“Gotcha, Flight. We’re comin’ around to final out of 12K, six and a half uprange. H-dot is 200 down.”
“Copy, Endeavor, descending at 200 feet per second. You’re seventy-four seconds to wheels-on.”
“And, Endeavor, Chase Two is with you,” called a gleaming T-38 jet beside Shuttle’s left wingtip. “We’re at your nine o’clock and see your vent doors open in payload bay.”
“Thanks, Chase,” Colonel Parker acknowledged. “Out of 3,500, making 285 knots over the fence — a tad hot. Speed brakes deployed 80 percent.”
Completing his turn to final approach and aligning his 100-ton glider with the runway centerline, the command pilot squinted through a six-inch square frame set into the forward windshield. Inside the black frame of his Kaiser Electronics Heads-Up Display, Will Parker could see the runway coming up quickly. The see-through HUD is clear glass like the windshield all around it. But on its glass face were numbers and symbols. Shuttle electronics and her humming black boxes projected critical flight information onto the small clear screen.
Along the left side of the HUD video image, a vertical column of numbers told the pilot his air speed. Another column of numbers on the right edge of the HUD face showed distance to the ground. And in the center of the glass screen, a white video “X” moved left or right of the centerline of the real runway below and half a minute away. By looking outside through the HUD frame on their windshields, both airmen could see exactly how their approach numbers looked without dropping their weary eyes inside the cockpit to the instruments above their knees. HUD keeps a pilot’s eyeballs where they belong. The device first flew in space on Shuttle Six in April 1983. Will Parker flew it now.
“Endeavor: Chase One sees your speed brakes open wide.”
“Thanks, Chase,” the pilot in command called. “Flight: we’re full manual CSS out here. Into the preflare at 1750 feet. Nose up bubble one point five degrees on inner glide slope… Two miles out. Landing gear armed. We’re sittin’ fat.”
“Copy, Endeavor. You’re twenty-eight seconds out. Right down the pike.”
“Thanks, Flight… Let me hear it, Number One!”
“Steady as you go, Skipper,” Enright called. “Landing gear hydraulics valves One, Two, and Three, set GPC. Out of 250 feet at 270 knots. Three in motion… Three down and locked!”
The centerline of Runway 23 rose swiftly to stop Endeavor’s descent. From their cozy office, the pilots could see the runway center line coming closer. But they could not see their ship’s wings nor her down-and-locked wheels far behind them. They flew their flightseats toward the dry lakebed of Edwards Air Force Base.
“Chase Two confirming three gears down and six wheels in position. One hundred feet, eleven seconds out,” the small chase plane called from beside the powerless glider.
“Okay, Skipper: 100 feet at 190 knots… 50 feet at 185… 30, 20… 10 at 170… 5. Mains contact!”
“We’re on the center line, Flight! Nose Wheel Steering ready. Nose wheel at 10 feet… 5 feet… 3… and Flop! Speed brakes 100 percent. Looked like 160 knots at touchdown… And we’re rollin’ in the sunshine! Light braking here at 80… 50… 20… And, all stop!”
“Roger, Endeavor. You’re home and beautiful job all the way!”
‘Yeh, Flight,” the sweating and exhausted Aircraft Commander sighed.
“Endeavor, we’re ready for closeout and safing procedures when you’re ready.”
“No thanks, Flight. We’ve been in this sweatbox for six hours. We blew up once on the pad, missed two OMS insertion targets, and bent our metal on two landings. And it smells like my old socks in here just now. You boys pull the plugs. Me and Number One are goin’ for the beer. And right now.”
When the Command Pilot yanked his microphone plug and laid his sweaty headset atop the forward glareshield, the second in command did likewise.
The Commander pushed his seat away from the instrument panel so he could lift his stiff, long legs over the low, center console between the two seats in the cockpit.
“Thought the Captain leaves last, Skip.”
“Not when the Captain has to make tracks for the head, Jack,” sighed William McKinley Parker.
The metal ladder swayed as Jacob Enright followed the commander out of the 60-million-dollar Shuttle Mission Simulator and into the cold fluorescent glare. In their sweat-soaked flightsuits, the two stooped airmen brushed past banks of computers and bleary-eyed technicians who conceive every possible failure, crisis, and catastrophic malfunction with which to torment the crew inside the lifelike simulator. Through the simulator’s computer-controlled windows, even the view of Earth and space is perfectly accurate.
“Nice crash in the drink there, Colonel Parker,” grinned a fat technician. The stoney glare from the flier’s face froze the trainer in midthought.
“That, my friend, is why those two guys are called The Icemen around here,” laughed another engineer after Parker and Enright grimly strode past them into the austere halls of the Lyndon B. Johnson Space Center in Houston.
The two exhausted pilots stood side by side facing the wall in the JSC men’s room, tending to business.
“Nine hours in that sweatbox, Jack!” the taller flier sighed.
“Yeah, Skipper. Least they can’t generate a wing falling off,” mumbled Jacob Enright.
“I’d call an FCS Saturation alarm and running clean out of elevon travel ten feet above the ground the next best thing, Jack.”
The two fliers zipped in unison, reflecting months of training together as a back-up crew who had yet to get a flight of their own. At least they were finally on the manifest for a military mission next year.
“And always bridesmaids, but never brides,” said the slow, down-home drawl of the taller, older man as he led his young copilot into the glare of the hallway.
“We’ll get ours, Will. It won’t be wasted. Not to worry.” Jack Enright consoled his captain as they shuffled down the glassy corridors to the astronauts’ office. They squinted against the cold glare of the hallway after spending half the night in the softly muted lights of the simulator’s flightdeck.
Side by side, backs stooped, hands deep in sweaty flightsuit pockets, the tall man and the short man made their way onward. Flaccid faces of technicians watched the crew pass. Over coffee, night-shift technocrats commented often that Jacob Enright walked and talked more like Colonel Parker every day.
Inside a large, chilly conference room, Parker and Enright sipped hot coffee at a large table topped with tacky plastic wood. Across the table sat the Launch Vehicle Test Conductor, at his side sat FIDO, the Flight Dynamics Officer, and beside him sat the only woman in the room, the Lead Shuttle Simulation Instructor. In front of the room-long blackboard secured to the wall, the Flight Director paced anxiously.
“I know it’s late,” the Flight Director began as he glanced out the window into the dark, cool December night. “But I want to nail down the simulation on the Return To Launch Site Abort protocol.” The director leaned over a pile of computer printouts and graphic time-lines spread upon the table.
“We had the Abort Region Determinator initiate the RTLS abort at 248 seconds into the launch. You carried trajectory lofting through 400,000 feet on two live main engines and one prematurely shutdown. No sweat there.” The tall flight director squinted through his pipe smoke. “But then, men, you boys were out to lunch. Anne?”
Parker and Enright studied their steaming coffee mugs.
The young woman set her round glasses upon a pretty face. She sifted through her own stack of mission profiles before she addressed the tension.
“It fell apart right from the powered turn-around,” she began dryly. “While burning the two remaining main engines after the center engine blew, you were late dumping 16,000 pounds of OMS pod fuel and 1,100 pounds of RCS propellant. You initiated powered pitch-around at 400,000 feet at five degrees per second, taking 32 seconds to reverse your track. That’s 16 seconds too long. By the time you turned around to initiate guidance back to the Cape, you were 275 miles up-range—50 miles too far from landing. Descending under power after the powered turn-around, you pulled 3 point 2 G’s — that’s one-tenth below crush level.”