Station Breaker

64 Projectile

This launch is just as jarring as the last the one. While rockets are a thing of beauty to see take off from the ground, being inside one is a slightly different experience. You're stuck between two forces that want to crush you and shake your brain loose from your spinal cord.

There's the rocket below you, burning millions of gallons of fuel in what can be best described as a controlled explosion. Above you is the earth's atmosphere. Maybe that doesn't seem like much, but think about when you were a little kid and stuck your hand out the car window and what it felt like when the wind slapped into it. Now imagine the wind is slamming into you at 7,000 miles an hour.

What's totally different than last time is the fact that I'm not in my comfy iCosmos form-fitting couch. The chair inside the DarkStar is a few straps stretched over an aluminum frame. I'm afraid I'm going to bust through it any second like my fat aunt on a cheap lawn chair.

One time in college a few of my buddies took turns riding around inside the trunk of an old Impala. It was a dumb, dumb thing to do.

When it was my turn, Ross, my sophomore year roommate, decided to go off-roading.

That trunk was a veritable Versailles compared to the inside of the DarkStar.

I'd give anything to be back in there right now with Mad Ross at the wheel, spinning out in the dirt lot behind Target.

I watch the readout as the countdown hits Max Q — the point where the rocket reaches the maximum impact against the atmosphere.

It's not exactly smooth sailing from here, but if there's a point where this fake space capsule is going to crush like a tin can and the rocket rip itself apart from stress, I just passed it.

Don't get me wrong, lots of things can still go horribly wrong. But we just passed a critical point. The atmosphere begins to get rapidly thinner around here and the vibration settles down a little.

I still have the gurgling roar of the rocket to remind me that I'm one misplaced decimal away from oblivion.

I get ready for the kick of the second stage booster as it separates from the primary booster.

BOOM and we shoot forward like a champagne cork from a bottle.

Meanwhile, the primary booster begins its descent back to Earth where it will land on the launchpad — making me kinda wish I was riding that down right now.

I'm now entering the 60 mile-zone that people generally agree is space.

Fun fact: the first manmade object in space was a Nazi V2 rocket in 1942. Space historians and people who like to remind you how there would be no private space industry without NASA tend to gloss over how much those goose-stepping assholes contributed to rocket technology.

Now I'm about to pass the 108 mile record they set, which basically means I'm beating Hitler again.

At this altitude, if I could look out a window, I'd see stars. But I can't, because I'm inside a black bullet designed for stealth.

Six more minutes of burn on the second stage and then we have separation. That's when the real excitement begins.

Right now I'm just doing the same launch profile we've done thousands of times before. The never-been-done-before part comes when the second stage detaches and the fake-Unicorn begins its approach to the US/iCosmos.

In order to make things look legit to anyone tracking on long range radar or telescope, at the same time the second stage engine disconnects, the DarkStar is going to launch from it.

I read the manuals and studied the interface, but I still have no damn idea what's going to happen.

What I can tell is that there's a very large cylinder between my legs like the hump of a long horse. This bad boy is filled with LMP-103S — a chemical that reacts with a catalyst and produces about 30 % more thrust than the hydrazine we use on the Unicorn spacecraft.

To really appreciate the situation I'm in, you can't think of me as sitting on top of a rocket as I get pushed into space: Instead, imagine a rocket engine itself with all those tubes and metal guts — and I'm strapped inside there. Basically, DarkStar is all engine and no rocket.

That's how Admiral Jessup's engineers figured out how to put one powerful rocket inside of another — they decided to have the astronaut straddle the most dangerous part.

Sure, there's some heat insulation that's supposed to protect my testicles from frying like eggs, but this has never been tested. For all I know, they melted the last three crash test dummies they put here.

The upside is that I'm pretty sure I'm going to black out the moment the rocket fires. The K1 is on the other side of the earth and I have to race like a bat out of hell to get into an elliptical orbit that will not only match its speed, but put me on a parallel path. All without them knowing I'm even sneaking up on them.

To do this, the DarkStar is designed to pick up another two thousand miles an hour of speed beyond the velocity of the Unicorn.

Most of it all at once.

Did I mention that the main rocket engine on the DarkStar is running between my legs?

Not in some cool this-is-my-pseudo-phalus kind of way. No, this is more of a this-monopropellant-thruster-is-about-to-violate-you-like-no-man-should-ever-be-violated kind of way.

"You ready to go?" asks Laney on the comm.

"No. Not really."

"Too bad. Time to man up."

"Baylor here, I'll be doing the countdown in mark…"

Oh, crap. Here we go…