“… 11 seconds. Water start.”
The floodgates beneath Shuttle opened and flooded the pad’s buried flame deflector channels.
“… 10…”
Inside the two solid boosters, the armed self-destruct sensors flipped on as the main engines’ prevalves opened sending liquid oxygen and liquid hydrogen toward the ignition valves which are the last stop before the engines’ combustion chambers.
“… 9, 8, 7…”
The armed, self-annihilating range-safety destruction sensors in the external tank and in the solid boosters switched on to listen for the suicide command.
Directly overhead, LACE looked down and sped on to open water.
“… 6!..”
Shuttle’s center main engine exploded to life with a clean blue flame which sent boiling steam into the air above the water flooded base of Pad 39-A.
Along the beaches, no one breathed.
“… 5, 4, 3…”
Main engines left and right fumed into blue hot life.
“… 2, 1, Ignition!”
The twin solid rocket boosters exploded into white flames. The whole vehicle flexed a full yard in the direction of the external tank when the pad’s hold-down clamps yawned open.
Endeavor had the sky.
“You have lift-off!” the ground radioed.
The Glass Lady, riding white fire, inched skyward. A blizzard of ice and frost from the freezing external tank sprayed the flightdeck’s six windows. Major Mode 102 ticked through Endeavor’s computers programmed to tear a fiery hole in the purple sky seven days before Christmas.
“And we have wings!” William McKinley Parker shouted from his sky.
8
A thunderclap of fire swirled from Endeavor’s tail and 2,237 tons of aluminum, fuel, men, and bricks of purest glass shuddered.
One million, one hundred thousand pounds of rubbery explosive in each solid booster fired out 3 million pounds of thrust into the sand at each side of the starship as powdered aluminum and aluminum perchlorate incinerated. From Endeavor’s three main engines, each generated 490,000 pounds of thrust with a clean blue flame. A ton of ice cakes and frost flakes vibrated free from the chilled external tank’s sides and pummelled the forward windows of the flightdeck.
Inside the warm heart of each of Endeavor’s five flight computers, 400,000 mathematical operations every second pulsed within Shuttle’s wire neurons over 24 serial data buses, the spinal cord of the living starship. Inside her two magnetic tape mass memory units, 34 million data bits were being sorted, interpreted, and flown. Nineteen multiplexer-dimultiplexer black boxes acted as traffic cops — like nerve bundles in living ganglia — directing the instantaneous computer-talk. Three engine unterface units on each Shuttle main engine listened for the flight computers’ steering commands. Thirteen signal conditioners converted Endeavor’s pulse, pressures, temperatures, and inertial measurements into computer chatter which traveled at the speed of light along 1,200 data channels to Shuttle’s two pulse code modulation master units. These PCMMU’s ready the ship’s vital signs for digestion by her Network Signal Processor which beeps the vitals to the ground’s tracking stations by FM telemetry beacons.
“And we have wings!” an excited bass voice thick with Kentucky twang called. “102 is running!”
Riding white fire, the glass-covered starship with five iron brains and two human hearts, nudged back the clear sky.
“Tower clear!” the ground called as Endeavor’s tail climbed past Pad 39-A’s launch tower. Seven seconds out, the ship was 200 feet aloft making 75 miles per hour through the humid morning air.
Eight seconds into the sky, 400 feet high, Endeavor slightly dropped her black nose toward the blue-green sea.
“Roll program,” the Mission Commander radioed. “And pitch program initiated.”
Shuttle was slowly twisting her body atop white, rolling thunder to align herself with the proper flight heading. As the nose dipped closer to the sea and the ship rolled into a slow wing-over, the two pilots flat on their backs flew heads down toward the sea with their feet skyward.
“Roll complete,” a slow voice drawled from the sky.
“Copy, Endeavor,” the ground called. “Go at thirty seconds. You’re 8,000 feet high making 675 feet per second.” Half a minute out, the solid rocket boosters shuddered and vibrated like a rutted country road. A distant buzzing from the high-pitched vibration filled the flightdeck cockpit.
To ease the stress on Shuttle of punching through the shock-wave wall of the sound barrier, Shuttle’s three main engines automatically throttled down from 104 percent power to only 68 percent power.
“MPL at 32.”
“Copy, Jack. Minimum power level at 32 seconds. You have a Go at 40 seconds.”
Shuttle’s nose pierced the sound barrier with a slight shudder of transonic buffet 52 seconds into the sky, 5 miles high. Outside air forces pressed the ship with 700 pounds per square foot of glass-covered skin.
“Throttles up, 100 percent, Flight. PC at 2,960 all three.”
“Roger, left seat. Chamber pressures 2960 psi on the mains. Configure control surfaces neutral.”
Shuttle’s body flap beneath the blue flames of the main engines and her wings’ elevons had been flexing automatically to ease the strain of air pressure as the ship cleaved the morning sky. Their job was done.
“Go at 1 minute fifty-three seconds, Endeavor.”
“Thanks, Flight. We’re right and tight in the sky!” the firm voice drawled confidently as Endeavor’s nose dropped to 39 degrees below vertical 120,000 feet high at three times the speed of sound.
“Go at 2 minutes, Will. Mach 4 out of 136,000 feet. Go for SRB separation.”
“Rogo, Flight. Flash evaporators on. And we see PC less than 50 at 2 plus 06.”
Inside Shuttle’s fuming tail, the heat dissipating flash evaporators began sweating out the heat from Endeavor’s systems. The green television screens on the flightdeck told the two airmen that the thrust level in each solid booster was trailing off to lessen the shock of an abrupt burn-out when their fuel was exhausted. Sensors felt each booster’s engine pressure drop to 50 pounds per square inch.
“BECO! And booster away.”
“Roger, Will. Booster engine cut-off. Looks good.”
“And it’s much smoother now, Flight, at 2 plus 15.”
“Copy, that, Jack.”
Spent and dry, the two dead solid boosters shut down simultaneously. Four small rockets in the nose of each SRB and four rockets in the tail of each, burst with 22,500 pounds of thrust each for seven-tenths of a second to shove the lifeless boosters clear of Endeavor and the external tank at four and one-half times the speed of sound, 30 nautical miles high. At 2,891 knots true airspeed, the ship climbed past the separated SRB’s.
The two discarded solid boosters will continue to coast upward by their own momentum until they reach 200,000 feet high. From there, they will arc down toward the ocean. Riding parachutes manufactured in Manchester, Connecticut, by Pioneer Parachute Company, the SRB’s will glide into the warm sea 140 miles east of the Cape. Landing and floating only one mile apart, the empty silos will be plucked from the sea, refitted, recharged, and reused.
“Real smooth ride at 2 plus 26. Guidance is now closed loop, Flight. Center television showing second-stage trajectory.”
“Copy, Jack. You’re right down the slot at two and one-half minutes out. We see Major Mode 103 now running in the GPC. Your flash evaporator is Go.”
Against the purple sky, the faint blue flames of the three main engines could no longer be seen from the ground. Only a grotesquely contorted contrail from the spent SRB’s marred the sky where high altitude winds tied the SRB exhaust plumes into a knot.