Just why was my mission classified? Wouldn't the whole world want to know that humans had learned how to breach the speed of light barrier, thus, enabling a whole new era of space travel? It was my guess that it was a political move on NASA's behalf. If this experiment turned out to be a big blunder, nobody would be the wiser. If it worked, then we could do a better demonstration in a few months or years and make a big promotion of it. There was also the turmoil of the energy system and the possible weapons capabilities that these entailed. And would we want FTL travel in the hands of just anybody in the world right now? What if some nut decided to fly a spacecraft at ten times light speed into the Earth? What would happen? Of course, there was always the fact that DARPA had some say so in this matter, since they funded the lion's share of the effort. But really, what would happen if some nut did fly an FTL missile into the Earth?
Well, actually the spaceship would never interact with the Earth because of the physics involved. A couple of guys wrote a paper back in the early part of the decade called something like "The View from the Bridge" or something similar. The paper showed that no data (which would include matter) could be transmitted to the interior of the warp bubble while it was active due to causality violations. Of course, the authors of that paper had no idea how to create a warp bubble. Just like our electron experiment, we had to set up the electrons to flow just inside where the bubble would be and then turn on the warped field. If we hadn't done this, the electrons would never have made it inside the bubble. The paper does allow for data or matter to escape the bubble at right angles to the travel direction. We had hoped to see some electrons deflecting off the inside of the bubble and out of its side to the electron detectors. As you recall we had no such luck for other reasons.
I digress. So, assume this nut flies the FTL craft into the Earth. What would happen? The warp field would push anything, and I mean anything, in its path right out of its way. The warped field would be stressed by the impact and eventually collapse the spacecraft inside the bubble. Most likely, it wouldn't poke a hole all the way through the planet before it destroyed itself either. The stresses on the warp device would be tremendous—it would become a self-eating watermelon. At any rate, I wouldn't want to be either the nut in the FTL craft or an innocent unsuspecting bystander on Earth who was walking down the street of some city a hundred miles away from impact. The damage could be catastrophic. Maybe that is why my mission is classified. That led me to wondering what if it wasn't a meteorite that killed the dinosaurs. What if it was a spacecraft that ran on iridium? The science fiction story possibilities here were outrageous.
My mind was spinning with these possibilities. Once they got me strapped in after ingress I had nothing to do really but lie there on my back anyway. During the Orbiter close-out procedure a light came on, back at the O and C building I assumed, that said there was a pressure leak in the crew module. The engineers and technicians outside the spacecraft on the tower attempted several times to verify if the light was correct or not. This took about three extra hours.
Apparently, the entire payload bay had to be brought to a particular pressure and temperature before they could make an accurate measurement. Boy, it sure will be nice when we develop spaceships like in the movies, where we just hop in and fly off to Dagobah or Naboo, or to pick up our date, the green animal woman slave from Orion. Until then, space travel will be damned complicated, risky, expensive, inconvenient, time consuming, difficult, and a hell of a lot more uncomfortable. Outside the spacecraft there were smart folks running around completing complicated tasks that took three Master's degrees in engineering just to qualify to watch. I didn't really know about all of this because by then my mind had stopped spinning. The adrenaline rush of being on the launch pad had worn off and I had fallen sound asleep. In fact, all but the flight surgeon cut my mic because I was snoring so loudly.
T-minus nine minutes and holding. I woke up to, "Dr. -Clemons . . . Anson!"
"Um hem . . . Payload Specialist Clemons is go, Flight!" I snapped. Tabitha held back a giggle.
"Glad to hear it, Anson. I was beginning to think you were going to sleep through the whole mission." I could just imagine the smile on her face. I didn't respond further. The next eight or so minutes were exciting. The vocal traffic picked up between launch control and the commander and pilot seats.
To me it was mostly a great big blur. At T-minus four minutes I recall hearing something about "Verify SSME valve movement in the close direction."
"Verify SSME valve movement in the close direction. Check!" Major Donald replied.
Then at T-minus two minutes and fifty seconds there was something about terminating the GOX vent hood purge. And transfer the PRSD to internal reactants. Tabitha ordered all of us to close our visors and then rechecked the LH2 replenish. Then a lot of things on the checklist began zooming by, very fast.
RETRACT GOX VENT HOOD GLS CGLS (Auto)
T-MINUS 02 MINUTES AND 35 SECONDS PRSD TRANSFER TO INTERNAL REACTANTS GLS CGLS (Auto)
T-MINUS 02 MINUTES AND 00 SECONDS CLOSE VISORS
T-MINUS 01 MINUTES AND 57 SECONDS TERMINATE LH2 REPLENISH GLS CGLS (Auto)
CLOSE LH2 TOPPING VALVE GLS CGLS (Auto)
CLOSE LH2 VENT VALVE GLS CGLS (Auto)
T-MINUS 01 MINUTES AND 46 SECONDS INITIATE LH2 PREPRESS GLS CGLS (Auto)
T-MINUS 00 MINUTES AND 55 SECONDS PERFORM SRB FWD MDM LOCKOUT GLS CGLS (Auto)
T-MINUS 00 MINUTES AND 50 SECONDS GROUND POWER REMOVAL
T-MINUS 00 MINUTES AND 48 SECONDS CLOSE LOX & LH2 OUTBOARD FILL & DRAIN VALVES GLS CGLS (Auto)
DEACTIVATE SRB JOINT HEATERS
GLS CGLS (Auto)
T-MINUS 00 MINUTES AND 31 SECONDS GLS GO FOR AUTO SEQUENCE GLS CGLS (Auto)
ARM CUT OFF GLS CGLS (Manual)
INITIATE RSL5 GLS CGLS (Auto)
ORB VENT DOOR SE9 START GPC CGLS (Auto)
You get the idea.
Finally, at twenty seconds things started to happen that I could feel, physically through small vibrations or large jolts. Down below us the launch pad exhaust reflection pool was being flooded with water to suppress the sound waves from the lift-off. Just ten seconds later the SRB safety inhibits were removed. Three point four seconds after that main engine three was given the start command. My teeth started chattering as I was lunged forward then backward violently. The ship had jumped about a meter. I had been warned that the Shuttle would sway a meter or two at main engine firing. We affectionately refer to this as the "twang" because the initial reaction of the spacecraft structure is to "twang" like a tuning fork when it is struck. To an outside observer, the shuttle seems to sway a bit. But to an inside observer . . .
"Sway hell," I mumbled to myself. It was more like being thrown in a car wreck.
Nine seconds later I couldn't hear a thing and I felt like I weighed five hundred and seventy pounds or more. What a ride! I tried to raise my arms once just to test how heavy they were. It wasn't easy. I was even more impressed by the space jockeys in the front two seats. I could barely blink. How the heck were they flying this thing? A few seconds later we went through throttle up and then to SRB separation and I couldn't remember a happier day in my life. This is what I had always wanted to do since I was a kid.