Target Lock

200 Miles Above the South Atlantic Ocean July 8, 2008

The Earth glowed frost-white and sapphire-blue, its vibrant colors separated from the infinite velvet black of space by the haze line along the planet’s curving horizon. And arcing silently toward that horizon was a great silvery lozenge shape, its winglike solar-cell arrays trimmed to catch the piercing light of the distant sun.

Six weeks earlier, a Russian-built Proton VI heavy-lift booster fired from the Boeing Aerospace sealaunch platform south of Hawaii had hurled the bus-sized unmanned spacecraft into orbit. Since that time, it had silently and efficiently proceeded about its cybernetic affairs, the seeds of a new mode of existence germinating in its commodious belly.

Powered by the flow of free energy from the sun, experiment packages clicked and whirred in the payload bays. Robotic microfactories and computer-guided autolabs tinkered tirelessly with the gravity-free environment, seeking to produce new and unique compounds and materials impossible to create at the bottom of the earth’s gravity well.

Perfect ball bearings were formed out of glass, metal, and nylon. Undistorted by a gee field, they promised to lengthen the service life and improve the energy efficiency of any mechanical device utilizing them. Unwarped by weight, perfect crystalline fibers were grown. Matted properly with the right carbon-based bonding compound and a Fiberglas with ten times the tensile strength of the finest high-grade steel, it loomed on the horizon. Foamed metal castings were made, utilizing one-third the material at one-third of the weight yet losing none of their durability. New alloys were blended, not merely of metal and metal, but of radical combinations of metal and ceramic and glass and plastic. Materials with qualities that engineers and technologists had only dreamed of before.

With each new creation, a door opened and a thousand possibilities crowded through. On the earth below, the various project teams salivated over the rain of data pouring down from their creation and visualized the day they would perform their orbital experiments hands-on instead of via remote telepresence.

Given the full potential of the new technologies they were creating, that day might not be far distant. The lNDASAT (Industrial Applications Satellite) project was the most ambitious and far-reaching private space project in history. Created by a consortium of U.S. and Western European corporations. the INDASATs were laying the foundation for the commercial development and industrial utilization of Near Earth Space.

But for now, however, the dreaming had to stop. The experiment bays were powering down, their stocks of raw materials exhausted and their exotic payloads secured. For INDASAT 06, it was time to go home.

Slowly, the great solar cell wings reefed back into the vehicle body, thermal-proof doors dosing over them. Thrusters fired. The INDASAT reoriented, its nose-mounted heat shield and retrorocket pack aiming ahead along its flight path. Over the data links, the onboard computers conversed with their ground-based counterparts at INDASAT mission control, an avalanche of systems checks and rechecks taking place.

All boards read green. The computers staged a final consultation with their human masters and received their clearance to proceed. Above Pretoria, South Africa, retrorockets blazed and INDASAT 06 began its long fall.

Its fuel expended, explosive bolts kicked the retropack free, leaving the thermoceramic heat shield bare and ready to meet the holocaust to come. Like some titanic rifle slug, the huge satellite slammed into the atmosphere over the Indian Ocean, pushing an incandescent shock wave of ionized air ahead of it as it continued its deceleration. Far below, off the Seychelle islands, native fishermen looked up in awe and wonderment at the great silvery fireball that illuminated the night sky as it streaked away toward the northeast.

The thermal flare faded and died as the descending satellite’s speed bled away. At 150,000 feet, the first small drogue chute was streamed, stabilizing the fall.

At 90,000 feet, a second, larger drogue blossomed, pitching the satellite over into its vertical descent to the recovery target, a set of coordinates in the Arafura Sea north of Australia.

The four main parachutes deployed at 30,000 feet, a football field’s worth of nylon fabric that lowered the spacecraft on the final leg of its journey to the dark waters below.

Onboard the INDASAT, the computers conducted a last-minute housecleaning. Blinking marker strobes and radio beacons were switched on for the convenience of the recovery team. The remainder of the thruster fuel was vented overboard for safety’s sake, and flotation bags were inflated in preparation for the water landing. With these final tasks completed, the computers powered down and an inert mass of metal and composites settled into the warm tropical seas.