Read Online Brown, Dale - Patrick McLanahan 03 by Sky Masters (v1.1) - Free Book Online Page B
Authors: Sky Masters (v1.1)
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bill DARPA another one hundred thousand
dollars for gas. It’s your decision.”
“I’m merely expressing my concern
about the winds at altitude, Doctor Masters . . .”
“And I replied to your concerns,”
Masters said with a smile. “My little baby here says it’s a go. Unless we fly
somewhere else to launch, away from the jet stream ...”
“DARPA is very specific about the
launch area, Doctor. These satellites are important to the Navy. They want to monitor
the booster’s progress throughout the flight. The launch must be over the White
Sands range.”
“Fine. Then we continue to monitor
the winds and let the computers do their jobs. If they can’t properly
compensate without going outside the range, we turn around on the racetrack and
try again. If we go outside the launch window, we abort. Fair enough?”
Foch could do nothing but nod in
agreement. This launch was important to both the Navy and Air Force, and he
wasn’t prepared to issue a launch abort unilaterally.
The object called ALARM that Masters
so lovingly regarded was the Air Launched Alert Response Missile; there were
two of the huge missiles on board the DC-10 that morning. ALARM was a
four-stage space booster designed to place up to three-quarter-ton payloads in
low-to-medium Earth orbit by launching the booster from the cargo hold of an
aircraft—in effect, the DC-10 was the ALARM booster’s first stage, with the
other three stages provided by powerful solid-fuel rockets on the missile
itself.
The ALARM missile had a long,
slender, one-piece wing that swiveled out from its stowed position along the
missile’s fuselage after launch. The wing would supply lift and increase the
effectiveness of the solid rocket motors while the booster was in the atmosphere,
which greatly increased the power and payload capability of the booster. An
ALARM booster could carry as much as fifteen hundred pounds in its
ten-foot-long, forty-inch-diameter payload bay.
On today’s mission, each of Masters’
ALARM boosters carried four small two-hundred-pound communications satellites,
which Jon Masters, in his own inimitable way, called NIRTSats—“Need It Right
This Second” satellites. Unlike more conventional satellites, which weighed
hundreds or even thousands of pounds, were placed in high geosynchronous orbits
almost twenty-three thousand miles above the Equator, and could carry dozens of
communications channels, NIRTSats were small, lightweight satellites which
carried only a few communications channels and were placed in low,
one-hundred-to-one-thousand-mile orbits. Unlike geosynchronous satellites,
which orbited the Earth once per day and therefore appeared to be stationary
over the Equator, NIRTSats orbited the Earth once every ninety to three hundred
minutes, which meant that usually more than one satellite had to be launched to
cover a particular area.
But a NIRTSat cost less than
one-fiftieth the price of a full-sized satellite, and it cost less to insure
and launch as well. Even with a constellation of four NIRTSats, a customer with
a need for satellite communications could get it for less than one-third the
price of buying “air time” on an existing satellite. A single ALARM booster
launch, which cost only ten million dollars from start to finish, could give a
customer instant global communications capability from anywhere in the
world—and it took only a few days to get the system in place, instead of the
months or even years it took for conventional launches. NIRTSats could be
repositioned anywhere in orbit if requirements changed, and Masters had even
devised a way to recover a NIRTSat intact and reuse it, which saved the
customer even more money.
Masters’ customer this day was, as
it usually was, the
dollars for gas. It’s your decision.”
“I’m merely expressing my concern
about the winds at altitude, Doctor Masters . . .”
“And I replied to your concerns,”
Masters said with a smile. “My little baby here says it’s a go. Unless we fly
somewhere else to launch, away from the jet stream ...”
“DARPA is very specific about the
launch area, Doctor. These satellites are important to the Navy. They want to monitor
the booster’s progress throughout the flight. The launch must be over the White
Sands range.”
“Fine. Then we continue to monitor
the winds and let the computers do their jobs. If they can’t properly
compensate without going outside the range, we turn around on the racetrack and
try again. If we go outside the launch window, we abort. Fair enough?”
Foch could do nothing but nod in
agreement. This launch was important to both the Navy and Air Force, and he
wasn’t prepared to issue a launch abort unilaterally.
The object called ALARM that Masters
so lovingly regarded was the Air Launched Alert Response Missile; there were
two of the huge missiles on board the DC-10 that morning. ALARM was a
four-stage space booster designed to place up to three-quarter-ton payloads in
low-to-medium Earth orbit by launching the booster from the cargo hold of an
aircraft—in effect, the DC-10 was the ALARM booster’s first stage, with the
other three stages provided by powerful solid-fuel rockets on the missile
itself.
The ALARM missile had a long,
slender, one-piece wing that swiveled out from its stowed position along the
missile’s fuselage after launch. The wing would supply lift and increase the
effectiveness of the solid rocket motors while the booster was in the atmosphere,
which greatly increased the power and payload capability of the booster. An
ALARM booster could carry as much as fifteen hundred pounds in its
ten-foot-long, forty-inch-diameter payload bay.
On today’s mission, each of Masters’
ALARM boosters carried four small two-hundred-pound communications satellites,
which Jon Masters, in his own inimitable way, called NIRTSats—“Need It Right
This Second” satellites. Unlike more conventional satellites, which weighed
hundreds or even thousands of pounds, were placed in high geosynchronous orbits
almost twenty-three thousand miles above the Equator, and could carry dozens of
communications channels, NIRTSats were small, lightweight satellites which
carried only a few communications channels and were placed in low,
one-hundred-to-one-thousand-mile orbits. Unlike geosynchronous satellites,
which orbited the Earth once per day and therefore appeared to be stationary
over the Equator, NIRTSats orbited the Earth once every ninety to three hundred
minutes, which meant that usually more than one satellite had to be launched to
cover a particular area.
But a NIRTSat cost less than
one-fiftieth the price of a full-sized satellite, and it cost less to insure
and launch as well. Even with a constellation of four NIRTSats, a customer with
a need for satellite communications could get it for less than one-third the
price of buying “air time” on an existing satellite. A single ALARM booster
launch, which cost only ten million dollars from start to finish, could give a
customer instant global communications capability from anywhere in the
world—and it took only a few days to get the system in place, instead of the
months or even years it took for conventional launches. NIRTSats could be
repositioned anywhere in orbit if requirements changed, and Masters had even
devised a way to recover a NIRTSat intact and reuse it, which saved the
customer even more money.
Masters’ customer this day was, as
it usually was, the
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