Stetson fired the forward thrusters to reduce the relative velocity between the vehicles. Stetson’s actions were just like in the robotic mission weeks earlier, but this time there was no obvious failure. He had done it then, and, in his mind at least, he was sure to do it again. This was what Bill was born to do.
Stetson again fired the thrusters to slow the Orion. Like the previous firings, inside the capsule they heard the BANG BANG of the thrusters. The sound was loud and annoying, but also comforting. For Stetson, it was the sound of him being in control. And he liked being in control.
“One hundred and fifty meters to target,” Chow said.
“One hundred meters.”
“Twenty-five meters.”
They both felt the bump as the Orion successfully mated with the Altair, making Mercy I a complete spacecraft. To Stetson, the resulting silence was deafening. His adrenaline was still pumping. Beads of perspiration were evident on his brow, and his ground-based physician was certainly monitoring his now-declining heart rate.
“Houston, this is Mercy I. We’re docked and beginning the Earth departure checklist.” Stetson was not about to take a break or relax while lives on the Moon were depending upon him.
“Tony, pull up the Earth departure checklist and let’s get started.”
“Roger that.” Chow smiled, himself not completely relaxed, and replied in his most professional voice for the benefit of all those listening to the exchange back on Earth.
Chapter 22
A few orbits later, Stetson and Chow, with support from mission control in Houston, determined that all systems on Mercy I were operational and ready for Trans-Lunar Injection, or TLI. It was at this point that the liquid-fueled engines of the Ares V Earth Departure Stage, or EDS, would reignite and give them the kick they needed to get to the Moon. Using essentially the same engines that powered the second stage of the Ares I, the Ares V EDS had fired first to place the vehicle and its payload into Earth orbit. Now that the rest of the spaceship had arrived and docked, they were ready to be reignited.
As with all phases of the mission so far, with the exception of the docking maneuver, the TLI was controlled by the onboard computer. Stetson and Chow watched with excitement and trepidation as the clock counted down to engine start. They were excited about their journey to the Moon but simultaneously worried at what they might find there. The Chinese crew was now experiencing the very cold lunar night, and no one could be sure there would be anyone left to rescue once Mercy I arrived.
With only a few minutes to go before the engines were to ignite, Chow reached up and turned off the radio transmitter so as to keep cabin conversation from being broadcast home.
“Bill, have you thought about what we are going to do if we don’t find anyone alive up there?”
“I try not to think about it. The Chinese ambassador requested that we bring the bodies home. But I’m not sure that would be the right thing to do. I think, if they are dead, that we should bury them on the Moon. They knew the risks, and if it were me, I would want to have the Moon be my final resting place. I’m not sure my wife would agree, but then again, she might. You?”
“I don’t know. It’s a shame we didn’t have time to really plan for that contingency. I mean, if we bury them there, shouldn’t they have some sort of marker or something?”
“Tony, these people are going to make it. We’re going to get there, and we’re going to get them home. No more of this dead and dying shit. We’ve got a rescue mission to make happen!”
“Right. I guess that’s the only way to think about it until we get different data,” Tony replied. “You got it.” With that, he turned the cabin’s transmitter back on.
The TLI burn was anticlimactic. Compared with launch and even the orbital-insertion burn, the boost that put them on a path to the Moon was fairly mild. The engines fired, changing the spacecraft’s roughly circular orbit around the Earth to an elliptical one with its highest point at the radius of the Moon’s orbit. If one were to look at the point in space at which the spacecraft would reach the Moon’s orbit at that very moment, then all that would be found would be empty space. The Moon would not yet have arrived there in its own orbit about the Earth. The boost was timed so that the spaceship would arrive at a point in space at precisely the same time that the Moon would arrive, allowing them to rendezvous and then land. Orbital mechanics was all about where to arrive and when.
For the next few hours, Stetson and Chow performed various maintenance and preparatory jobs, finished their evening meal, and settled into their wall-mounted sleeping bags for a well-deserved night’s rest. Neither felt the least little bit of space sickness. Stetson had experienced it on his previous flights, with less severity on each subsequent flight. For this flight, he hardly noticed it. Chow appeared to be one of those rare people who was unaffected by space sickness.
Chow struggled into his sleeping bag, taking comfort that the recirculating fans were humming in the background. He didn’t want to fall asleep, have the fans fail, and suffocate on his own exhaled carbon dioxide. With no external forces or wind, it might be easy for an astronaut to suffocate during sleep, with a cloud of stationary carbon dioxide accumulating around his head. This, like many other “gotchas,” was well understood by spacecraft designers. Chow did manage to get this thought out of his mind as he fell into a fitful sleep.
Gazing out onto the gray lunar surface, Chow was stranded in the lunar lander, waiting to die. He was alone. In his thoughts he was asking, Where is Stetson? Why isn’t he here? He knew that Bill had come to the Moon with him on the rescue mission, but he was nowhere to be found. His panic began to increase until it finally reached a boiling point as he spoke to his wife, telling her goodbye from the Moon, when the alarm sounded and jolted him awake.
Momentarily disoriented, Chow looked around, trying to figure out where he was. For a moment he thought he was, like in his dream, on the Moon. He then concluded that he must be at home in his bed—no, that wasn’t right, either. Now fully awake, hearing the blaring of the klaxon, he realized he was on the Orion spacecraft on his way to the Moon. He looked quickly over at Bill Stetson, who was also being jolted awake.
“Bill, what’s going on?” he asked nervously.
“I have no idea.” Stetson quickly unzipped his bag and didn’t even bother to cover himself as he floated forward to check the status boards and find out why the alarm was sounding.
Chow unzipped and joined Stetson. Just as they arrived, the radio came to life.
“Mercy I, this is Houston. We’re seeing a problem with one of your solar arrays. Are you seeing it as well?”
“Uh, checking it,” Stetson relied. “Copy that, Houston—we see it. One appears to have stopped tracking the sun.”
“That’s what telemetry is showing us, over.”
The solar arrays, mounted on the Orion near its base, provided most of the power required to run its systems. They were mounted on gimbals that allowed them to continuously track the sun so as to maintain the ability to generate a consistent amount of power. Since the Orion was moving toward the Moon while it was still orbiting the Earth, albeit on an ever-increasing altitude orbit, and since the whole spacecraft was slowly spinning to equalize the heat input from the sun in its so-called barbeque roll, the solar arrays were constantly moving to keep the sun in view.
“Batteries are kicking in,” noted Chow as he looked at the status board. With the array not pointing at the Sun, the power generated would drop, requiring the onboard batteries to come online in order to maintain the ship’s systems, including life support.