“The clock is running, Houston.”
Apollo 18 had begun.
Father Ilarion’s jaw had gone slack. What he was seeing on the small screen was far removed from his daily life, and yet the power and danger were palpable to him.
As the final 30 seconds before launch had ticked down, he’d grabbed Alexander’s hand, squeezing hard. While the announcer’s voice counted through the last 10 seconds, Ilarion’s grip intensified until his entire arm was shaking, the flames from the engines filling the screen and the rocket lifting off the pad, agonizingly slowly.
“Slava Bogu!” Ilarion said in abject wonder. Praise God! His eyes remained locked on the flickering image, but he didn’t understand what the NASA announcer was saying. “Is everything still all right, Alexander?”
“Yes, Father, the rocket is working perfectly. The astronauts are having the ride of their lives.” He pried his hand out of the hieromonk’s grip and shook his tingling fingers.
The two men watched without speaking, the blue TV light oddly illuminating the icons on the bare plaster walls as the image on the screen shrank to a wavering flame in the sky.
“Roll and pitch program, Houston.”
The three crewmen were intensely hawking their instruments. The rocket had climbed clear of the launch tower and then turned to steer up the east coast; they could see the precision of it in the motion of the black-and-white ball of the artificial horizon. As Chad radioed the expected motions to Houston, Luke noticed the sunlight changing angle through the windows, confirming that the ship was guiding properly.
“Roger, 18. Thrust good on all five engines.”
Hearing the voice of their CAPCOM was reassuring. It meant that a team of experts was comparing expected height and speed to what the ship was actually doing, and that they matched.
Luke traced his thumb along the table in his checklist, confirming what Houston was telling them. He tried to hold his hand steady against the deep, powerful throbs and fast, jittery shaking, but the vibrations made it hard to line up the numbers. The relentless roaring of the engines filled the cockpit with a symphonic cacophony punctuated by terse communications with the ground.
Luke leaned his head forward against the motors’ thrust and caught Michael’s eye. “How’s that for a cat-shot?” he said, referring to the steam catapult that had once launched their jets from aircraft carriers.
Michael grinned. “Better!”
As the fuel rapidly burned and the vehicle got lighter, it accelerated faster and faster through the thinning air. Luke felt his head and arms getting pushed back as the g-force mounted. He leaned against the headrest, which was buzzing as the rocket shouldered itself through the atmosphere.
He checked his gauges. “Cabin pressure’s dropping.” Open valves were letting the air inside the cockpit vent as the pressure around the ship dropped with altitude. They’d let it fall all the way to 5 psi and then close the valves to hold it there, using pure oxygen for the rest of the flight. An elegant way to flush the spaceship of Florida air.
“Shake it, baby!” Michael’s voice quavered slightly with the intensity of the vibration.
The air had been pushing back against their increasing speed, putting a heavier and heavier load on the structure of the ship. The engineering name for that pressure was Q, and they had just hit the speed and height where it was at maximum. Max Q. From now on, with the air getting rapidly thinner with height, the forces would drop. It was the heaviest load the rocket’s structure was designed for, and Luke was glad to be safely through it. He gave Michael two thumbs up.
The CAPCOM’s voice confirmed the good news: “18, you are GO for staging.”
Soon the first stage of their rocket would run out of fuel and would shut down, separate and fall into the Atlantic. But for now the crew was still being crushed at nearly four times their weight, getting close to the design limit for the rocket itself. Rather than slam all five engines to a stop at once, the computer shut down the center motor to drop the forces while the remaining four burned the last of the fuel.
“Inboard cut-off,” Chad reported. Luke instantly felt the load on his body lighten, like there was one less person lying on top of him. But the remaining four engines kept pushing as the ship got lighter, and the g-load rapidly climbed again.
“Christ!” he grunted. He’d pulled lots of g as a fighter pilot, but wasn’t used to the relentless load of a rocket. It was getting hard to breathe against the steady weight.
“Hold on!” Chad yelled.