“Harsh, but seriously motivating,” Boomer agreed. “You do that.”
“Speaking of actually flying…” Brad continued, deliberately changing the subject to something a lot nearer and dearer to his heart. He waved a hand at the spaceplane towering over them. “What’s the latest word on when we can take this crate and the others out of mothballs and back into the sky?”
Boomer grinned at him. “Why? Getting itchy feet here on the ground, McLanahan?”
“Maybe a little.”
The other man nodded. “Yeah, me too.” He shrugged. “Not long now, I hope. Most of the birds look like they’re in pretty good condition, but my crew chiefs are still checking every component from nose to tail fins. Anything that looks dodgy gets pulled.”
“That can’t be cheap,” Brad said slowly.
“It sure isn’t,” Boomer agreed. “But the higher-ups saw the point when I told them it was a choice between spending a couple of million dollars on needed maintenance now… or maybe watching a spacecraft worth a couple of hundred million dollars burn up on reentry or auger into some Iowa farmer’s cornfield later.”
Brad flashed a smile of his own. “Nicely argued, Dr. Noble. I’m betting the other little fact, that you’d be one of the guys riding in the cockpit of that doomed spaceplane, wouldn’t have been nearly as persuasive.”
“Maybe not,” Boomer allowed. “The definition of ‘acceptable risk’ sure changes when you’re the one taking the risks.” He jerked a thumb toward the rolling ladder up to the S-19’s open cockpit. “Speaking of which, I’ve got something new to show you.”
Curious now, Brad followed him up the ladder to a platform overlooking the cockpit. From this vantage point, everything about the S-19 Midnight looked identical to the one he’d flown into orbit five years before. Or, for that matter, to the digitally simulated versions he’d trained on for the last several weeks. It had the same two side-by-side seats for the pilot and copilot, who was called the mission commander — with all the usual consoles and panels crowded with touch-screen multifunction displays and other controls.
Boomer tapped him on the shoulder and pointed to a patch of metal deck visible between the seats. “See there?”
Brad squinted, and this time he spotted a small pull handle set almost flush with the deck itself. Thin, dark lines in the deck plating outlined what looked like a new hatch or compartment. That was weird. Unlike NASA’s larger space shuttle, the S-19 only had one deck. Everything below the spaceplane’s cockpit should be just sensor instrumentation, avionics, and heat shielding. He glanced back at the other man. “Okay, I’m officially baffled. What gives?”
For an answer, Boomer lowered himself into the open cockpit and settled into the right-hand mission commander’s seat. He patted the other. “Take a seat, kid, and I’ll show you.”
Still puzzled, Brad climbed down into the left-hand pilot’s seat. In his lightweight Nomex flight suit, it felt a lot wider and less cramped than it did when wearing a standard full-pressure space suit. “All right. Now what?”
Boomer reached down to the pull handle set between them. In one easy motion, he tugged it up and to the right. A section of the deck plating rose smoothly and pivoted away behind his seat, revealing a deep compartment extending below the cockpit. “We had to reroute some cabling and sacrifice a small amount of fuel tankage to make room for this,” he explained.
Brad shot him a crooked grin. “So what’s inside? A built-in bar?”
“In your dreams,” Boomer said dryly. Still bent over, he caught hold of a piece of gear stored inside the compartment. Grunting with effort, he yanked a bulky, white backpack up into view. “This would be a heck of a lot easier in zero-G,” he said through gritted teeth as he set it down carefully on the deck. “Here on Earth, this damned thing still weighs about fifty pounds.”
Brad leaned over himself, taking a closer look at the backpack. It was about twenty inches high, eighteen inches wide, and eight inches deep. A number of ports, connectors, and valves dotted its outer surface. “That’s a PLSS,” he realized. “But it looks significantly smaller than the other models I’ve seen.” A PLSS, or Primary Life Support System, contained oxygen, power, carbon-dioxide scrubbers, environmental controls, communications gear, and a small emergency maneuvering system. Astronauts wore them during EVAs.
Boomer nodded. “Yep. Our Sky Masters engineers took the advanced version of the PLSS that NASA’s been working on at the Johnson Space Center and slimmed it down quite a bit. They had to, since everything has to fit into this one tight compartment.” Straining, he pulled out a second life-support pack and rested it on top of the first.
“What’s the trade-off involved in the reduced size?”
“These life-support packs only provide three hours of air and power, not the eight-plus hours of the bigger models,” Boomer replied.
Brad frowned. “That’s one hell of a negative trade-off.”
“This new equipment isn’t intended for routine use,” Boomer said patiently. “It’s all strictly for emergencies.”
“Emergencies as in ‘oh, shit, this spacecraft is kaput and we’ve gotta get out’?” Brad guessed.
“Yeah. Those kinds of emergencies.”
“Three hours of life support doesn’t seem like nearly enough time for anyone to mount a rescue operation,” Brad said dubiously.
“It’s not,” Boomer agreed. He reached down inside the compartment and retrieved another piece of gear. “Which is why we developed this little Rube Goldberg — looking device.”
Brad felt his eyebrows rise. The other man was holding up a clear case packed full of smaller pieces of equipment, including what looked oddly like a large, deflated white balloon, a parachute pack, and what appeared to be a small, twin-nozzle, handheld rocket motor. “What is that?”
“The high-tech version of a ‘Hail Mary’ pass,” Boomer said matter-of-factly. “More officially known as an ERO kit.”
“ERO?”
“Emergency Return from Orbit.” Boomer tapped the side of the clear case. “If everything works as intended, all this hardware assembles into a disposable one-man reentry vehicle.” His expression was completely serious. “Way back in the 1960s, General Electric engineers designed a system they hoped would allow Gemini astronauts stranded in orbit to return safely to Earth… without using another spacecraft to retrieve them. They called the concept MOOSE, for Manned Orbital Operations Safety Equipment.”
“But the system was never actually deployed?” Brad guessed.
“Canceled after early ground testing,” Boomer acknowledged. “The ERO kit is our own updated version, using more advanced materials.” He tapped the case. “For example, that weird balloon-like thing is actually a disk-shaped, six-foot-diameter aerogel bag with a thin Nomex cloth heat shield attached to one side and a parachute pack and retrorocket combo on the other.”
“Aerogel? That’s the super-lightweight stuff they call ‘solid smoke,’ isn’t it?” Brad said slowly. At Boomer’s nod, he frowned again. “But aerogel is made out of silica, basically beach sand. It’s incredibly brittle.”
“This is a new form of aerogel developed by NASA’s Glenn Research Center out in Ohio,” Boomer reassured him. “They make it out of polyimide, a really strong, amazingly heat-resistant polymer. It’s hundreds of times sturdier than the traditional aerogels — so much so that you can actually support the weight of a car on a thick enough piece.”