HOWLAND & BAKER ISLANDS—PRELAUNCH

  As I departed Coronado for North Island Airfield with Senior Chief Baxter and six SWIC-3 Team members, I quipped to the rest of the Team, “This is the first leg of my roundtrip, guys. I’ll see you back here in two-and-a-half days.” It turned out that was not exactly how it happened, but we didn’t know that then.

  We had already spent three days going over every single part of Gryphon-10 and its launch pallet, and we did the same with its twin, a fully operational backup system. Then I went over both systems again myself—just to be sure. Both systems waited for us strapped down in a big Navy supersonic transport aircraft on the North Island tarmac under a brilliant blue sky speckled with puffy cirrocumulus clouds.

  The entire remaining SWIC-3 team and Capt. Nelson himself saw us off. We jetted down the runway, lifted through the sparse clouds into the stratosphere, and turned toward Hawaii as we accelerated to nearly Mach 2.

  Four hours later, with one refueling stop in Hawaii, we rolled to a stop at Amelia Earhart International Airport under a blistering equatorial sun. Thousands of sooty terns, lesser frigatebirds, and masked boobies filled the sky, kept clear of aircraft by a sonic system that was inaudible to the human ear.

  At the end of the tarmac near the entrance to Launch Loop International (LLI) Howland headquarters, two Chinooks waited with cargo bays open, twin rotors drooping as if wilting in the hot tropical sun. Senior Chief Baxter and his six guys remained with the aircraft to supervise the unloading of the two pallets and their loading into the much tighter Chinook interiors.

  I strolled slowly through the humid air toward the headquarters building to meet with the current Slingshot director, Sam Davidson. As I turned toward the double front doors, they opened and out walked Apryl Searson.

  “Tiger Baily, as I live and breathe! It’s really you, isn’t it?” She ran up, threw her arms around my neck, and gave me a kiss the like of which I had not received in a very long time.

  “I’ve been here several times in the last few months,” I said. “Where were you?”

  “Been at the Atlantic site working with Margo on the new launch loop,” she said nuzzling my neck. “What’re you doing here?”

  “If I told you, Apryl, I’d have to kill you,” I said with a grin.

  “Will you have any time for me before you leave for LEO?” she asked with a twinkle in her blue eyes.

  “Schedule’s pretty tight,” I told her, “but a guy’s gotta sleep…”

  She stuck out her tongue at me. “…or not,” she whispered as she disentangled herself. “When are you lifting to the skyport?”

  “Later this afternoon, when we have thoroughly checked both systems out—both the Senior Chief and me.”

  “In these or your flightsuit?” she asked, stroking my chest.

  “I’ll change into my flightsuit after I talk with Sam,” I told her.

  I spent fifteen minutes with Sam Davidson. He had been briefed on our operation and was concerned about any possible hitch in his 24/7 schedule of throwing people and cargo into space. His launch operation was tight by any definition: One personnel or cargo capsule every three minutes, each adding to LLI’s bottom line. That’s 480 daily launches, typically broken down into 2,000 metric tons of cargo and eighty personnel capsules. That’s a lot of freight and people, and my operation would impact it negatively.

  “Sam,” I said as I stood to leave, “I know we’re cutting into your schedule, but you’re being well paid for the inconvenience.” I shook his hand. “Besides, think of the glory!”

  He grinned and slapped my back as I left. “Good luck, Tiger! I’m glad it’s you, and not me.”

  Apryl was waiting for me outside Sam’s door, my folded flightsuit in her arms. She winked and indicated with a toss of her blond, pixie-cut hair for me to follow her. Intrigued, I did, despite my tight schedule. We entered a small conference room. Apryl locked the door behind us, threw her arms around my neck, and wrapped her legs around my waist. She planted a kiss on me that eclipsed her earlier one on the steps.

  After we came up for air, things progressed rapidly, and all I can say is that it was a good thing the room was soundproofed.

  I left the conference room several minutes later, somewhat the worse for wear, dressed in my flightsuit—still pretty much on schedule. Apryl promised to give my clothing to Senior Chief Baxter.

  By the time I got to the Chinooks, Senior Chief Baxter and his guys had both pallets loaded and were tightening straps over the fairings, cinching them to tie-downs in the chopper decks. Baxter split the guys up, and then he took one Chinook, and I took the other for the short flight to Baker Island.

  The choppers landed right next to the loading rail and disgorged the pallets. An articulating boom crane loader rolled up under control of one of the socket crew who deftly hoisted the first pallet over the rail where another crew member attached it to a launch dolly directly behind the personnel capsule designated for us. Then he did the second one, that would remain at the socket, ready to lift should it be needed. Senior Chief Baxter carefully checked each component of each pallet-dolly unit, and then I did it again. Everything checked out.

  Senior Chief Baxter glanced at me, and I nodded. “Board up!” he told the guys.

  The five-minute trip up to Amelia Earhart Skyport was just as much of a rush as the first time.

  AMELIA EARHART SKYPORT—PRELAUNCH

  At Amelia Earhart Skyport, eighty klicks above Baker Island, the capsule tilted to horizontal, sealed against the skyport lock, and the door opened inward. There was Apryl Searson tossing me a coquettish smile. Apparently, she had caught the first available capsule following our tryst. As I stepped into the reception area, Apryl brushed my lips with hers and whispered in my ear, “Before you leave, Tiger, find three minutes for me!” Senior Chief Baxter pretended not to notice, but his guys all grinned at me. One flashed me a thumbs-up.

  The capsule closed behind us, the lock sealed, and a gantry crane moved the capsule out of the way.

  “Okay, guys, suit up!” Baxter ordered, and a minute or so later, the pallet arrived.

  With skytower traffic stopped, the guys hustled through the personnel lock. They removed the fairing and stowed it, and then they prepped the pallet with its Gryphon-10 payload, swinging the wingsuit pod cover to vertical on its hinges like a clamshell. Baxter once more examined every part of the pallet and wingsuit. If it was humanly possible, he was not going to let something happen to the Skipper (me!) on his watch during this historic LEO drop. He took his time, oblivious to the queued-up freight pallets and passenger capsules waiting down at Baker Socket. As he finished, he signaled to me in the main skyport lounge area to suit up for my final system check.

  “Time to go,” I said to Apryl who was snuggled against me on a couch overlooking the broad, colorful band of stars that we know as the Milky Way; only out here it looked more like a multi-colored, diamond-studded bracelet spanning the sky.

  The skyport crew had left us alone during the setup and systems check, and even now they gave us as much privacy as possible. Apryl nuzzled my neck and then kissed me passionately.

  “Come back to me, Tiger, and tell me all about your fantastic adventure!”

  Little did she or I know what lay in store.

  After disentangling myself from Apryl, I suited up. Our suits were an advanced version of the old NASA flightsuits incorporating high-pressure oxygen bottles and electronic carbon-dioxide scrubbers. A pair of TBH (Thomas, Bird, and Hellbaum) hypergolic jet boots that slipped over the suit feet and calves completed the getup. The boot fuel valves were controlled by a microswitch under each big toe.

  I stepped through the personnel lock onto the dock and commenced a detailed inspection of the pallet and wingsuit. Like Senior Chief Baxter, I took my time. It was my ass on the line, and I wanted to be sure that everything was nominal.

  My team stood around chatting quietly on their private circuit, watching everything I did to ensure I missed nothing. I kept open a private circuit with the Senior Chief and went through the checklist with him, item-by-item. I was focused for about a half-hour, and as I finished, I looked up at the transparent port between the dock and the skyport lounge. Apryl’s face filled the port. I waved a gauntleted hand at her, and she blew a kiss back. My guys roared their approval, although I could only see this by the expressions on their faces—the dock remained silent.

  I stepped onto the pallet, backed up against the pod cover, and allowed the crew to strap me in. Unlike Gryphon-7, where my arms were securely strapped to the wings, on the Gryphon-10 my arms were free to move from the wings to my body within the encasing carapace. This was a lot more comfortable than the older version, but I still could not scratch my back. My legs were strapped in very much like the Gryphon-7, as was my body. Then the crew swung down the pod cover with me attached just like a closing clamshell. They sealed the edges all around, pressurized it, and checked for leaks.

  So far, this was exactly like the several static drops I had already made from Fred Noonan Skyport in the Gryphon-10. As I felt the cool breeze from my air supply against my right cheek, I told the Senior Chief that I was ready for the final countdown.

  AMELIA EARHART SKYPORT—LAUNCH

  “Base, Bird—comm check.”

  “Loud and clear, Tiger.” It was Master Chief Boldt. His calm voice was reassuring.

  “We completed all checks and are transiting to the rail,” I said. “Systems nominal up here.”

  “Roger that…Base systems nominal.”

  “Mother, state your status,” Boldt ordered.

  “Standing by to launch.” Mother’s voice did not sound artificial but rather had a soothing, contralto tone.

  “We’re ready when you are,” Boldt said.

  I felt the gantry lift the pallet and move down the track. I knew the routine, but my direct vision was limited to down and a bit side to side. I could turn my head inside the transparent helmet, but the helmet was locked into the carapace. I activated my heads-up display so I could monitor what was going on around me. The gantry moved the pallet to the kick thruster platform, and then backward to attach the kick thruster. The kick thruster is a reigniteable solid-fuel rocket. This always worried me a bit. I’m not a rocket scientist, but I know a lot about rockets. Shutting down a burning solid-fuel rocket is no simple task. LLI did this using an iris-like very strong magnetic field to slice through the solid fuel column just above the burn. They had never experienced a misfire, so the odds were in my favor, but this time I was riding the pallet. I wasn’t safely tucked into a capsule that could withstand atmospheric reentry in case something went wrong.

  The gantry moved the pallet over the rail where a launch pouch was attached. Its purpose was to couple magnetically to the rail, accelerating the pallet at three-gees until it reached LEO orbital velocity. Simple to tell, but complex in doing.

  “Final systems check,” I announced over the general circuit. “Bird systems nominal.”

  “Mother nominal.” Mother’s calming voice filled my helmet.

  “Flight Control nominal,” Master Chief Boldt said. “On my count: Five, four, three, two, one…Launch!”

  SLINGSHOT RAIL—COUPLED

  One moment we—the pallet, Gryphon-10, and I—were hovering above the rail. The next, we surged forward, gently at first, and then rapidly built to three-gees, with me taking the gees through my body to my feet. I could still feel the Velcro straps securing my legs inside the upper carapace. I knew my legs were surrounded by the carapace and could not collapse, but the feel of the straps was reassuring anyway.

  Exactly four minutes after launch, Mother rotated the pallet 45° to the left. Twenty-seven seconds later and 1,050 klicks down the rail from Amelia Earhart Skyport, Mother released the pallet from the rail and initiated a two-minute kick thruster burn. At the end of the time, the magnetic iris sliced through the kick thruster’s solid fuel stack, cutting off the burn. The pallet with Gryphon-10 and me headed on a tangent away from the Earth at almost eight km/s on a path that passed forty-seven klicks over Fred Noonan Skyport, over Southern California, and that would intersect the 160-klick orbit on the other side of the Earth. During the acceleration phase, in addition to my leg straps, I could feel the belly band holding me securely in the pod. When the acceleration ceased, and I was in freefall, I still could feel the reassuring pressure of the belly band—kinda like Apryl’s legs around my torso on Howland Island just before all this got underway.

  LEO—MANNED

  To put things into perspective, I was in an elliptical orbit with perigee at eighty klicks and apogee at 160 klicks. At apogee on the opposite side of the Earth, Mother would fire the kick thruster to change my orbit from elliptical to circular. When I reached the right point in my orbit, she would rotate the pallet 180° and fire the kick thruster to slow my velocity and separate the Gryphon-10 from the pallet. I would drop from orbit and then skip into and out of the atmosphere, slowing down each time until I was over San Diego at a manageable height and speed for landing.

  As I whipped along my elliptical orbit climbing higher with each passing minute, I had a grand view of the Earth below. “Are you seeing this?” I asked.

  “Roger that,” Master Chief Boldt responded dryly.

  “That’s San Diego,” I said at thirteen minutes. “Hi down there, guys!”

  I told Mother to superimpose borders over my panoramic view, and two minutes later, I crossed over the Oklahoma Panhandle with a cloud cover that made it difficult to see the ground.

  “Altitude one-hundred-thirty klicks,” Boldt’s dry voice informed me.

  As I continued to gain altitude, five minutes later brilliantly lit nighttime Washington, DC, swept below me.

  “No time to say Hello—Good-bye…I’m flying through your nighttime sky,” I sang, floating in my sling, awestruck by the speed of passing.

  “Roger that,” the Master Chief opined.

  During the ten minutes it took to cross a darkened Atlantic, I watched lightning bolts play between towering thunderheads of a massive storm system creating a magical landscape beneath my flying carpet.

  “Good morning Mauritania!” I said in my best Robin Williams imitation as I approached the West African Coast.

  “Roger that. Altitude one-hundred-fifty klicks.”

  In the final ten minutes, I swept southeast across the Gulf of Guinea and passed into the Republic of the Congo.

  “Stand by for pallet rotation,” the Master Chief advised.

  Dawn was breaking as I swept over Brazzaville and crossed the Congo River that bordered the Democratic Republic of the Congo. The sun glinted off the broad river surface as the city lights winked out below. The terminator swept past, and forested landscape turned from dark purple to bright green as the sun washed the blackness from the sky. As I passed over Kinshasa, the Master Chief droned, “One-hundred-sixty klicks.”

  Mother rotated the pallet to the proper angle and counted down the final five seconds to the circularizing burn: “Five, four, three, two, one…Initiate!”

  A bright morning star flared briefly for any of the eleven-million inhabitants of Africa’s third-largest city who happened to be looking overhead at that moment.

  And that’s when all hell broke loose.

  LEO—DISASTER

  “What the fuck!” I yelped as the rear of my Gryphon-10 pallet tilted sharply upward while the nose yawed to the right. Then the whole thing started to corkscrew while the kick thruster continued its burn. I was terrified. Almost without thinking, I manually jettisoned the kick thruster and watched it corkscrew ahead of me until it flared out. I lost it in the glare of the morning sun.

  Keeping tight control of my rising panic, and very glad my belly strap held me firmly in the pod, I told Control about my problem while I deployed a tethered holocam to inspect the damage.

  As I related earlier, I was in a stable orbit off to the right by 22.5° but had to get control of my tumble.

  With the back end of the pallet partially melted, and a large chunk missing from my right fin, Mother gave me the bad news: “Probability of complete structure failure one hundred percent.”

  “Well…that’s not exactly good news,” I said, knowing Flight Control was listening.

  “Tiger,” Master Chief Boldt said, “we’re working on that. While you’re at it, try to conserve your oxygen.”

  “Control and Bird, this is Baker Socket, Baxter here. We’re checking the backup bird right now. We’ll send it up the skytower in about fifteen minutes.”

  “Baxter, this is Control. Before you send the pallet up, locate four oxygen bottles, and strap them to the pallet. Connect them to a manifold in the center of the back of the pallet. Also, send up oxygen fittings, adaptors, and any tools you think Tiger might need… anything at all.” The Master Chief paused. “Oh yeah…two complete TBH boot sets.” Then continued more softly. “Remember, the Skipper is up there all alone, he can’t get down, and he’s running out of oxygen.”

  “I heard that, Master Chief,” I said, feeling a bit more in control. “It’s not so bad as all that. Besides, the Senior Chief is already sending me everything I’ll need to complete my job up here.” As an afterthought, I added, “Ain’t that right, Bob?”

  All I heard back was a grunt.

  “Mother,” I said, “how close are you to fixing my tumble?”

  “Approaching a solution now,” she said. “Are you ready?”

  “Go for it!” I said, gripping my handholds with more force than I probably needed, once again glad for the belly strap.

  I sensed the nozzle moving on its gimble and felt several short rocket bursts from Gryphon-10’s thruster—not a lot of pressure on my body, but they did push me around a bit. Mother had no way to fire forward, but somehow she managed to stop both the rotation and wobble with a small net addition to my forward velocity which meant my orbit had changed from circular to a modest ellipse.

 

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