Scav
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This is something I'm throwing out for some trivial entertainment. I've had my run of 'huh!' moments where I'll come back to a scenario on Orbiter and find the spacecraft I was piloting embroiled in an unusual situation, or behaving oddly (on one occasion I found my intrepid XR5 landed on the surface of Oberon from LEO).
So without further ado, in the spirit of complete geekery, and just to show off my meager writing skills, I give you:
So without further ado, in the spirit of complete geekery, and just to show off my meager writing skills, I give you:
SEP-008, Chapter 1.
"Houston, Constitution. Orbit stabilization burn complete," Mission Commander Brian J. Adkinson said triumphantly into his mic boom as OV-109, Constitution closed its main engine valves for the fourth time in two days. "Now showing orbital state as follows: perigee . . . 5,210.67 nautical miles; apogee is 5,212.89 nautical miles."
"We copy that, Constitution, and your telemetry confirms that. Well done. Go ahead and perform your closeout procedures, and let us know when you're ready for deployment of the VARIS."
"Roger that, Houston."
As Pilot Greg Williams went to work beside him, Adkinson busied himself as he reached for his log. Taking a pen from the velcro patch above his head, he scratched a checkmark in the log with a smug sense of satisfaction. Constitution was alive and well, and underway on her eighth mission, and his turn in the commander's seat was a long, hard-fought proposition.
He'd missed a seat on either Discovery or Atlantis before the fleet was decommissioned not that long ago. He remembered the bittersweet emotion he felt that night standing in the floodlit darkness with the others at Cape Canaveral's Shuttle Landing Facility as Atlantis touched down for the last time, with her chest-rattling sonic booms still echoing forever in his heart. He knew he was a dreamer; he thought at the time the chances he'd actually fly in space were slim to none, but that hadn't stopped him from trying.
That tenacity of his had bought him a stint with the Russians to the International Space Station during an expedition, and the experience had only whetted his appetite for more. After countless more hours in the simulators and in the classroom, he'd finally found himself where he was sitting at the present: in a chair overlooking a vista over five thousand miles above the surface of the Earth. He stole a second to glance 'up', out Constitution's cockpit window at the glowing blue ball of life 'above' him.
"That's a helluva sight, isn't it?" Williams quipped, and Adkinson smiled. His counterpart, the one they called 'pilot' (though Adkinson himself held the distinction of being wholly in charge of Constitution. His duties included actually getting her into the air, and landing her at the end of the mission) was already launched headlong into his first spaceflight. A wiry, brown-haired, brown-eyed man, he was an affable sort with too much arm hair. Adkinson himself was always the red-headed 'odd-man-out' with the strangely out-of-place blue eyes that had always won him a championship in the occasional impromptu staring contests. They were only a year apart in age, and the instant esprit de corps they developed in training had blossomed with startling velocity between the two before Constitution had even left the ground.
"Sure is. Who thought we'd actually end up here, huh?"
"Damn straight. Shuttle'd never have taken us up this far."
"No, not five thousand miles. Five hundred, maybe. How's your checklist coming?"
"I've got the mains locked out, and the RCS is on stand-by. Angular configuration is good. We're ready to start."
"Excellent. Jamie?"
"Right on it, boss!" Mission Specialist Two, Jamie Cunningham replied cheerfully from her spot immediately behind the two, on the 'right' side of the cockpit. Her bailiwick was the aft half of the payload bay, which included Constitution's primary mission: the Van Allen Radiation Intensity Survey Satellite. Latched firmly into her cavernous cargo bay, the large device was passive, and required only a pittance of direct current electrical power to unshield the device's receiving equipment and unfurl the solar panels that would power the software controlling and overseeing it before it was to be deployed.
The rest of the eight-person crew of Constitution were either out of the cockpit in the mid-deck, or quickly bustling with their own activities in the parasite module housed in the forward part of the cargo bay.
"Let's see," the pixie-like blonde-haired, blue-eyed woman murmured to herself as she poured over her panel. "Major function to secondary mode . . . check . . . SPEC four-zero-one, execute."
Her fingers flew over the simple twenty-one key keyboard as she executed the tasks she had committed to memory weeks before. "Calibration run is complete. Item twenty-two, execute. Item twenty-three, execute. Device telemetry to downlink, and accept."
Turning her head, she reached for and grabbed a microphone stuck to the bulkhead at her side.
"Houston, Constitution MS-2. I've got SPEC four-oh-one engaged, and I'm broadcasting my internal readings now. How are you reading it?"
"Looks good, Jamie, uh, give us a second to get a bite on this."
"Roger that." She turned her head suddenly, and grinned at the two men at the front of the cockpit. "Guys, I'm reading a great deal of radiation out there already; the hull's gotta be taking a pounding at this rate. Looks like when we're done, we're getting a shot in the--"
"That . . . will do, Jamie," Adkinson interrupted her quickly, and Williams shared a grim look between them. Constitution was the result of years of classified research and design, and she was a big ship. Really big. Half again the size of the Space Shuttle, she boasted the largest combined crew area of any spacecraft to date. She also had the latest in dynamic radiation shielding, and a robust hull that was guaranteed to mitigate micrometeroid damage . . . on paper. They also happened to be floating smack dab near the lower terminus of what modern science understood as the inner Van Allen radiation belt; the part of the Earth's electromagnetic field that used to give astronauts and scientists alike the willies, and science fiction writers pause for serious nerd fuel.
The fact of the matter was that this was no science fiction mission. Earth-based sensors could only record and digest so much of the environment around the planet, and The Powers That Be had made a considerable (one might say collosal) investment in the ship they were ensconced in. The need for real, tangible, quantifiable data was very real in this mission if they were ever going to break humans out of low Earth orbit again.
"Right, boss," Jamie replied shortly as she shook her head stiffly. "Houston, Consititution," She called out."
"Go ahead, Jamie."
"I'm about ready to deploy the VARIS. I'm reading a great deal of radiation out here. Interior's still solid. What've you guys got?"
"We're gett--"
Brian Adkinson blinked as the sharp bang! of the ship's forward RCS jets belched their gas out into space.
The movement was barely perceptible at first, and he cast his eyes out the window as the stars began to move "up" and to the "right." The rotation built up on itself, and his eyes shot over to the pilot's station. Reading Williams' confused expression, he cleared his throat.
"You bump something?" Adkinson asked.
"Uh, no, uh . . ." Williams replied. "We're rotating down and yawing to port. I'm gonna null this out."
Williams punched a quick command into his panel. "Orbital DAP to CSS," He said crisply, and as he grabbed the control stick in front of him and reefed it in the reciprocal direction, a second series of sharp bang! and pop! noises vibrated through the hull.
"Countersteering. . ." Williams announced lowly, and his eyebrows narrowed as Constitution continued to build up rotational momentum.
* * *
Mission Specialist Four, Tessa Stapleton, swore viciously as she floated into the deckhead and banged her head upon a metallic, unyielding object. The movement was certainly less than graceful, had happened in slow motion, and she smashed a hand into a lock of her long, auburn hair as she reached out with a foot to steady herself against the bulkhead. Constitution was moving; not her, she realized, and she rolled her eyes as the pain subsided. A little warning of a planar alteration would have been decent, after all.
The movement increased, and she started to feel the strangely faint signs of centrifugal force act upon her already upset innards. She'd been in space for two days already, and she still hadn't become used to the perpetual free-fall sensation. The movement was arcanely unusual, and she forced a sigh through her teeth in exasperation.
"What the hell is going on up there?" She demanded to the air in front of her.
* * *
"Ahh, maybe we got hit by a meteroid or something," Greg Williams hissed through his teeth. He released control of the stick, reached for and pressed a control at his right shoulder. A display blinked, showing him a series of numbers.
"Whatcha got?" Adkinson demanded.
"I've got no caution and warning lights, but our RCS is venting freely right now. I've got RCS three and four are showing full blow . . ." He paused to tap a second series of keys, "and I can't null them out or get them to manually shut off."
Adkinson nodded stiffly. "Cross-feed--"
"Cross-feeding RCS to Main, got it!" Williams finished the sentance as he reached for a switch above him. Adkinson knew his counterpart had already gone through all of the usual phenomena he could think of, trying to diagnose why Constitution was acting in this way. The next step was a full fuel purge from the RCS subsystems to get them to shut off.
It was a brute-force method of last resort, of course. Thankfully, both the reaction control and main propulsion systems used the same fuel, and the RCS fuel drums could be purged from full capacity in less than a minute. The ship was already rotating in an uncomfortable fashion, and any further wasted time would make things very dangerous indeed.
"What the hell else is gonna go wrong?" Adkinson muttered to himself as he heard the pumps engage.
* * *
"Houston, Constitution. Orbit stabilization burn complete," Mission Commander Brian J. Adkinson said triumphantly into his mic boom as OV-109, Constitution closed its main engine valves for the fourth time in two days. "Now showing orbital state as follows: perigee . . . 5,210.67 nautical miles; apogee is 5,212.89 nautical miles."
"We copy that, Constitution, and your telemetry confirms that. Well done. Go ahead and perform your closeout procedures, and let us know when you're ready for deployment of the VARIS."
"Roger that, Houston."
As Pilot Greg Williams went to work beside him, Adkinson busied himself as he reached for his log. Taking a pen from the velcro patch above his head, he scratched a checkmark in the log with a smug sense of satisfaction. Constitution was alive and well, and underway on her eighth mission, and his turn in the commander's seat was a long, hard-fought proposition.
He'd missed a seat on either Discovery or Atlantis before the fleet was decommissioned not that long ago. He remembered the bittersweet emotion he felt that night standing in the floodlit darkness with the others at Cape Canaveral's Shuttle Landing Facility as Atlantis touched down for the last time, with her chest-rattling sonic booms still echoing forever in his heart. He knew he was a dreamer; he thought at the time the chances he'd actually fly in space were slim to none, but that hadn't stopped him from trying.
That tenacity of his had bought him a stint with the Russians to the International Space Station during an expedition, and the experience had only whetted his appetite for more. After countless more hours in the simulators and in the classroom, he'd finally found himself where he was sitting at the present: in a chair overlooking a vista over five thousand miles above the surface of the Earth. He stole a second to glance 'up', out Constitution's cockpit window at the glowing blue ball of life 'above' him.
"That's a helluva sight, isn't it?" Williams quipped, and Adkinson smiled. His counterpart, the one they called 'pilot' (though Adkinson himself held the distinction of being wholly in charge of Constitution. His duties included actually getting her into the air, and landing her at the end of the mission) was already launched headlong into his first spaceflight. A wiry, brown-haired, brown-eyed man, he was an affable sort with too much arm hair. Adkinson himself was always the red-headed 'odd-man-out' with the strangely out-of-place blue eyes that had always won him a championship in the occasional impromptu staring contests. They were only a year apart in age, and the instant esprit de corps they developed in training had blossomed with startling velocity between the two before Constitution had even left the ground.
"Sure is. Who thought we'd actually end up here, huh?"
"Damn straight. Shuttle'd never have taken us up this far."
"No, not five thousand miles. Five hundred, maybe. How's your checklist coming?"
"I've got the mains locked out, and the RCS is on stand-by. Angular configuration is good. We're ready to start."
"Excellent. Jamie?"
"Right on it, boss!" Mission Specialist Two, Jamie Cunningham replied cheerfully from her spot immediately behind the two, on the 'right' side of the cockpit. Her bailiwick was the aft half of the payload bay, which included Constitution's primary mission: the Van Allen Radiation Intensity Survey Satellite. Latched firmly into her cavernous cargo bay, the large device was passive, and required only a pittance of direct current electrical power to unshield the device's receiving equipment and unfurl the solar panels that would power the software controlling and overseeing it before it was to be deployed.
The rest of the eight-person crew of Constitution were either out of the cockpit in the mid-deck, or quickly bustling with their own activities in the parasite module housed in the forward part of the cargo bay.
"Let's see," the pixie-like blonde-haired, blue-eyed woman murmured to herself as she poured over her panel. "Major function to secondary mode . . . check . . . SPEC four-zero-one, execute."
Her fingers flew over the simple twenty-one key keyboard as she executed the tasks she had committed to memory weeks before. "Calibration run is complete. Item twenty-two, execute. Item twenty-three, execute. Device telemetry to downlink, and accept."
Turning her head, she reached for and grabbed a microphone stuck to the bulkhead at her side.
"Houston, Constitution MS-2. I've got SPEC four-oh-one engaged, and I'm broadcasting my internal readings now. How are you reading it?"
"Looks good, Jamie, uh, give us a second to get a bite on this."
"Roger that." She turned her head suddenly, and grinned at the two men at the front of the cockpit. "Guys, I'm reading a great deal of radiation out there already; the hull's gotta be taking a pounding at this rate. Looks like when we're done, we're getting a shot in the--"
"That . . . will do, Jamie," Adkinson interrupted her quickly, and Williams shared a grim look between them. Constitution was the result of years of classified research and design, and she was a big ship. Really big. Half again the size of the Space Shuttle, she boasted the largest combined crew area of any spacecraft to date. She also had the latest in dynamic radiation shielding, and a robust hull that was guaranteed to mitigate micrometeroid damage . . . on paper. They also happened to be floating smack dab near the lower terminus of what modern science understood as the inner Van Allen radiation belt; the part of the Earth's electromagnetic field that used to give astronauts and scientists alike the willies, and science fiction writers pause for serious nerd fuel.
The fact of the matter was that this was no science fiction mission. Earth-based sensors could only record and digest so much of the environment around the planet, and The Powers That Be had made a considerable (one might say collosal) investment in the ship they were ensconced in. The need for real, tangible, quantifiable data was very real in this mission if they were ever going to break humans out of low Earth orbit again.
"Right, boss," Jamie replied shortly as she shook her head stiffly. "Houston, Consititution," She called out."
"Go ahead, Jamie."
"I'm about ready to deploy the VARIS. I'm reading a great deal of radiation out here. Interior's still solid. What've you guys got?"
"We're gett--"
Brian Adkinson blinked as the sharp bang! of the ship's forward RCS jets belched their gas out into space.
The movement was barely perceptible at first, and he cast his eyes out the window as the stars began to move "up" and to the "right." The rotation built up on itself, and his eyes shot over to the pilot's station. Reading Williams' confused expression, he cleared his throat.
"You bump something?" Adkinson asked.
"Uh, no, uh . . ." Williams replied. "We're rotating down and yawing to port. I'm gonna null this out."
Williams punched a quick command into his panel. "Orbital DAP to CSS," He said crisply, and as he grabbed the control stick in front of him and reefed it in the reciprocal direction, a second series of sharp bang! and pop! noises vibrated through the hull.
"Countersteering. . ." Williams announced lowly, and his eyebrows narrowed as Constitution continued to build up rotational momentum.
* * *
Mission Specialist Four, Tessa Stapleton, swore viciously as she floated into the deckhead and banged her head upon a metallic, unyielding object. The movement was certainly less than graceful, had happened in slow motion, and she smashed a hand into a lock of her long, auburn hair as she reached out with a foot to steady herself against the bulkhead. Constitution was moving; not her, she realized, and she rolled her eyes as the pain subsided. A little warning of a planar alteration would have been decent, after all.
The movement increased, and she started to feel the strangely faint signs of centrifugal force act upon her already upset innards. She'd been in space for two days already, and she still hadn't become used to the perpetual free-fall sensation. The movement was arcanely unusual, and she forced a sigh through her teeth in exasperation.
"What the hell is going on up there?" She demanded to the air in front of her.
* * *
"Ahh, maybe we got hit by a meteroid or something," Greg Williams hissed through his teeth. He released control of the stick, reached for and pressed a control at his right shoulder. A display blinked, showing him a series of numbers.
"Whatcha got?" Adkinson demanded.
"I've got no caution and warning lights, but our RCS is venting freely right now. I've got RCS three and four are showing full blow . . ." He paused to tap a second series of keys, "and I can't null them out or get them to manually shut off."
Adkinson nodded stiffly. "Cross-feed--"
"Cross-feeding RCS to Main, got it!" Williams finished the sentance as he reached for a switch above him. Adkinson knew his counterpart had already gone through all of the usual phenomena he could think of, trying to diagnose why Constitution was acting in this way. The next step was a full fuel purge from the RCS subsystems to get them to shut off.
It was a brute-force method of last resort, of course. Thankfully, both the reaction control and main propulsion systems used the same fuel, and the RCS fuel drums could be purged from full capacity in less than a minute. The ship was already rotating in an uncomfortable fashion, and any further wasted time would make things very dangerous indeed.
"What the hell else is gonna go wrong?" Adkinson muttered to himself as he heard the pumps engage.
* * *
