Titan by Stephen Baxter Read Free Book Online

Gemini mission patches on the walls, and the framed retirement plaques, and the big old US flag at front right, beside the plot screens; she even liked the ceiling tiles and the dingy yellow gloom, and the comforting litter of yellow stickies and styrofoam coffee cups and the ring binders full of mission rules…
    But this room was more modern. The controllers’ DEC Alpha workstations were huge, black and sleek, with UNIX-controlled touch screens. The display/control system, the big projection screens at the front of the FCR, showed a mix of plots, timing data and images of an empty runway at Edwards. The decor was already dated—very nineties, done out in blue and gray, with a row of absurd pot-plants at the back of the room, which everyone ritually tried to poison with coffee dregs and soda. It was soulless. Nothing heroic had happened here. Of course, Fahy hoped nothing would, today.
    Fahy began to monitor the flow of operations, through her console and the quiet voices of her controllers on their loops: Helium isolation switches closed, all four. Tank isolation switches open, all eight. Crossfeed switches closed. Checking aft RCS Helium press switches open…
    Fahy went around the horn, checking readiness for the deorbit burn.
    “Got the comms locked in there, Inco?”
    “Nice strong signal, Flight.”
    “How about you, Fido?”
    “Coming down the center of the runway, Flight, no problem.”
    “Guidance, you happy?”
    “Go, Flight.”
    “DPS?”
    “All four general purpose computers and the backup are up, Flight; all four GPCs loaded with OPS 3 and linked as redundant set. OMS data checked out.”
    “Surgeon?”
    “Everyone’s healthy, Flight.”
    “Prop?”
    “OMS and RCS consumables nominal, Flight.”
    “GNC?”
    “Guidance and control systems all nominal.”
    “MMACS?”
    “Thrust vector control gimbals are go. Vent door closed.”
    “EGIL?”
    “EGIL” was responsible for electrical systems, including the fuel cells. “Rog, Flight. Single APU start…”
    And so it went. Mission Control was jargon-ridden, seemingly complex and full of acronyms, but the processes at its heart were simple enough. The three key functions were TT&C: telemetry, tracking and command. Telemetry flowed down from the spacecraft into Fahy’s control center, for analysis, decision-making and control, and commands and ranging information were uploaded back to the craft.
    It was simple. Fahy knew her job thoroughly, and was in control. She felt a thrill of adrenaline pumping through her veins, and she laid her hands on the cool surface of her workstation.
    She’d come a long way to get to this position.
    She’d started as a USAF officer, working as a launch crew commander on a Minuteman ICBM, and as a launch director for operational test launches out on the Air Force’s western test range. She’d come here to JSC to work on a couple of DoD Shuttle missions. After that she had resigned from the USAF to continue with NASA as a Flight Director.
    As a kid, she’d longed to be an astronaut: more than that, a pilot, of a Shuttle. But as soon as she spent some time in Mission Control she realized that Shuttle was a ground show. Shuttle could fly itself to orbit and back to a smooth landing without any humans aboard at all. But it wouldn’t get off the ground without its Mission Controllers. This was the true bridge of what was still the world’s most advanced spacecraft.
    She’d been involved with this mission, STS-143, for more than a year now, all the way back to the cargo integration review. In the endless integrated sims she’d pulled the crew and her team—called Black Gold Flight, after the Dallas oil-fields close to her home—into a tight unit.
    And she’d been down to KSC several times before the launch, just so she could sit in OV-102— Columbia —and crawl around every inch of space she could get to. As far as she was concerned the orbiter was her machine, five million pounds of living, breathing aluminum,