Siege of Lightning

CHAPTER FOUR CLIPPERS

Michael Kessler had always loved the sea as much as he enjoyed flying. He dreamed of the times when discoverers like Columbus, Cortez, and Balboa went against all odds and set forth to find new worlds, challenging the powerful and dangerous ocean in wooden ships that would make today’s sailors tremble with fear. Those were the days, he reflected. The days of real sailors. Men with nerves of steel. Most of the famous explorers were considered lunatics by their peers, or were labeled as dreamers and not given any respect. Only after much ridicule did men like Columbus and Magellan, men ahead of their time, finally receive ships, which often looked so old and battered they appeared hardly able to reach the harbor’s mouth, much less endure the cruel Atlantic Ocean or even the more dangerous Pacific. Crews were made up mostly of prisoners, men sentenced to death who would be pardoned by the crown only if they cooperated and survived. Ships’ crews were large in those days, mainly because one in four would die during a given voyage. Those were the odds given to the inmates prior to sailing: seventy-five percent chance of coming back alive with their crimes forgiven. Most took the opportunity, though the sea was far from forgiving.

Scurvy was the primary cause of death. Caused by a lack of Vitamin C, it resulted in the slow rotting of their bodies, starting with their gums and calves. The disease, if not immediately treated, evolved into gangrene and eventually death. The men tried just about everything — from opening their gums and skin with knives to bleed the blackened blood, to savage amputations. Mere delays of the inevitable, thought Kessler. How ironic. While the ocean’s clear waters flowed under the hull and fresh air caressed the main deck, the crew would be literally rotting away.

With time, cures for such diseases were developed, sailing ships grew in size and speed, and by the middle of the nineteenth century safe and fast transatlantic voyages were possible thanks to a new breed of vessels, initially called the “tall ships.” Sails hung higher and higher on massive masts in order to maximize the driving power of the wind. Below the waterline, their reinforced hulls could endure the savage punishment of the sea as water and wood clashed at speeds in excess of twenty knots.

It was the golden age of sailing, the age of the clippers, and the American-built Lightning, one of the largest and fastest clippers ever made, a long, graceful yachtlike vessel, beautifully painted and rigged, ruled the seas. Lightning’s first captain was “Bully” Forbes, notorious for refusing to reduce sail area when the winds were strong, setting records during his voyages between America, England, and Australia while surveying routes to deploy submarine cables for telegraph communications. The fear in those days was that strong winds would increase the likelihood of smashing the rigging, but Forbes knew how much to push Lightning without exceeding the builder’s specifications. Lightning’s shrouds, four inches in diameter, provided the strength to support a 160-foot-high mainmast. In addition, Lightning became one of very few ships that regularly used a moonsail — a sail above the uppermost sails. Lightning had the muscle, and Forbes simply took advantage of it, setting record after record in one of the last of the great American clippers.

Lightning. Kessler read the words painted in black on the starboard wing. It was nighttime, but the entire area was brightly lit, and he stared at the thermal-protection system covering the basically aluminum orbiter. The system, composed mainly of two types of reusable insulation tiles and thermal blankets, protected Lightning against the brutal aerodynamic heating during re-entry. The two types of tiles, consisting of pure silica fibers made of sand and stiffened with clay, differed only in thickness and surface coating to provide protection for different temperature regimes. The thicker tiles — ranging from one to five inches in thickness — were coated with a mixture of tetrasilicide and borosilicate glass, which gave them their glossy black sheen. These tiles protected the orbiter’s entire underside, part of the nose, and all leading edges, against temperatures reaching up to 2300 degrees centigrade. The thinner tiles and thermal blankets — ranging from one-half to three inches thick — had a coating of aluminum oxide and white silica compounds. Rated for up to twelve hundred degrees, these while tiles and thermal blankets protected the upper fuselage and all leeward surfaces.

Thermal tiles — a logistic nightmare. Each tile had to be individually cut and fit to a specific location on the orbiter. After bonding, the tile was pull-tested to determine how tightly it adhered to the skin. Pull-testing was critical to ensure that Lightning’s thermal-protection system would be able to withstand the extreme rigors of lift-off and re-entry heating.

Kessler continued to stare at the orbiter. In less than twenty-four hours, hundreds of thousands of gallons of liquid hydrogen and liquid oxygen would be pumped into the External Tank, from the propellant storage facility located on the northwest corner of the launch complex, at a rate of ten thousand gallons per minute, making Lightning ready for business.

Ready for business. Kessler lowered his gaze, suddenly overcome by a feeling of inadequacy, of not being ready for the responsibility. But what about all of the months of training I endured at Johnson Space Center’s Shuttle Mission Simulator? All of the “dead stick” landings at Kennedy? The hundreds of hours practicing EVAs in the WET-F pool? Doesn’t that count for something? And that’s not counting the flying I did for the Navy. Doesn’t that qualify me as mission commander?

Kessler watched in silence as the colossal Rotating Service Structure slowly rolled back, exposing Lightning’s closed payload bay doors. Launch minus thirty hours. Kessler felt his heartbeat increasing. Relax, Michael. If you can handle one of those Tomcats landing on a moving carrier, you shouldn’t have any problems bringing that spacecraft back home.

Kessler closed his eyes and visualized him and Jones on the day of the launch at the Operations & Checkout building eating the classic steak and eggs breakfast prior to the weather briefing. Then it would be time to suit up and leave the O&C building at T minus two hours, thirty minutes and head for the launch pad. Upon arriving at the white room at the end of the orbiter-access arm, white-room personnel would assist them in entering the orbiter, where they would conduct air-to-ground communications checks with Launch Control at Kennedy and Mission Control in Houston. Then Lightning’s hatch would be closed.

God, he pleaded, please don’t let me fuck this one up.

Kessler turned and headed for his quarters. He had two more hours of rest before the press conference later on that morning.

A mile away Captain Clayton Jones walked up to the Vehicle Assembly Building, looking for Kessler. The VAB, originally built to assemble the Saturn V moon rocket under the name Vertical Assembly Building, was at the time the largest building in the world, covering eight acres with an enclosed volume of 129 million cubic feet. The structure could withstand winds of up to 125 knots, a necessity to protect the space vehicle properly against the temperamental Florida weather.

The titanic bridge cranes lifted the orbiter Atlantis off the floor. They would hoist 150,000 pounds of orbiter onto the 154-foot-long, unpainted, rust-orange External Tank. Its dirty-looking primer contrasted with the pristine white of the Solid Rocket Boosters and the gleaming orbiter, but NASA had made the decision long ago — to stop painting disposable tanks, thus saving the taxpayers the cost of a fifteen-thousand-dollar paint job, and lightening the tank’s weight by almost six hundred pounds.

The entire shuttle assembly took place over one of the Mobile Launcher Platforms.

Jones stared at the colossal assembly. The high-precision hoisting unit had successfully brought Atlantis—in a vertical profile — within inches of the External Tank. NASA technicians now worked laboriously at connecting the hardpoints on Atlantis’s underside to the steel assembly built onto the side of the External Tank.

The Herculean effort to prepare a shuttle for launch never failed to fascinate him. He’d watched for hours while Lightning was readied. He couldn’t wait to ride her into space.

Inside the small aft lavatory of the Boeing 707, Thomas H. Pruett felt another convulsion and couldn’t hold it any longer. On his knees, Pruett placed his face over the toilet and let it all out. In the past he’d only felt nauseated during the few occasions when a crisis forced him to travel by Air Force fighter to “hot spots,” but as his digestive condition worsened, Pruett found himself unable to tolerate even jetliner flights.

“Let’s go, Tom. Limo’s waiting.”

Chief Europe Roland Higgins banged impatiently on the lavatory door. To Pruett, Higgins seemed all too eager to get back to the office after returning from a South American tour designed to let Higgins get acquainted with most of the Western Hemisphere field houses. Since the early retirement of the previous Chief Western Hemisphere, Pruett had been filling in while searching for a permanent replacement, but after several months without being able to find the right individual, Pruett had decided to give his younger, ambitious, and very confident Chief Europe a shot at managing both divisions.

“Give me a second.”

Their last stop had been French Guiana. Not a very high place on Pruett’s list, but Higgins had insisted on visiting all the field houses. Not because he’d expected any real surprises — after all, Pruett always kept extremely close contact with his people — but because Higgins had argued that a face-to-face meeting was the best way to keep a good working relationship with faraway field offices.

Pruett turned on the faucet over the diminutive sink and splashed cold water on his face. He inhaled deeply and stared at his own image in the mirror. Not a pretty sight, he decided with a frown. The circles under his bloodshot eyes and tousled hair were not in character with a man in his position. Two weeks of nonstop traveling had definitely taken a toll on his fifty-year-old body. Not a young gun anymore, he thought. Ten years ago he would have already been in that limousine headed for the CIA headquarters.

Pruett dried his face with a paper towel, pulled a comb from his pocket, and brushed his thinning brown hair back, making a receding hairline much more obvious and a square wall of forehead a bit more rectangular, but also giving him a somewhat distinguished look. At least that was what his secretary, Tammy, had told him. At his age he was beyond flattering remarks from young members of the opposite sex. He admitted he had kept some of the attractive characteristics of his youth, especially his large frame, which had given him the right to date just about any girl he wished as captain of his school’s wrestling team, and his full lips, which blended into a square jaw — his father’s jaw — gave him a kind of rugged geniality.

He rinsed his mouth several times, straightened up his tie, and rolled down the sleeves of his still-white shirt. He smiled. After a decade of stomach problems, Pruett had gotten good at getting sick without messing up his shirt or tie. Just a few minutes in a private rest room and he would emerge looking like new.

He unlocked the door, pushed it open, and spotted his subordinate closing his briefcase. Higgins was about six feet tall, a couple of inches shorter than Pruett. He looked impeccable, dressed in a double-breasted suit, which went well with his pale complexion and carefully clipped mustache.

“You should see a doctor,” Higgins said as he walked up the aisle toward the forward section of the cabin.

Pruett frowned, snagged his briefcase and coat, and followed him. “Doctors don’t know shit.”

Higgins shook his head as they walked down the stairs toward the limousine waiting to take them to Langley.