Artemis I Has A Stowaway - Day 23
December 8th, 2022
06:00 Alex Whelm wakes up, eats one of his last three Skor bars, and uses the head. Today’s the day.
I’m making progress on the intercept. And Mark’s nothing but compliments and back pats, but 98%, 99%, 98%, 98%, 99%, 100%, 97%, 99%, 98%, 99% is still fail, fail, fail, fail, fail, pass, fail, fail, fail, fail. NASA wanted to do this if I got two out of my last ten. I got one out of my last ten.
Dragon Sovereign's crew are god even knows how many thousands of miles away right now. They’re going to be tethered together, Captain Covington probably at the lead of the line, So imagine for a second what they need to do here. They’re on the exterior of the Dragon Sovereign. The Earth is below them, the stars above, but that is absolutely it. There’s not so much as a glimmering reflection of Orion to guide them. This whole thing is going to be done on GPS. The four of them, literally right now, are probably working out if they’re doing it “1, 2, 3, GO”, or “1, 2, GO!” to jump off the Dragon capsule with as much force as their legs can muster. Then it’s a computer controlled, GPS guided, burn towards a black patch of space that I need to get to exactly as they reach it.
Time to get dressed. I’ve got two Skor bars left. I eat them both. I’m not fucking this thing up because I’m hungry. I also use the head again. After this it’s peeing in my pants time as I don’t want to be distracted by a full bladder.
Good news, bad news. I’ve learned some lessons about duct taping my legs up. I tape each of my toes individually, then the webbing between them from around my ankle, then all the way up the legs just like before. Bad news - the hair on my legs managed to grow back since I did this last.
NASA walks me through the computer inputs needed in order to tell Orion that I’m going to depressurize her intentionally. I have to confirm that I’m really sure I want to do this, three times, and enter a password “Admin_Overide” (seriously NASA?) to do it.
Alright. Off to the races. A few NASA directed keystrokes and a klaxon alarm sounds, then gets softer, and softer, and softer, as the air drains from Orion. My toes still fucking hurt. Mostly the tips. But it’s way less bad than last time. My legs don’t exactly feel great either. But that might just be the duct tape.
I disconnect my air feed, float over to the airlock, through the already open inner door, and open the outer airlock door. Earth’s on the other side of Orion so it’s nothing but stars. Three breaths and the air inside my helmet is muggy and unsatisfying. Breathing faster isn’t going to help, and I hold my breath for fear of condensation. But by this point I’m back at the pilot’s seat and reconnect to the air supply. Damn, fresh air is sweet. Then I strap in. Learned that lesson well. Now wait.
I don’t have to wait long. Orion shakes and a rumble propagates through my back from the blast of her engine. And it stops. Ok. Show-time.
NASA’s ground based radar is pretty good, so they’ve got a heading on my targets and, very gently, using the ships flywheels, I bring Orion about to the right heading. Just like the simulator, except this time I actually rotate as Orion does, and I’m looking up at the ships window, not down at the LCD screen. Mark was right though, it actually doesn’t make much difference.
Gotcha. four little dots moving in a line, all shining their flashlights at me to make them easier to see. Just like the simulations though, the intercept needs to be corrected in basically every which way. I’m going too fast, coming in too “high”, and I think I’m too far to the left, but that’s harder to tell right now.
The “fast” is the biggest issue, no way to fix that without spending fuel, and the sooner I do it the less fuel it needs. -0.3 m/s. Better. -0.1 m/s. Better. -0.05 m/s Better… maybe a bit too much though. Let’s wait and see.
I work the “left” and “high” problems, and again that’s fuel, but it has to be spent. Ok, the basic intercept looks ok-ish. I need to let this play out a while longer though. I’ve used up 73% of available fuel. The original vectors were not as well aligned as I would have liked.
They’re about a hundred meters away now. The window helps. 3D and depth perception - if I fully turn my head to the window so I can put both eyes onto them. Orion’s rolling and tumbling a little, and I use flywheels to correct that. I’m getting close to saturated on twisty and loopy, and that’s going to limit my options later.
Ok, this bucking bronco is settled for the moment, and I’m into last-chance for course correction territory. I was right, I slowed down just a smidge too much before. +0.06 m/s, and I think I’m bringing them in just a bit too far to the right, +0.1 m/s.
Master alarm, 96% of fuel is gone.
Welcome to the 90% stage. 50 meters to go.
So, at this point if I do nothing, what happens is that they end up somewhere near the window that I’m looking at them through. I’m feeling like they’ll pass in front of the nose cone by a couple of feet. That’s no good. What I need to do is rotate Orion around so that they come right up to the airlock and the abundance of handholds around it. I’ve got to use some fuel for that unfortunately. Flywheels saturated. 98% of available fuel gone now. And my options for getting this done are narrow, and narrowing by the second.
As I rotate Orion I lose sight of my targets. Remember when I said this was the hardest part? Yeah. I’m watching the artificial horizon to make my numbers. Ok. Spinny is aligned.
I look out the airlock. Fuck. They’re coming in too low. I trigger a -0.1 m/s burn. Bingo fuel. Fuck. They’re going to miss. By like 2 fucking meters. It’s, nothing. It’s twenty fucking seconds if I’d been faster to see the distance. It’s four lives.
I unstrap and disconnect my air feed. The galley is close and its got those 1 kg ballast blocks. I grab two (one in each hand) and kick off for the airlock. Orion’s got four safety cables that unspool from the panel right outside the outer airlock. I start unspooling one.
Dragon’s crew is about 30-40 yards out. Crawling along. I tie off the end of the safety harness to the test weight and throw. Wow. That’s a spectacular miss. My body’s calibrated throw stuff in Earth gravity where it is going to fall down from the second it leaves the hand. I threw way, way, way too high, my body assuming it would just start to drop like everything else I’ve ever thrown since I was throwing my pacifier away.
Ok, 25-30 yards. I’ve got one more test block. By the way, I’ve been breathing. The air inside my helmet is thick and hot and starting to fog the inner surface of the glass dome. I hold my breath, but it isn’t like I just took a deep lungful of clean air, I’m breathing trashy re-breathed, air and I’m already dying to hook myself back up to the proper flow.
I’m going to push this one, two handed. Granny basket time. I shoot!
So, back in high school I made some life choices involving lots of science and math courses, and no gym courses. Why? Because in addition to being a jackass, Mr. Popolopolus was right, that he’d seen children who could whip my butt. I missed again.
The air situation is getting bad. I couldn’t tell my lungs to hold my breath any longer and I’m just gasping. I’ve never felt like this: never. My body just knows it’s dying unless it gets air and every instinctive warning system I have is screaming that at me. My heart’s thundering in my ears, my head wants to split open, and my lungs are on fire. I pull out the third cable. Let’s try something different this time - because I’m out of ballast. I start swinging the tether, like a lasso, extending it out as I do. Dragon’s crew is going to pass close, I just have to get the cable into range and if it completes a rotation in less time than it takes them to transition through its rotational plane, I’m guaranteed a hit. The inside of my helmet’s visor is fogged. I’m down to outlines of the world. I’m not sure I’m going to be able to find my air hose like this. My hand’s shaking, like, shaking wrong, like the muscles are too tired to do what I’m asking them, but… I haven’t been doing much with them. Fuck I’m tired… I just need to get some air, to rest…
The outlines of dragon’s crew are starting to pass the line I’m spinning, it didn’t work. I don’t know why. It just didn’t. They just keep drifting past.
Three options. A) I go to sleep right here and now, and we all die. B) I go back to my chair and try to reconnect my air feed. 50/50 I get there. But Sarah and her crew die.
I go with option C. I fumble the last tether and clip it onto my flight suit, and push off at the four slightly brighter splotches in my visor. Maybe they can grab onto me and climb in.
Wow, did I just kill myself? I think I just killed myself. Actually, this is probably better than fighting a bear. It’s hard to think, my thoughts are all fuzzy and weird. I close my eyes. At least I won’t be guilty. This is better. It’s ok, I can just die. It’s ok.
*******
I’m Nathan H. Green, a science-fiction writer with a degree in aerospace engineering, and I’m going to be doing daily semi-fictional stories tracking the Artemis I mission. You can follow along through my reddit (u/authornathanhgreen).
Artemis I Has A Stowaway is a work of semi-fiction. All incidents, events, dialogue and sentiments (which are not part of the mission’s official history), are entirely fictional. Where real historical figures appear, the situations, incidents, sentiments, and dialogues concerning those persons are entirely fictional and are not intended to depict actual events, personality, disposition, or attitudes of the real person, nor to change the entirely fictional nature of the work. Save the above, any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, events, or locales is entirely coincidental.
© 2022 Nathan H. Green
06:00 Alex Whelm wakes up, eats one of his last three Skor bars, and uses the head. Today’s the day.
I’m making progress on the intercept. And Mark’s nothing but compliments and back pats, but 98%, 99%, 98%, 98%, 99%, 100%, 97%, 99%, 98%, 99% is still fail, fail, fail, fail, fail, pass, fail, fail, fail, fail. NASA wanted to do this if I got two out of my last ten. I got one out of my last ten.
Dragon Sovereign's crew are god even knows how many thousands of miles away right now. They’re going to be tethered together, Captain Covington probably at the lead of the line, So imagine for a second what they need to do here. They’re on the exterior of the Dragon Sovereign. The Earth is below them, the stars above, but that is absolutely it. There’s not so much as a glimmering reflection of Orion to guide them. This whole thing is going to be done on GPS. The four of them, literally right now, are probably working out if they’re doing it “1, 2, 3, GO”, or “1, 2, GO!” to jump off the Dragon capsule with as much force as their legs can muster. Then it’s a computer controlled, GPS guided, burn towards a black patch of space that I need to get to exactly as they reach it.
Time to get dressed. I’ve got two Skor bars left. I eat them both. I’m not fucking this thing up because I’m hungry. I also use the head again. After this it’s peeing in my pants time as I don’t want to be distracted by a full bladder.
Good news, bad news. I’ve learned some lessons about duct taping my legs up. I tape each of my toes individually, then the webbing between them from around my ankle, then all the way up the legs just like before. Bad news - the hair on my legs managed to grow back since I did this last.
NASA walks me through the computer inputs needed in order to tell Orion that I’m going to depressurize her intentionally. I have to confirm that I’m really sure I want to do this, three times, and enter a password “Admin_Overide” (seriously NASA?) to do it.
Alright. Off to the races. A few NASA directed keystrokes and a klaxon alarm sounds, then gets softer, and softer, and softer, as the air drains from Orion. My toes still fucking hurt. Mostly the tips. But it’s way less bad than last time. My legs don’t exactly feel great either. But that might just be the duct tape.
I disconnect my air feed, float over to the airlock, through the already open inner door, and open the outer airlock door. Earth’s on the other side of Orion so it’s nothing but stars. Three breaths and the air inside my helmet is muggy and unsatisfying. Breathing faster isn’t going to help, and I hold my breath for fear of condensation. But by this point I’m back at the pilot’s seat and reconnect to the air supply. Damn, fresh air is sweet. Then I strap in. Learned that lesson well. Now wait.
I don’t have to wait long. Orion shakes and a rumble propagates through my back from the blast of her engine. And it stops. Ok. Show-time.
NASA’s ground based radar is pretty good, so they’ve got a heading on my targets and, very gently, using the ships flywheels, I bring Orion about to the right heading. Just like the simulator, except this time I actually rotate as Orion does, and I’m looking up at the ships window, not down at the LCD screen. Mark was right though, it actually doesn’t make much difference.
Gotcha. four little dots moving in a line, all shining their flashlights at me to make them easier to see. Just like the simulations though, the intercept needs to be corrected in basically every which way. I’m going too fast, coming in too “high”, and I think I’m too far to the left, but that’s harder to tell right now.
The “fast” is the biggest issue, no way to fix that without spending fuel, and the sooner I do it the less fuel it needs. -0.3 m/s. Better. -0.1 m/s. Better. -0.05 m/s Better… maybe a bit too much though. Let’s wait and see.
I work the “left” and “high” problems, and again that’s fuel, but it has to be spent. Ok, the basic intercept looks ok-ish. I need to let this play out a while longer though. I’ve used up 73% of available fuel. The original vectors were not as well aligned as I would have liked.
They’re about a hundred meters away now. The window helps. 3D and depth perception - if I fully turn my head to the window so I can put both eyes onto them. Orion’s rolling and tumbling a little, and I use flywheels to correct that. I’m getting close to saturated on twisty and loopy, and that’s going to limit my options later.
Ok, this bucking bronco is settled for the moment, and I’m into last-chance for course correction territory. I was right, I slowed down just a smidge too much before. +0.06 m/s, and I think I’m bringing them in just a bit too far to the right, +0.1 m/s.
Master alarm, 96% of fuel is gone.
Welcome to the 90% stage. 50 meters to go.
So, at this point if I do nothing, what happens is that they end up somewhere near the window that I’m looking at them through. I’m feeling like they’ll pass in front of the nose cone by a couple of feet. That’s no good. What I need to do is rotate Orion around so that they come right up to the airlock and the abundance of handholds around it. I’ve got to use some fuel for that unfortunately. Flywheels saturated. 98% of available fuel gone now. And my options for getting this done are narrow, and narrowing by the second.
As I rotate Orion I lose sight of my targets. Remember when I said this was the hardest part? Yeah. I’m watching the artificial horizon to make my numbers. Ok. Spinny is aligned.
I look out the airlock. Fuck. They’re coming in too low. I trigger a -0.1 m/s burn. Bingo fuel. Fuck. They’re going to miss. By like 2 fucking meters. It’s, nothing. It’s twenty fucking seconds if I’d been faster to see the distance. It’s four lives.
I unstrap and disconnect my air feed. The galley is close and its got those 1 kg ballast blocks. I grab two (one in each hand) and kick off for the airlock. Orion’s got four safety cables that unspool from the panel right outside the outer airlock. I start unspooling one.
Dragon’s crew is about 30-40 yards out. Crawling along. I tie off the end of the safety harness to the test weight and throw. Wow. That’s a spectacular miss. My body’s calibrated throw stuff in Earth gravity where it is going to fall down from the second it leaves the hand. I threw way, way, way too high, my body assuming it would just start to drop like everything else I’ve ever thrown since I was throwing my pacifier away.
Ok, 25-30 yards. I’ve got one more test block. By the way, I’ve been breathing. The air inside my helmet is thick and hot and starting to fog the inner surface of the glass dome. I hold my breath, but it isn’t like I just took a deep lungful of clean air, I’m breathing trashy re-breathed, air and I’m already dying to hook myself back up to the proper flow.
I’m going to push this one, two handed. Granny basket time. I shoot!
So, back in high school I made some life choices involving lots of science and math courses, and no gym courses. Why? Because in addition to being a jackass, Mr. Popolopolus was right, that he’d seen children who could whip my butt. I missed again.
The air situation is getting bad. I couldn’t tell my lungs to hold my breath any longer and I’m just gasping. I’ve never felt like this: never. My body just knows it’s dying unless it gets air and every instinctive warning system I have is screaming that at me. My heart’s thundering in my ears, my head wants to split open, and my lungs are on fire. I pull out the third cable. Let’s try something different this time - because I’m out of ballast. I start swinging the tether, like a lasso, extending it out as I do. Dragon’s crew is going to pass close, I just have to get the cable into range and if it completes a rotation in less time than it takes them to transition through its rotational plane, I’m guaranteed a hit. The inside of my helmet’s visor is fogged. I’m down to outlines of the world. I’m not sure I’m going to be able to find my air hose like this. My hand’s shaking, like, shaking wrong, like the muscles are too tired to do what I’m asking them, but… I haven’t been doing much with them. Fuck I’m tired… I just need to get some air, to rest…
The outlines of dragon’s crew are starting to pass the line I’m spinning, it didn’t work. I don’t know why. It just didn’t. They just keep drifting past.
Three options. A) I go to sleep right here and now, and we all die. B) I go back to my chair and try to reconnect my air feed. 50/50 I get there. But Sarah and her crew die.
I go with option C. I fumble the last tether and clip it onto my flight suit, and push off at the four slightly brighter splotches in my visor. Maybe they can grab onto me and climb in.
Wow, did I just kill myself? I think I just killed myself. Actually, this is probably better than fighting a bear. It’s hard to think, my thoughts are all fuzzy and weird. I close my eyes. At least I won’t be guilty. This is better. It’s ok, I can just die. It’s ok.
*******
I’m Nathan H. Green, a science-fiction writer with a degree in aerospace engineering, and I’m going to be doing daily semi-fictional stories tracking the Artemis I mission. You can follow along through my reddit (u/authornathanhgreen).
Artemis I Has A Stowaway is a work of semi-fiction. All incidents, events, dialogue and sentiments (which are not part of the mission’s official history), are entirely fictional. Where real historical figures appear, the situations, incidents, sentiments, and dialogues concerning those persons are entirely fictional and are not intended to depict actual events, personality, disposition, or attitudes of the real person, nor to change the entirely fictional nature of the work. Save the above, any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, events, or locales is entirely coincidental.
© 2022 Nathan H. Green
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