false readings.
Thus, most of the controllers seemed to think some kind of instrumentation problem or flaky telemetry was screwing their data. They couldn’t recognize the system signature they were getting. In such situations controllers had a bad habit of retreating into their specialisms, thinking in tight little boxes, blaming the data.
Except there had also been a crew report. Something real had happened to her ship up there.
Behind her, the FCR’s viewing gallery was starting to fill up. Bad news traveled fast, around JSC.
STS-143 was falling apart, and on her watch.
Another call: “Flight, Prop. I’m reading RCS crossfeed. It’s Tom Lamb, Flight. I think he’s going to burn his reaction thrusters.”
He’s trying to complete the burn, Fahy thought.
Lamb thumbed through a checklist quickly. “All right, Bill, I’m going to feed the RCS with my left pod OMS tank. I’m assuming I’ve still got some pressure in there, despite what these readouts say… Here we go. Aft left tank isolation switches one, two, three, four, five A, three, four, five B to close, left and right…”
Lamb was, Benacerraf realized, intending to burn the reaction control engines, without waiting either for the okay from Houston or even for burn targets. He was just, in his can-do 1960s kind of way, going ahead and doing it.
Angel was watching Lamb. He was working switches on an overhead panel. His gestures were hurried, careless, Benacerraf thought. His blue eyes were shining; he grinned, and his face was flushed. He was enjoying this, she realized, enjoying being stuck in the middle of a deorbit burn with two failed engines. Relishing a chance to show off his competence.
She felt a deep and growing unease.
Lamb grasped his flight control handle. “Initiating burn.” He pushed the handle forward, keeping his eye on his displays. “Houston, Columbia. RCS burn started.”
“Copy that.”
“Please upload burn targets for me.”
“We’re working, Tom. Hang in there.”
Benacerraf said, “Are we committed to the deorbit yet? Maybe we could just abort the burn and stay up a little longer.”
Tom Lamb glanced back at her, still holding down the flight stick. “The rear RCS bells are back in the OMS engine pods, remember. If something big has taken out the OMS, we don’t know how long we’ll have the RCS.”
My God, she thought. He’s right. We have to use the reaction control system while we have it, use those smaller thrusters to try to complete the burn. Because it’s all we have, to get us home.
Her perspective changed. It was, she realized, perfectly possible that she wasn’t going to make it through; that suddenly so quickly it had become her day to die.
For the first time since the events of this incident had started to blizzard past her, she felt real fear.
And, she thought, Lamb figured all of that out, in the first couple of seconds, in the middle of this roller-coaster ride. And made the right choice, took the appropriate action.
“Okay, Columbia, Houston.”
“Reading you, Joe,” Lamb said.
“We want to confirm you’re doing the right thing. We’re figuring those burn parameters now. Uh, I have the targets. They’re being uplinked now. And I’ll voice up the parameters to you, Tom.”
Lamb nodded at Angel, who fumbled for a scratch pad, and copied down the timings the capcom read up.
The residual burn lasted a full seven minutes.
“Okay, Columbia, Houston. Counting you down out of the burn.”
“Good. My arm’s getting kind of stiff, Joe,” Lamb said.
“Ten. Five. Three, two, one.”
Lamb released the flight control stick. He checked the orbiter’s attitude, altitude and velocity using his analogue instruments, and compared them to the CRT “Hey, we got a good burn. How about that.”
“Copy that, Columbia. Residuals are three-tenths. You’re a little off U.S. One, a little delayed, but we figure you can recover on the way in.”
Benacerraf found she was gripping her
Thus, most of the controllers seemed to think some kind of instrumentation problem or flaky telemetry was screwing their data. They couldn’t recognize the system signature they were getting. In such situations controllers had a bad habit of retreating into their specialisms, thinking in tight little boxes, blaming the data.
Except there had also been a crew report. Something real had happened to her ship up there.
Behind her, the FCR’s viewing gallery was starting to fill up. Bad news traveled fast, around JSC.
STS-143 was falling apart, and on her watch.
Another call: “Flight, Prop. I’m reading RCS crossfeed. It’s Tom Lamb, Flight. I think he’s going to burn his reaction thrusters.”
He’s trying to complete the burn, Fahy thought.
Lamb thumbed through a checklist quickly. “All right, Bill, I’m going to feed the RCS with my left pod OMS tank. I’m assuming I’ve still got some pressure in there, despite what these readouts say… Here we go. Aft left tank isolation switches one, two, three, four, five A, three, four, five B to close, left and right…”
Lamb was, Benacerraf realized, intending to burn the reaction control engines, without waiting either for the okay from Houston or even for burn targets. He was just, in his can-do 1960s kind of way, going ahead and doing it.
Angel was watching Lamb. He was working switches on an overhead panel. His gestures were hurried, careless, Benacerraf thought. His blue eyes were shining; he grinned, and his face was flushed. He was enjoying this, she realized, enjoying being stuck in the middle of a deorbit burn with two failed engines. Relishing a chance to show off his competence.
She felt a deep and growing unease.
Lamb grasped his flight control handle. “Initiating burn.” He pushed the handle forward, keeping his eye on his displays. “Houston, Columbia. RCS burn started.”
“Copy that.”
“Please upload burn targets for me.”
“We’re working, Tom. Hang in there.”
Benacerraf said, “Are we committed to the deorbit yet? Maybe we could just abort the burn and stay up a little longer.”
Tom Lamb glanced back at her, still holding down the flight stick. “The rear RCS bells are back in the OMS engine pods, remember. If something big has taken out the OMS, we don’t know how long we’ll have the RCS.”
My God, she thought. He’s right. We have to use the reaction control system while we have it, use those smaller thrusters to try to complete the burn. Because it’s all we have, to get us home.
Her perspective changed. It was, she realized, perfectly possible that she wasn’t going to make it through; that suddenly so quickly it had become her day to die.
For the first time since the events of this incident had started to blizzard past her, she felt real fear.
And, she thought, Lamb figured all of that out, in the first couple of seconds, in the middle of this roller-coaster ride. And made the right choice, took the appropriate action.
“Okay, Columbia, Houston.”
“Reading you, Joe,” Lamb said.
“We want to confirm you’re doing the right thing. We’re figuring those burn parameters now. Uh, I have the targets. They’re being uplinked now. And I’ll voice up the parameters to you, Tom.”
Lamb nodded at Angel, who fumbled for a scratch pad, and copied down the timings the capcom read up.
The residual burn lasted a full seven minutes.
“Okay, Columbia, Houston. Counting you down out of the burn.”
“Good. My arm’s getting kind of stiff, Joe,” Lamb said.
“Ten. Five. Three, two, one.”
Lamb released the flight control stick. He checked the orbiter’s attitude, altitude and velocity using his analogue instruments, and compared them to the CRT “Hey, we got a good burn. How about that.”
“Copy that, Columbia. Residuals are three-tenths. You’re a little off U.S. One, a little delayed, but we figure you can recover on the way in.”
Benacerraf found she was gripping her
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