Read Online Brown, Dale - Independent 01 by Silver Tower (v1.1) - Free Book Online

a safe trip to you, Ann.”
                The Marine
escort guided her to the wide covered main gangplank on the California 's starboard gunwale. A small knot of
reporters were waiting for her when she stepped off the platform onto the dock
but she ignored them and quickly found her mother standing near the raised
officer’s wives’ railed greeting area.
                “He’ll be
all right,” Ann said quietly. Her mother’s eyes never left the bridge as the
USS California began slowly to slide
away from its mooring toward the Golden Gate .
     
                 June 1992
                VANDENBURG
AIR FORCE BASE, CALIFORNIA
     
                 “Lift
off. We have lift-off of the Space Shuttle Challenger, STS Mission 51-L.lt has
cleared the tower....”
                The Challenger’s pilot ran his fingers down
the Space Shuttle Main Engine, the SSME status readouts on his computer
monitor. “All main engines look good. ...”
                The young woman beside him acknowledged with
a nod. No NASA simulator could ever fully prepare a person for the feeling of a
space shuttle at lift-off. Noise. Incredible, ear-splitting, thundering noise.
Vibration enough to feel intestines shake. . . .
                As the stowed service arm and gantry slid
from view out the forward windscreens, Ann Page could even see a few seagulls
scurry from the fiery behemoth as it lifted upward. The sight of the petrified
sea gulls made her smile despite the adrenalin coursing through her, tightening
her muscles, constricting her throat.
                “Instituting roll maneuver.. . roll maneuver
complete, Challenger, you look beautiful....”
                On hearing the last report from Ground
Control, Ann reached up through the gradually building “g” forces to the upper
left of her left forward instrument panel and flicked the ADI attitude switch
to LVLH. “ADI attitude switch to local vertical, local horizontal, ” she
announced over interphone. Her pilot in the right seat nodded and did the same
on his panel.
                “Thank you, Dr. Page, ” the pilot said over
interphone, and suddenly the pilot looked young—very young. Like a guy she had
known in high school.
                Ann watched the mach meter on her main
instrument panel while at the same time checking her number-one cathode ray
tube computer monitor and panel C2, the computer control panel and manual main
engine controls. The engine control sequence for launch and ascent was
controlled by computer, but she was obliged to be ready for any malfunction
right up to complete engine failure. If that happened, it would be up to her
and her pilot to control the engines manually and set up her shuttle for an
RTLS—Return to Launch Site abort. As she watched her instruments she kept in
mind her training—think “abort, abort” until five minutes into the flight,
after that think “orbit, orbit. ”
                Forty seconds after takeoff the shuttle
exceeded the speed of sound, and Ann saw the main engines throttle back automatically
to sixty-five percent.
                “Control, this is Challenger. Main engines
at sixty-five percent. Confirm.”
                “Challenger, we confirm SSMEs at six-five
percent, right on the mark.”
                They were approaching a critical phase of
flight when all aerodynamic forces affecting the shuttle—thrust, drag, gravity,
and lift— were exerting equal pressure on the ship all at once. It was “max Q.”
The main engines were throttled back to avoid tearing the shuttle apart as it
reached, then exceeded max Q. The shuttle's computers would control the
delicate transition as the huge craft sliced its way skyward.
                A few moments later Ann could see the pilot
give a sigh of relief as the main engines began to throttle up under strict
computer