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The Maretian

by Kris Overstreet

Chapter 93: Sols 174-175

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The sun rose on a crystal clear day at Cape Canaveral. On Pads 38A and 38B, two giant towers of metal rose skyward, casting immense shadows across the wetlands. Sleipnir 1 stood on 38A, entering its final prelaunch checks. A smaller crew monitored Sleipnir 2 on pad 38B, from which it would launch on the morrow. Sleipnir 3 sat in the Vehicle Assembly Building on the immense crawler, ready to be transported out to 38A once Sleipnir 1 was on its way.

Just outside the exclusion zones on land and sea, tens of thousands of people gathered. They gathered in cars and trucks and campers. They gathered on fishing boats and yachts and cruise liners. They came as close as they could, keeping security guards and soldiers and navy ships and coast guard cutters busy maintaining the cordon around rhe space center.

Millions, even billions more, watched on television, on the Internet, by radio and phone and any means they could. The world wanted to know: would the first attempt by man to send an emergency resupply mission to another planet succeed?

HERMES – ARES III MISSION DAY 303

Everyone crowded around Johannsen’s console, listening to the two-minute-delayed audio broadcast of the countdown from Earth. They relayed the signal on to Friendship’s radio, because although the alien ship’s radio signal was no longer clear enough to send voice broadcasts, Hermes’s superior signal strength allowed voice messages to travel the other way.

The crew leaned forward as they heard Mitch Henderson’s voice crackle over the speakers, “This is the Flight Director. Begin launch status check.”

None of the Ares III crew spoke as the Florida launch controller ran down the go/no go list, getting responses of Go from each controller. There was a slight rustling on the bridge as Mitch reported that Sleipnir 1 was go for launch on schedule, as everyone unconsciously shifted against Hermes’s rotation-simulated gravity.

One by one, the countdown callouts rang out. The Red Falcon shifted to internal power, its computers taking over the flight sequence. Fuel lines were disconnected. Final automated checks were made, reported as good. And the count rolled on.

At fifteen seconds the launch timer began reading the seconds out loud. The Hermes crew leaned forward almost as one person.

“Six… five… four…”

Martinez, who had been praying silently, began reciting the Ave Maria aloud.

“Ignition sequence start.”

Beck’s hand grasped Johannsen’s shoulder. She didn’t flinch.

“Three… two…”

Vogel stared at the deck and said nothing.

“Ignition.”

Lewis stood a step behind the others, arms folded, hands gripping her upper arms so her fingers wouldn’t drum on her sleeves.

“one… and liftoff! Liftoff of the SpaceX Red Falcon, carrying the supply probe Sleipnir 1 to the Ares III habitat on Mars.”

None of the crew let out any sighs of relief. They would be premature. No Ares supply mission had failed yet, but they had seen numerous satellite launches fail, for one reason and another. There was no such thing as a guaranteed successful launch.

“Trim?” With liftoff, control of the flight automatically handed off to Mission Control at Houston. Mitch Henderson had taken command.

“Trim’s good, Flight.”

“Course?”

“On course, Flight.”

“Altitude one thousand meters. Safe abort reached.”

“Pitch and roll program commencing.”

“Thirty seconds to max-Q.”

“Getting a little shimmy, Flight.”

That caught everyone’s attention. During launch, the less you heard on the controller channel, the better. The word shimmy should never come up at all.

“Say again?”

“We have a slight longitudinal vibration, Flight. Computer’s handling it.”


One of the multiple engines in the first stage of the Red Falcon booster had a very slight clog in its fuel pump. This caused the engine to sputter slightly, shaking the craft in an unexpected, but not disastrous, manner. It was just one more vibration on top of several sources of buffeting the ship would encounter in the course of a normal ascent.

But inside the rocket’s first stage, one of the wires leading to a control gyro had a weak spot, hidden by insulation and not caught by the inspection many weeks beforehand. The wire stretched and snapped inside the insulation, sending its signal to the first stage computer in weak, sporadic sparks instead of a steady stream of data. This fault, unexpected and previously unencountered outside of simulations, caused the first stage computer to attempt to compensate for what it thought was a sudden and severe change in pitch.

One point five seconds later, the computer recognized the fault, cut the sensor out of its decision loop, and attempted to correct its error. Unfortunately this happened about one second too late.


“WHOA!”

The bottom dropped out of the stomachs of the listening Ares astronauts.

“Flight, the ship just pitched down hard.”

“Can you correct?”

“Getting ratty data here, Flight.”

“Craft’s pulling five G’s and rising.”

“Computer’s attempting to compensate, but we’re still tracking below target trajectory.”

“Get it back on course,” Mitch ordered breathlessly.

“Ten seconds to max Q.”


For a second and a half the flight computer of Sleipnir 1’s first stage had believed that it was pitching up well out of its prograde vector. It compensated as best it could by throttling certain engines and pivoting its engine bells for maximum downward pitch. This put its nose well outside the prograde vector in the opposite direction, just at the moment when the ship was about to experience the highest aerodynamic stress load of the flight- “max Q”.

Air approached the point of incompressibility as the rocket continued to accelerate. The hardening air pushed against the upper side of the imbalanced rocket, shoving it towards the ground, even as the computer tried to bring its nose back in line with its pre-programmed trajectory.

Red Falcon was the most powerful booster system humanity had ever flown successfully. But this time the strength of the rocket worked against it, because the same thrust that tried to compensate for the misalignment also accelerated the ship closer to max Q, harder against the unyielding atmospheric forces.

At almost any other point in the flight the error might have been survivable. Not this time, not this place.

The linkage between the first and the second stage failed, and the giant rocket broke in two. The first stage plowed headlong into the second stage and the probe.

The fireball was visible for miles and miles in the clear skies off the eastern coast of Florida.

On Hermes, the crew listened to the end.

“We’ve lost readings on the probe, Flight.”

“Lost the probe?” Mitch again. “Entirely lost the probe?”

“First stage guidance LOS, Flight.”

“Second stage LOS, Flight.”

“Reestablish.”

Martinez, listening to this, slammed a fist into the bulkhead. “Shit!”

“No luck.”

“Satcon?”

“No satellite acquisition of signal.”

“Ground?”

“Flight, we see a large fireball downrange at the approximate last observed position of Sleipnir 1.”

“Flight, USS Stockton reports debris falling into the exclusion zone.”

A long moment of silence followed, broken by Mitch Henderson’s voice, much subdued, saying, “GC, Flight. Lock the doors.”

Vogel looked at the deck and said nothing.

Beck squeezed Johannsen’s shoulder tighter.

Lewis spoke. “Okay, back on task, people,” she said. “This was only one of three. NASA made these redundant for a reason. Mark and his friends will be fine if they get the other two.”

The next day Sleipnir 2 launched without incident, achieving first Earth orbit and then Mars insertion trajectory with perfect precision. Almost one hundred sols’s worth of food, plus spare hab canvas and other spare parts, were on course for a Sol 585 landing somewhere to the south of the Ares III Hab.

The crew of Hermes listened, relaxed slightly, and crossed their fingers for Sleipnir 3.

Author's Notes:

Posting this very early because I have to take the first leg of driving home and likely won't be able to post at all tonight.

I have no idea if this would actually work to cause a malfunction on a BFR. It's the best I can do under time pressures and major distractions, including someone who simply cannot understand that I need to NOT be holding a conversation with him while I'm trying to do this sort of thing.

In Kerbal Space Program, if your ship gets out of its aerodynamic profile in thick atmosphere, it will tumble, but it takes a LOT of such forces to break the ship in the game. In real life (at least in our universe) a rocket that tumbles on the short axis will snap like a cheap crushed cigar.

Buffer is now zero. I'll see what I can put together, but I'm scrambling for every two words I can string together at this point.

Next Chapter: Sol 177 Estimated time remaining: 20 Hours, 31 Minutes
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