CHAPTER 2 – ROCKET SHIP SQUADRON
17:47 (New York Time)
Saturday, March 30, 1957 ‘C’
BOAC ticket counters, La Guardia Airport
New York City, USA
Elizabeth Osborne was bored to tears as she stood behind the ticket counter of the British Overseas Airways Corporation, or BOAC, in La Guardia Airport, as she was still hoping for her first customer of the afternoon. She also was depressed and fearful about her job. The number of customers showing up at the BOAC counters had been steadily declining for over two years now, thanks to the entry into American airlines service of the new Boeing 717 and of the other American-produced jet airliners. The buying by Air France of a sizeable fleet of Boeing 717 airliners two years ago had further cut the share of the transatlantic air traffic that BOAC previously held. The Vickers VC-20, an outstanding aircraft in its own right that had entered service with the BOAC and other British airline companies in 1954, was no match for the Boeing 717, which had more than double the passenger capacity, had longer range and, most importantly, was much more fuel-efficient and economical to fly than the VC-20. As a direct consequence of this, the BOAC had been unable to match the much lower ticket prices offered by American airlines on the transatlantic and transpacific routes, something that had made potential customers flee BOAC ticket counters in droves. Worse even, Pan Am had now been offering for three years a supersonic long range service between the United States, Europe and the various countries across the Pacific, including Australia. Great Britain, having no supersonic airliner similar to the Northrop VC-5000, had by now lost all the commercial transpacific air routes to American and French companies. In a final blow to the British aircraft industries, previously dependable customers in Canada and Australia had started buying American-made jetliners instead of British-made aircraft, finding the latter underperforming and uneconomical. As an end result of all this, BOAC was on the verge of bankruptcy despite massive subsidies from the British government. And all that could basically be blamed on one person : Lieutenant General Ingrid Dows, who had landed her fantastic spaceplane right here at La Guardia last Monday. Dows was now widely known to have directed the development of all the new American jet aircraft, both military and civilian, that had been entering service since late 1952, on top of having directed the American space program to a thunderous success with her first ever manned space flight in orbit.
Elizabeth was still hoping for a customer when her supervisor, Donald Fielders, came to her station. She noticed at once his long face and braced herself for bad news as the tall, thin man in his forties stopped besides her and spoke in a low voice.
‘’Elizabeth, I am afraid that I have bad news for you, for all of us, in fact. The company is closing as off next Monday all its airport service counters in the United States and Canada. It will also terminate all transatlantic air services at the same time. In fact, it is not even sure if it can stave off bankrupty in the near future.’’
Her throat now dry and near tears, Elizabeth could only speak then with the utmost difficulty.
‘’And us, sir? What is going to happen to us?’’
‘’We will be repatriated to England soon afterwards. Some of us may be offered new positions within the company, but the majority will most likely be released.’’
Tears then flowed out, as Elizabeth saw her future evaporate : unemployment was already high in Great Britain and she could probably only hope for an unskilled, low-paying job over there.
‘’Why? Why didn’t the company buy some of the new American jetliners? That would have saved our jobs.’’
Fielders made a grim smile at those words : while he had to publicly support the official position of the BOAC, which had insisted on buying British aircraft as a matter of national pride, Elizabeth’s question was a most pertinent one.
‘’You could say that it was a political decision, Elizabeth. I will be holding an information meeting for all our airport employees after supper, at seven in the personnel lounge. Be there!’’
‘’I…I will be there, sir.’’
As Fielders walked away to go back to his office, Elizabeth leaned on her service counter and cried silently her despair. A group of Pan Am pilots and air stewardesses that was passing in front of the BOAC counter saw her and slowed its pace, looking at her. However, none of them made a derisive remark, as they could understand too well what could have prompted her tears.
08 :14 (California Time)
Tuesday, April 16, 1957 ‘C’
Hangar of the First Space Squadron
Vandenberg Military Space Command Base, California
Ingrid looked around her at the seventeen men and three women assembled in a semi-circle in front of her, mentally reflecting on the enormous amount of talent and flying experience pooled in that group. All of them were qualified test pilots, while all but four held engineering degrees. The three women in the group, Gertrude Meserve, Shirley Slade and Jeane Hixson, were all veterans of Ingrid’s old command, the 99th Composite Wing, while Ingrid had extensively worked at Muroc Air Force Base in the past with both Charles Yeager and Jack Ridley. Also part of the group were the seven men that, in Nancy Laplante’s history, had become the first American astronauts under the Mercury program. In turn, many of the men present who hadn’t known her before seemed mesmerized by her impossibly youthful appearance and angelic beauty. Keeping a serious expression, she then spoke in her clear, youthful voice.
‘’Again, welcome to the Military Space Command and to the First Space Squadron, ladies and gentlemen. Now that you had time to complete your administrative clearances on this base and were able to install your families in the base married quarters, it is time to start our work as a squadron. Behind me are the two Douglas XC-2000 LEVIATHAN heavy space transporters and one SPS-10A space plane that are presently on strength of our squadron, on top of five F-83A chase planes that will also serve to keep your piloting skills current. A second SPS-10A space plane is due to be delivered before the end of this month, with the first SPS-10B heavy space plane to follow in May. You may have noticed the smell of fresh paint all over the base, which is due to the fact that this base was only recently rebuilt and enlarged to accommodate the facilities of the Western Test Range Complex of my Military Space Command. As you were able to see by themselves, that meant that both the single and married quarters are brand new and state of the art, something which can only help the morale of everybody. I am sure that all of you had to deal in the past with either Air Force or Navy old, cramped or decrepit quarters, so don’t come to me complaining about your new quarters.’’
Her last sentence drew a concert of laughs and giggles from the assembled pilots.
‘’My wife doesn’t like the paint color of our lounge.’’ Said jockingly Major Leroy Gordon ‘Gordo’ Cooper Junior. ‘’What should I tell her, General?’’
‘’If she doesn’t like the paint color, then she can repaint her lounge herself, Major.’’
‘’But, she certainly will dump that job on me, General.’’
‘’Not my problem, Major!’’ Replied Ingrid with a smirk, attracting more laughs. She then became serious again. ‘’Present here today is Brigadier General Gertrude Meserve, freshly graduated from the Air Force Test Pilot School in Muroc, and who was previously in command of the First Fighter Wing in Langley. General Meserve is now my deputy for manned space operations at Military Space Command and will be de facto commander of the First Space Squadron. If you have any problems from now on, she will be more than happy to help you.’’
The group applauded politely as the tall and thin brunette in her late thirties nodded her head to acknowledge Ingrid’s declaration. Ingrid next told her pilots to follow her and led them to the sole SPS-10A space plane present in the huge hangar, stopping under its nose and facing again her group.
‘’Ladies and gentlemen, here is the STARBLAZER, the space plane in which I did the first ever manned space flight three weeks ago. It has now been refurbished and fully checked following its orbital flight, with the surfaces exposed to the highest reentry temperatures replaced by new ones. The SPS-10A is designed so that those parts, mostly the forward-facing edges, can be easily replaced after each orbital flight. This feature allowed Lockheed to avoid the need to use exotic and very expensive metal alloys in its construction. It is built mostly of steel honeycomb panels over titanium and aluminum structural framing and weighs thirty metric tons empty, or 200 metric tons when fully fuelled. The mass goes up to 253 metric tons when fitted with its two jettisonable solid rocket boosters. Its main engines are two liquid bipropellant rocket engines integrated into two ramjet tubes. While the rocket engines burn a mix of liquid oxygen and a type of refined kerozene we call RP-1, the ramjet engines burn liquid hydrogen.’’
‘’Uh, why put those rocket engines inside the ramjet tubes, General?’’ Asked Milton Orville Thompson, a naval reservist who had been employed previously as a research pilot by the NACA, or National Advisory Committeen for Aeronautics. Thompson was not in fact the only civilian test pilot from the NACA present in the group, with Albert Scott Crossfield, Neil Alden Armstrong, John McKay and Fitzhugh Fulton Junior also coming from what became the NASA in Nancy Laplante’s timeline. All five men had seen their old military ranks reactivated and bumped up on joining the Military Space Command. In response to Thompson’s question, Ingrid pointed the huge twin air intake projecting under the belly of the space plane.
‘’Because we exploit a phenomenon called ‘ram air effect’. The air scooped by the ramjet air intakes is first slowed down and compressed in the inlets, then flows around the rocket engine pods positionned in the center of the air ducts. In pure ramjet mode, when the SPS-10A is accelerating towards hypersonic speeds through the atmosphere, liquid hydrogen is injected in the ducts, both to cool down the compressed air, thus improving the efficiency of the engine, and to be lit up as fuel to provide thrust. In pure rocket mode within the atmosphere, the extra air volume flowing through the ramjet tubes is basically sucked in by the rocket exhaust, adding significantly to the thrust and also doubling the efficiency of the rocket engines, a critical factor for us. That ram air effect in fact would allow us to fire up the ramjet engines even at zero speed, something normally impossible for ramjets. In dual rocket-ramjet mode, the total thrust is actually greater than if we simply added the individual thrusts from each type of engine. This is basically our secret on how we manage to attain orbit without having to burn an insane amount of fuel or having to build a gigantic multi-stage rocket. Yes, Major Glenn?’’
‘’And how efficient exactly does this ram air effect make the engines of our space plane, General?’’
‘’Well, each of the two Rocketdyne S-3D rocket engines, which were also used in Army ballistic missiles, provide by themselves a thrust of 77.5 metric tons in vacuum, with a specific impulse of 282 seconds, or a thrust of 68.2 metric tons and a specific impulse of 248 seconds at sea level. With ram air effect and the extra volume of air from the unlit ramjet tubes, the maximum thrust at high altitude goes up to 95 metric tons, while the specific impulse goes up to 503 seconds. As for the ramjet engines themselves, they each provide a thrust of 120 metric tons and a specific impulse of 3,500 seconds at high altitude and hypersonic speeds. When using in combination the rocket and ramjet engines, the total thrust of our space plane at Mach 3 and an altitude of 60,000 feet will be a maximum of 432 metric tons, with a combined specific impulse of 1,600 seconds. My inaugural flight in space actually gave us a lot of precious data for our engineers and scientists to study on the true performance of our engines. As a result, the flight profile to orbit of our SPS-10A has now been seriously modified, to take advantage of the unexpected high performance of its engines. We now know that the SPS-10A will easily be able to put in low Earth orbit a payload of over 5,000 kilos, or 11,000 pounds if you prefer, and this with a comfortable safety margin. All that at twelve percent of the cost of using a pure ballistic rocket to launch the same payload in orbit.’’
Major Robert White wiggled a hand on hearing that.
‘’My God! We could thus bankrupt the Soviets if they try to keep the same pace as us in terms of putting payloads in orbit.’’
‘’That’s part of the idea, Major.’’ Said Ingrid, a devilish smile appearing on her lips. ‘’To complete this initial description of the SPS-10A, it has two orbital and two retro-rocket engines, all of which use storable liquid bipropellants and have a unitary thrust in vacuum of 4.43 metric tons, plus two TF-58 turbofan engines for subsonic atmospheric flight. Our space plane is also equipped with a total of four fixed strategic reconnaissance cameras, in order to fulfill its other main task : strategic reconnaissance from orbit. Don’t worry about trying to remember all of this at once, ladies and gentlemen : you will be spending the next few weeks studying in depth our space plane and the joys of orbital mechanics. Serious work awaits us!’’
02:31 (California Time)
Senior Officers transient quarters
Vandenberg Military Space Command Base
California
Ingrid answered the bedside telephone of her transient room in a slurred voice, her mind still fogged by sleep and with her eyes unfocused.
‘’General Dows!’’
‘’General, this is Major Compton, at Military Space Command headquarters. I am sorry to wake you up at such an hour, but our space tracking stations have detected the launch into orbit by the Soviets of a two-person space capsule. That capsule is now effecting its second orbit around the Earth, at an inclination of 65 degrees and an average altitude of 190 miles. We are still refining the orbital parameters of that Soviet craft, General.’’
‘’You said ‘two-person capsule’, Major?’’
‘’Yes, General! Our radio intercepts of the transmissions between the capsule and its ground controllers show that there is one man and one woman aboard the capsule. The consensus here is that the Soviets want to upstage your solo flight of last month, General.’’
Ingrid smiled to herself as her mind cleared up fast by now.
‘’Well, there is nothing like healthy competition to keep us on our toes, Major. How are those two Soviets doing up to now?’’
‘’Up to now, the Soviets have kept their transmissions to a minimum, General, probably to preserve their operational security. If something abnormal happens, we should be able to learn about it quite fast, General.’’
Ingrid thought quickly then : in her opinion, such a space launch at this early stage had to be a big gamble for the Soviets. Their manned spacecraft technology was untested and followed only by two months the launch of their first ever artificial satellite, SPUTNIK, a tiny affair indeed. To proceed with a two-person mission like this shouted of political pressure on the Soviet space program leaders…like the pressure from Washington that had prompted her first space flight a month ago. Someone was liable to get hurt eventually at that game.
‘’Has the Pentagon been advised about this Soviet space launch, Major?’’
‘’Yes, General! Do you have directives for our command, General?’’
‘’Yes! Put our space tracking network on full alert and retransmit all your data and intercept links to the headquarters of the Western Test Range Complex here in Vandenberg : I will monitor the situation from there. Pass my thanks to our space tracking technicians for a job well done, Major.’’
‘’Will do, General! Have a good night, General.’’
The duty officer then hung up, leaving Ingrid looking at her telephone while thinking furiously. Her feeling was that this rushed space launch business may well end very badly. In that, the Soviets would only have themselves to blame for it, but that still meant the possible death of two brave human beings engaged in a peaceful mission. She could not in all conscience simply sit back and do nothing if that ever happened. Taking a decision, she formed a number on her telephone and got a sleepy answer after four rings.
‘’Brigadier Meserve speaking!’’
‘’Gertrude, this is Ingrid : there is a possible space emergency in the making. I want you to go to your squadron’s hangar and to alert our space squadron personnel at once : we may have to launch the STARBLAZER with little or no notice. Don’t ask questions now : I will brief you at the hangar.’’
Cutting the line and putting down the receiver, Ingrid then jumped out of bed and started to quickly put on a fresh flight suit.
Using the base duty driver, Ingrid went from her transient quarters to the huge hangar structure housing both the First Space Squadron and the headquarters of the Western Test Range Complex. There, she found a flurry of activity as the personnel of the First Space Squadron was streaming in and was then directed immediately by Gertrude Meserve in preparing both an XC-2000 and the STARBLAZER for a space mission. Gertrude gave her a questioning look when Ingrid entered the squadron’s operations room.
‘’So, what is going on, Ingrid?’’
‘’Details are still scant, but I was alerted by the command headquarters that the Soviets launched tonight a two-person capsule in orbit. It should be doing its third orbit by now.’’
‘’A two-person capsule, only two months after their small satellite? Are the Soviets nuts? That’s way too big a step for them to safely take right now.’’
‘’You hit the nail with the word ‘safely’, Gertrude. This was probably a political decision taken by Moscow against the advice of their space scientists. I hate to say this, but I fully expect that soviet space mission to end badly. As a consequence, I want to be ready to help those Soviets in orbit if they ever get in trouble.’’
‘’But, would the Soviets even request our help if things go wrong for them in orbit, Ingrid? That would be like acknowledging our superiority in space technology, something their propaganda would never allow. If we try to help them without being formally asked, the Soviets could turn it against us. Hell, they could even pretend that we shot at their capsule or bumped into it.’’
‘’True!’’ Said Ingrid, thinking over the problem. A slight smile appeared on her face a few seconds later, prompting a question from Gertrude.
‘’What are you thinking about, Ingrid? Do you have an idea?’’
‘’I believe so, Gertrude. I am now calling this a practice emergency space interception mission, with the goal of identifying a potentially hostile space object. In essence, that Soviet manned capsule will play the role of the potentially hostile space object.’’
It was then the turn of Gertrude to smile in amusement.
‘’Neat! That will allow you to approach to within visual range of that Soviet capsule and be ready to react at a moment’s notice if something wrong happens. The fun part is that, even if nothing bad happens, this will indeed constitute a very good exercise for our unit.’’
‘’Exactly! However, there will be no weapons fitted to the STARBLAZER. Instead, I want the towing cable module and the survival chamber module to be loaded in the payload bay of my space plane.’’
‘’I will get on it right away, Ingrid. Uh, if you ever have to rescue those Soviets and bring them back to Earth aboard the STARBLAZER, where will you land? They may object to being taken to the United States.’’
‘’A good point, Gertrude. However, I suspect that it will be up to diplomats to decide that once any rescue is made in space. It may be a good idea for me to pack my passport, some money and a small travel kit, in case I have to land in some neutral country. Well, I am going now to see if we received more detailed data on that Soviet spacecraft’s orbit.’’
11 :52 (GMT) / 03 :52 (California Time)
Soviet VOSTOK 2 spacecraft
Low Earth Orbit
Major Lydia ‘Lylia’ Litvyak reflected mentally on the strange twists of fate along the last few years that had brought her to where she was now, sitting besides Lieutenant Yuri Gagarin in the cramped reentry sphere of the VOSTOK 2 spacecraft. Originally a city girl from Moscow, she had volunteered to become a fighter pilot during the Great Patriotic War{4}, shooting down a total of 32 German aircraft during that conflict and earning in the process the title and gold star medal of ‘Hero of the Soviet Union’. She had been one of the few female pilots to stay on as a military aviator after the war and had gone on to fight in the Korean War as a ‘volunteer’, shooting down five American aircraft before the Americans had been forced to evacuate Korea completely. Then had come the Indochina War, where she had again flown in combat against the Americans. However, her luck had then turned and, after shooting down three American Navy fighter aircraft, had been downed by one of the new devilish American air-to-air missiles. Fished out of the sea off the coast of Vietnam by the Americans, Lilya was then sent with six other captured Soviet pilots to the United States as prisoners of war, where she had spent over a year before being repatriated to the Soviet Union after her country had lost the devastating war of conquest Stalin had initiated in Eastern Europe in 1953. At that time, Lilya had been fearful of the kind of reception she would get once back in the Soviet Union, as the Soviet secret police looked with deep suspicion at any Soviet serviceman captured by the enemy. Instead, she had found out on her return to Moscow that Joseph Stalin was dead and that his hated secret police had been dismantled by an alliance between the new Soviet leader, Nikita Krushchtchev, and the leaders of the Red Army. Instead of being sent to a reeducation camp in Siberia, as she had fully expected, Lilya had been reinstated as a fighter pilot, even keeping her rank of senior captain. In this, she had to partially thank her old nemesis in the air, Major General Ingrid Dows, who had conducted the airstrikes that had killed Stalin and most of the members of the Politburo and had destroyed the secret police headquarters in Moscow. The same Ingrid Dows had visited her and the other Soviet pilots detained in Fort Leavenworth and had spoken to her then, revealing that she knew many things about Lilya thanks to the historical information passed on to her by her late adoptive mother, the celebrated Canadian time traveler, Nancy Laplante. Without becoming true friends, Lilya had then developped a measure of respect and admiration for that exceptional young woman. As for how she had become a cosmonaut, things had been even more twisted, even ironic. Her fame, her extensive flying experience and her widely acknowledged skills as a pilot had earned her a place in the first batch of candidates chosen for the Soviet space program five months ago. The fact that she had pursued a diploma in aeronautical engineering through part-time studies during the last few years had also helped. Still, she would probably not have flown on this first manned Soviet space mission if not for Ingrid Dows, whose first human space flight in March had plunged the leaders of the Soviet Union into utter dismay. Those leaders had then decided that only a multicrew space flight could regain some glory to the Soviet Union around the World. The problem was that the VOSTOK 1 capsule, which had been about to be launched, had been designed for only one cosmonaut sitting in an ejection seat. Soviet engineers had then decided to replace the bulky, heavy ejection seat with two lightweight molded, crashworthy seats. That would still have been insufficient as weight saving went, unless the two smallest cosmonauts available were selected for the mission. That had left the young, 23 year old Yuri Gagarin and the petite Lilya, who weighed less than fifty kilos. Lilya could thus thank the fact she was the smallest cosmonaut available for being in orbit now.
Sitting besides Yuri in the cramped, 2.3 meter-diameter reentry sphere and wearing her bulky orange spacesuit with its visor open, Lilya saw on the rudimentary navigation instruments of their capsule that they were approaching the southwest coast of Africa while on their ‘up’ part of their orbit around the Earth.
‘’We are about to get to the precalculated retro-braking point. We should soon get the remote commands for turning around our spacecraft and firing our retro-rockets.’’
Yuri acknowledged that with a nod of the head, being quite nervous. Like Lilya, he did not like the fact that the whole mission was under the complete and direct control of their ground controllers in the U.S.S.R.. Even if he or Lilya wanted to take manual control due to some emergency, they would then have first to open a sealed envelope in order to get the password that would unlock the said controls. In essence, both of them were no more than mere passive passengers, restricted to simply reading the instruments on the radio when requested. As predicted by Lilya, who was the senior cosmonaut for the flight, the attitude rockets of the capsule soon fired short bursts at interval, turning it around so that their solid propellant retro-rocket could fire and slow them down enough to initiate reentry into the Earth’s atmosphere. The muffled roar they expected from their retro-rocket never came. Instead, a loud explosion jarred both cosmonauts in their seats and sent the capsule tumbling wildly around in space.
‘’WHAT THE HELL HAPPENED?’’ Asked Gagarin, near panic.
‘’I’M NOT SURE! MAYBE THE RETRO-ROCKET EXPLODED ON IGNITION. DAMN! WE HAVE RED LIGHTS ALL OVER OUR INSTRUMENTS PANEL! THE PRESSURE IN OUR OXYGEN TANKS IS FALLING QUICKLY. ZARYA-1, ZARYA-1, THIS IS VOSTOK 2 : WE HAVE HAD AN EXPLOSION IN THE EQUIPMENT MODULE, POSSIBLY FROM THE RETRO-ROCKET. WE ARE TUMBLING AROUND AND LOSING OXYGEN.’’
The ground controller at the Baikonur cosmodrome took long seconds to respond, probably taking the time first to check the telemetry data from the spacecraft.
‘’VOSTOK 2, from Zarya-1, we are going to fire your attitude rockets to stop your spinning, then you will read out on the radio the readings from your instruments.’’
‘’We acknowledge, Zarya-1.’’ Replied Lilya, who then waited and prayed silently. Unfortunately, their attitude rockets never fired and their mad stumbling around continued, prompting another radio message from Lilya to Baikonur.
‘’Zarya-1, this is VOSTOK 2. The attitude rockets have not fired yet, over.’’
‘’But…we did send the command signal over fifteen seconds ago, VOSTOK 2. Something must be wrong with the attitude rockets. Read out your instruments now, over.’’
Lilya did that, her heart sinking when she saw that their reserves of nitrogen, used to fuel the attitude rockets, were emptying even faster than their reserves of oxygen. The explosion had probably cut a nitrogen line. Knowing that she had only a few minutes at the most to act before they would be out of nitrogen, Lilya took a decision and grabbed the sealed envelope containing the password to unlock the manual commands, ripping it open.
‘’Zarya-1, the remote control systems are not working. I am going to go to manual control before we lose all of our nitrogen.’’
Extracting a small piece of paper from the envelope and reading the single word on it, Lilya then punched that word on her control box. As soon as the indicator light for manual control mode came on, she grabbed the short control stick and started giving gentle commands to the attitude rockets, using the artificial horizon and the three small portholes of her spacecraft to orient herself. She managed to stop their tumbling and to roughly stabilize their spacecraft on the correct axis after nearly forty seconds of tense efforts. Yuri blew air out in relief as Lilya spoke again on the radio while throwing switches on her instruments panel.
‘’Zarya-1, from VOSTOK 2 : I have managed to stabilize the spacecraft and return it to its original flight axis. The nitrogen reserve is now nearly empty and still leaking out. I have shut the valves of the leaking oxygen tanks to prevent more losses, but that leaves us with only enough oxygen for maybe a day. I request instructions, over.’’
This time, the silence from the ground controller was long and ominous, with his voice showing his dismay when he answered Lilya.
‘’VOSTOK 2, from Zarya-1. We…we are studying the situation here and will call you back soon with instructions. Zarya-1 out!’’
Lilya was left stunned by that, understanding with dread that Baikonur probably had no practical solution for their problem. Closing her eyes for a moment, she whispered a prayer in a fervent tone.
‘’Dear God, please have mercy on me and on my comrade.’’
12 :04 (Washington Time) / 17 :04 (GMT) / 09 :04 (California Time)
The Oval Office, The White House
Washington, D.C.
U.S.A.
Having just been briefed on the dire situation of the Soviet Vostok 2 spacecraft by the Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, Admiral Arthur Radford, President Eisenhower sat back in his chair.
‘?