmets and remove them, pushing them to the rear of the mid-deck. Sergei let the Buran model float away for the moment and unbuckled his parachute and harness. The straps floated to each side and he drifted upwards, grinning delightedly. He turned to face his crewmates. “Survived my first launch, Yuroshka!”

Yurii moved carefully out of his seat. He felt a twinge of nausea, and was careful not to turn his head abruptly. Everyone had Scop/Dex motion sickness pills packed with the other survival gear in their ACESs’ lower leg pockets, but he preferred to tough it out for now. He watched Sergei turn a somersault – his friend did not appear sick. “You feel sick at all, Seryozha?”

“No, I’m fine,” said Sergei, pushing off to the other side of the cabin. “This feels so weird!”

Yurii flinched as retching noises erupted beside him – poor Joe was already affected. Joe hastily grabbed his barf bag (“emesis bag” was the official NASA name for it) but two greenish-yellow globules of vomit floated away, oscillating gently, before he could catch the rest in the bag. He then proceeded to empty his stomach of that morning’s partially-digested lunch.

“Seryozha! Look out!” Sergei turned to see the tennis ball-sized spheres heading towards him. He quickly pulled his barf bag out of a leg pocket and, holding it open, managed to intercept one vomit globule so it floated into the bag, but the other eluded him and splattered against the sleeve of his pressure suit, clinging with surface tension. “Shit!” he grimaced in disgust. A few smaller droplets headed off on various trajectories. “Yura! Get the wet-wipes!” They spent the next few minutes determinedly hunting the escapees, using Yurii’s bag to corral them; it was rather like chasing butterflies.

MS-2 came floating through the port interdeck hatchway, a grin on his dark face. “How’re you guys doing?” He glanced bemusedly at the two flustered-looking Russians, who held wet-wipes and barf bags. “Joe – you look green! You want some medication?” Joe nodded miserably, wiping his mouth with a cloth flap fastened to his barf bag. Despite his years as a fighter- and test pilot, he had been similarly sick on his previous two Shuttle flights. There was no way of predicting who would get ill.

Yurii and Sergei had got Joe drunk one evening in Zvyozdyi Gorodok, and he confessed that his Shuttle crewmates during his first mission nicknamed him “Spew”.

“I don’t think you can hold anything down, so I’ll give you an injection,” said Chad. He opened a modular locker and retrieved the Emergency Medical Kit, a blue box with red Velcro attachment points and a red strap (there was also a companion Medication and Bandages Kit which had blue Velcro and strap). Rummaging inside it, he pulled out the “A” pallet and retrieved a hypodermic syringe filled with Phenergan, an anti-nausea medication.

“You’ll have to get out of your Pumpkin Suit. Sergei, hold this for a minute, please.” Sergei took the syringe, wrapped in sealed plastic, as Chad spent the next few minutes helping Joe awkwardly struggle out of the ACES, then his cooling garment and, finally, his MAG. Joe then had to float there butt-naked as Chad unwrapped the syringe and proceeded to inject Joe in the backside with the medication. Joe shot an embarrassed glare at the two Russians as they tried to suppress grins.

“I’d love to get a photo of this for the NASA Gallery web site,” muttered Yurii, in Russian.

Sergei bit his lip to hold back laughter – Joe looked humiliated enough already – and turned to another locker in the MF section to retrieve their clothes. The thirty-three lockers were located in the forward bulkhead of the mid-deck, storing various items like food, clothes and loose equipment. A program called “Lockerstow” on the Payload and General Support Computer laptops enabled the crew to locate items in the lockers. Everything was color-coded; each crewmember was assigned a specific color indicating their role on board. The commander was red, pilot yellow, MS-2 green, MS-1 blue, MS-3 orange, MS-4 brown and MS-5 was purple.

Sergei flipped up two thumb latches on the upper corners and turned them. He then opened the door of locker MF43M with “M/S #3 clothing” printed in white letters on an orange label, and pulled out the drawer; the plastic-bagged contents were held in place between grey foam rubber spacers. Their clothes consisted of cobalt-blue trousers or shorts with Velcro stripes, and various T-shirts and long-sleeved cotton rugby tops. They had one change of tops for each day (shorts and trousers were changed every seven days). Yurii’s clothes were in the adjacent MF57M locker, and Joe’s in MF71M next to it.

He and Yurii helped each other divest themselves of their ACESs (Yurii retrieved Misha from one of his suit’s pockets) and put their helmets back into their carry bags. Their MAGs were stuffed into sealable plastic bags and stored in the wet trash floor compartment, MD76M, along with the soiled wet-wipes and barf bags; this rubbish was vented overboard each day to burn up in the atmosphere. They then got dressed, both choosing shorts and today’s navy-blue shirt.

The ACES were pushed against the starboard wall. All seats – with the exception of the commander’s and pilot’s – would be detached and folded up for the mission’s duration as they were unnecessary in zero gravity. A brown mid-deck retention net was then attached to the MF71 row of lockers and the starboard wall to secure the items until re-entry.

“Here you are, Joe.” Yurii handed Joe his clothes and the ISS commander-to-be muttered “Spasiba, thanks” in reply (one of the few Russian words he could remember). Joe dressed, still moving gingerly, though at least he didn’t appear so ill now the Phenergan was taking effect.

Orbital dreaming

“We’re coming up on OMS-two, everyone,” announced the commander over the intercom speaker set in the mid-deck’s roof, after being notified by Mission Control. This burn, 45 minutes after launch, would circularize the orbit and initially place Atlantis into a lower orbital plane than the ISS, 230 kilometers high for this launch. They would be thus traveling faster, and use the next two days to catch up, docking with the Station on Mission Day 3.

On panels F6 and F8 was displayed ADI ATTITUDE – INRTL (inertial), and on panel C3 the pilot set the digital autopilot to AUTO, entering ITEM 2 7 EXEC on the computer keyboard. He flicked the OMS ENG – ARM/PRESS switch to begin the sixty-six-second burn. A faint vibration carried through the Orbiter’s frame as the thruster in each of the two OMS pods fired behind the Orbiter at 20:24 GMT with a combined total of 12,000 pounds of thrust, increasing its velocity and circularizing the orbit. As the Orbiter accelerated around them, those not secured floated backwards and down a little. “Houston, all systems nominal at mark fifteen seconds. Both tanks showing thirty-seven hundred PSI,” the commander noted, halfway through the burn.

“OMS-two cut-off after sixty-six seconds at forty-six minutes six seconds MET. We have achieved orbit at an apogee of one hundred twenty-four nautical miles.” There was a smattering of applause and some whooping and cheers from the Americans. “Changing to mode 106 coasting.” When Atlantis reached the correct orbit the computer program was changed again to OPS 2, the on-orbit mode: OPS 2 0 1 PRO on the computer keypad.

“Opening the payload bay doors ….” This vital function – OPS 2 0 2 PRO – enabled the doors’ built-in radiators on their inside surfaces to shed the excess heat accumulated during launch; if they stuck, Atlantis would have to deorbit in a few hours before the trapped heat became intolerable. MS-1 floated to the rear of the flight deck to panel R13L to operate the controls. “Starboard and port doors opened nominally,” he reported. The starboard door opened first as it overlapped the port door.

“Deploying Ku-band antenna,” continued Jim. This, an extendible satellite dish located in the forward end of the payload bay, enabled voice and video communications with Mission Control, as well as rendezvous radar, on frequencies between 15,250 to 17,250 MHz. The Ku antenna controls were also located on panel R13L.

“NC-1 burn at MET three hours thirty-six minutes,” noted the commander. This was the first of up to 13 OMS and RCS firings which would raise Atlantis’s orbit over the next couple of days by a total of around 158 kilometers to the Station’s altitude. Orbital drag meant that the ISS’s height decayed by up to a few hundred meters every 24 hours; it had a mean altitude of 388.9 kilometers at Atlantis’s launch. There were two orbit-raising burns this first day, two more and a planar-correction burn the next, three orbit-raising burns and another planar burn on docking day, plus four mid-course correction burns during the docking rendezvous to fine-tune the docking path trajectory.

From the moment of launch they were on Mission Elapsed Time, counting upwards from zero at midnight MET. “We’re now over the Indian Ocean, coming up on Western Australia.”

Various RCS thrusters fired at intervals with short bursts to make minor adjustments to Atlantis’s attitude (the OMS was used for major orbital maneuvers). Both the RCS and OMS used nitrogen tetroxide as an oxidizer and monomethyl hydrazine as the propellant – both deadly toxic fuels. “If you breathe that stuff in, your lungs will dissolve,” a technician had cheerily informed the Russians during a tour of the Orbiter in the Orbiter Processing Facility hangar west of the VAB.

The Orbiter’s initial attitude after insertion was designated +YVV, −ZLV. This meant that its starboard wing, out of which the imaginary positive Y-axis pointed, traveled in the velocity vector – the eastwards direction of travel, 51.6º to the Equator. Its minus Z-axis, which extended up out the top of the Orbiter – from its payload bay doors – pointed in the local vertical direction, down towards the Earth. Atlantis thus traveled upside down and sideways – in microgravity, it didn’t matter which direction it faced.

Jim came down through the port interdeck access hatch to divest himself of his ACES; the commander and pilot were now checking out the Orbiter’s systems, switching to Operational Sequence 8 (OPS 8 0 1 PRO). Sergei retrieved Buran and floated up through the hatch, with Yurii, who had grabbed a Nikon 35 mm F4S SLR camera, on his heels; eager to get their first look at space. The grey-haired commander glanced around, grimaced when he saw the two Russians (he looked a bit pale and nauseous himself), then turned back to his tasks, the cockpit before him a glowing cave of jewels. Yurii gave Dedushka “the finger” behind his back. Katyusha ignored them. The Russians then saw the incredible view of Earth and space outside, and their mordant moods of the last few days and months were temporarily forgotten.

Six windows surrounded the commander and pilot at the front of the cabin, and four more windows lay in the ceiling. Two windows at the aft crew station afforded a view along the payload bay, looking northwards. Yurii and Sergei drifted across to these, staring wide-eyed out over the 60-foot-long bay at the arc of the Earth overhead and into unbounded space – all of infinity lay before them.

Atlantis glided on a 51.6˚-inclined orbit to the Equator, the same as the ISS’s, heading eastwards in the direction of Earth’s rotation. They had crossed the terminator into the night portion of orbit at 20:24 GMT or MET +24 minutes. At their initial altitude their orbital period was 89 minutes, with nights of 40 minutes.

A waxing crescent moon softly illuminated the cloud layer covering the world below, in shades of subtle blues and greys. Lightning flickered through a distant mass of cumulonimbus to the north, illuminating the clouds from within like purplish three-dimensional sculptures. Marking the edge of the atmosphere was a faint greenish-white veil of airglow, a layer of radiating oxygen at the edge of the atmosphere. Above this was the absolute blackness of space, a myriad of stars strewn across like diamonds on black velvet. They were astonishingly bright and clear, the band of the Milky Way dazzlingly intense, especially from this segment of orbit in the Southern Hemisphere where the greatest mass of the galaxy was visible.

Sergei had once read about a theory of parallel Earths and universes: that every time a decision was made or an event happened, different timelines would branch out, and each line contained one subsequent future resulting from that event or decision. It involved some aspect of quantum physics, too complicated for Sergei to fully understand, but the theory intrigued him. In a parallel Universe, he thought now as he looked out into the void, Yura and I are floating inside Buran after launch, soon to dock with Mir-3, or whatever Station Russia has up there now. I am commander, Yura is the flight engineer, Temyusha is the pilot …

Lost in his thoughts – Yurii floating quietly beside him holding Misha – ignoring the noisy, chattering Americans behind them, Sergei gazed dreamily out into the Universe. He released the Buran model to drift in front of the window like a ghost of what could have been.

Appendices

NASA acronyms

NASA (and other) acronyms used in this story, listed in alphabetical order:

ACES
Advanced Crew Escape Suit (model S1035)
AOA
Abort Once Around
APU
Auxiliary Power Unit
ASP
Astronaut Support Person/s (also known as “Cape Crusaders”)
ATO
Abort to Orbit
BFS
Backup Flight System
BITE
Built-In Test Equipment
CDR, PLT, MS
Commander, Pilot, Mission Specialist
CRT
Cathode Ray Tube
DAP
Digital Autopilot
EMU
Extravehicular Mobility Unit (U.S. spacesuit)
EST
Eastern Standard Time
ET
External Tank
EVA
Extra-Vehicular Activity
F&D
Fill & Drain
FPS
Feet Per Second
FRCI-12 HRSI
Fibrous Refractory Composite Insulation (tiles), High-temperature Reusable Surface Insulation (tiles)
GLS
Ground Launch Sequencer
GN2
Gaseous Nitrogen
GOX
Gaseous Oxygen
GPC
General-Purpose Computer
He
Helium
HGDS
Hazardous Gas Detection System
HIU
Headset Interface Unit
HPU
Hydraulic Power Unit/s
IMU
Inertial Measurement Unit
ISS
International Space Station
JSC
Johnson Space Center, Houston, Texas
KSC
Kennedy Space Center, Florida
LCG
Liquid Cooling Garment
LDB
Launch Data Bus
LH2
Liquid Hydrogen
LOX
Liquid Oxygen
LPS
Launch Processing System
LVLH
Local Vertical/Local Horizontal
MAG
Maximum Absorbent Garment
Max-Q
Maximum Dynamic Pressure
MDM
Multiplexer/Demultiplexer
MDMS
Maintenance Data Management System
MECO
Main Engine Cut-Off
MET
Mission Elapsed Time
MHz
MegaHertz
Miles p/h
per hour
MLP
Mobile Launcher Platform
MPS
Main Propulsion System
N2
Nitrogen
NASA
National Aeronautics & Space Administration
NBL
Neutral Buoyancy Lab
NC-1
Nominal Correction-1 (first phasing maneuver)
NSTS
National Space Transportation System
NTD
NASA Test Director
O&C
Operations & Checkout Building
OMS
Orbital Maneuvering System
OPS
Operational Sequence
ORB
Orbiter
PASS
Primary Avionics Software System
PMS
Power Management System
RCS
Reaction Control System
PNP
Probability of No Penetration
PRSD
Power Reactant Storage & Distribution
RASA
Russian Aviation & Space Agency (Rosaviakosmos; see also RAKA in Russian glossary) (note: now the Russian Space Agency, Roskosmos)
RTLS
Return To Launch Site
SAFER
Simplified Aid For EVA Rescue
SARSAT
Search and Rescue Satellite
Scop/Dex
Scopolamine (0.4 mg) & Dexedrine (5 mg) in gel capsule
SLWT
Super Light-Weight Tank (introduced in 1998)
SRB
Solid Rocket Booster/s
SRSS
Shuttle Range Safety System
SSME
Space Shuttle Main Engine
SSRMS
Space Station Remote Manipulator System (robot arm or Canadarm-2)
STA
Shuttle Training Aircraft
SVMF
Space Vehicle Mockup Facility
TAL
Transoceanic Abort Landing site
TDRS
Tracking & Data Relay Satellite/s
TV
Television
VAB
Vehicle Assembly Building
Vi
Internal Velocity (inside Orbiter)
VRL
Virtual Reality Lab
WETF
Weightless Environment Training Facility

Russian glossary

Russian transliterations:

Amerikantsy
Американцы
Americans
Angel Smerti
Ангел Смерти
Angel of Death
Angliiski
Английски
English (language)
Baikonur
Байконур
Cosmodrome in Kazakhstan (also transliterated “Baykonur”)
Berkut
Беркут
Golden Eagle
BI: Bortinzhener
БИ: Бортинженер
Flight engineer
Buran
«Буран»
Snowstorm (canceled Russian space shuttle)
Da
Да
Yes
Dvoinya
Двойня
The Twins
Dedushka
Дедушка
Grandfather
Devushka/devuskhy
Девушка/девушкы
Young maiden/s
Dobroe utro!
Доброе утро!
Good morning!
Do svidaniya
До свидания
Goodbye
Ekspeditsiya Nedalyokii
Экспедиция Недалёкий
Expedition Clueless
Energiya (also spelt Energia)
Энергия
Vigor; energetic (name of rocket, and of S. P. Korolyov Rocket & Space Corporation – Ракета космическая корпоация)
Gidrolaboratoriya
Гидролаборатория
Hydrolaboratory
KK: Komandir Korablya
КК: Командир Корабля
Spaceship commander
Kosmicheskaya Mafiya
Космическая Мафия
Space Mafia (a.k.a. NASA)
Kosmonavt
Космонавт
Cosmonaut
Ledyanaya Korolyova
Ледяная Королева
Ice Queen
Lyubushka
Любушка
Sweetie
Mir
«Мир»
Russian space station (1986-2001)
MKS: Mezhdunarodnaya Kosmicheskaya Stantsiya
МКС: Международная Космическая Станция
International Space Station (Cyrillic acronym)
Ne budet dorogi
Не будет дороги
You will have no road
Orlan-M
«Орлан-M»
Sea Eagle (Russian spacesuit)
Partizanskaya voina
Партизанская война
Partisan (guerrilla) warfare
Poekhali!
Поехали!
Let’s go!
RAKA: Rossiiskoe Kosmicheskoe Agentstvo
РАКА: Российское Авиационно-Космическое Агентство, РК
Russian Aviation & Space Agency (became Federal Space Agency/Roscosmos in March 2004)
Rosaviakosmos
Росавиакосмос
Russian Space Agency (to March 2004)
Sokol
«Сокол»
Falcon (Russian pressure suit)
Soyuz Transportnyi Modernizrovannyi Antropometricheskii
«Союз Транспортный Модернизрованный Антропометрический »
Union (Russian spaceship), Transport Modernized Anthropometric (replacing TM version)
Soyuz-Forsunochnaya Golovka
«Союз-Форсуночная Головка»
Soyuz fuel-injector’s head (type of rocket)
Spasiba
Спасиба
Thank-you
Spetsnaz
Спецназ
Russian special forces (abbreviation of Специальный Назначение, Spetsial’nyi Naznachenie, Special Purpose)
SSSR: Soyuz Sovetckikh Sotsialisticheskikh Respublikh
СССР: Союз Советских Социалистических Республих
Union of Soviet Socialist Republics (USSR)
Strizh
«Стриж»
Swift, Martin (species of bird) (Russian pressure suit)
Tovarishchi
Товарищи
Comrades
TsPK: Tsentr Podgotovki Kosmonavtov imeni Yu. A. Gagarin
ЦПК: Центр Подготовки Космонавтов имэни Ю. А. Гагарина
Yurii Gagarin Cosmonauts’ Training Center
TsUP: Tsentr Upravleniya Polyotom v Moskve
ЦУП: Центр Управления Полëтом (в Москве)
Flight Control Center (in the suburb of Korolyov, Moscow)
Vozdushno-Desantniye Voiska
Воздушно-Десантние Войска
Aerial landing army/force (Russian airborne force – the “Blue Berets”)
VP: Vtori-Pilot
ВП: Второй-Пилот
Co-pilot
Za …
За …
To … (toast)
Zenit
«Зенит»
Zenith
Zvyozdyi Gorodok
Звёздый Городок
Star City (Starry Town)

Cyrillic words:

Сергей Александрович Константинов, Серëжа
Sergei Aleksandrovich Konstantinov, Seryozha (official/intimate names)
Юрий Леонидович Золотёв, Юра
Yurii Leonidovich Zolotyov, Yura

Links

Some useful references for this story were the Countdown Timeline and Shuttle Reference Manual at the KSC website.

© Suzanne B. McHale, 2002-August 2003; revised June 2007