“We have to make required modifications to the shroud and stringback, a new aluminum skin, and enhanced stringer and ring-frame construction. We will deliver a fifteen feet by eighty-two feet useable payload space, of which fifteen by sixty is capable of changeout on the pad. Avionics and guidance, navigation and control systems are adapted from those on the orbiter; systems relating to manned life support, long duration orbit, descent, and landing are deleted…”
Jardine’s accent was Texan, his voice brisk, clipped and competent; it depressed Libet even more to think that this man could show equal professional enthusiasm about taking apart his orbiters as assembling them.
Barbara Fahy was standing beside Libet. “That smooth corporate bull does have a way of putting you to sleep, doesn’t it?” Fahy pushed back her hat and scratched her forehead. “Damn this thing.”
“You don’t look too happy,” Libet said.
Fahy fixed her hat back in place. “Should I be? I looked up the original proposal for Shuttle-C, from the 1980s. They were asking for five years to complete the development, including six months for proposal evaluation and contract award, four years of design, fabrication and assembly, a comprehensive test program, and a couple of test flights before going operational. For better or worse Boeing are rushing through their modifications in half that time. And we’ll be going straight to operational, without a chance for a single test flight. The same is true of the Saturn refurbishment program. I’m a big supporter of this program, Siobhan, this vision of Paula’s to get us to Titan. But we just aren’t giving this damn thing enough time.”
“We don’t have much choice. The bad guys are closing in, remember. In fact, Boeing are already behind schedule.” It was true; it was the reason for their visit today.
“I know, I know. But all we need is one of these flights to fail, just one, and we won’t have the lift capacity we need. And I might be the person who has to deliver one of those flights. And carry the can when it blows apart.”
They were taken to the floor of the facility now, and walked underneath the still-graceful chin of the orbiter. The smooth, shaped surface of Atlantis’s belly loomed over Libet, dark and sheer, and she could see the complex mottling of the tiles and blankets of the thermal protection system.
Those tiles, all thirty thousand of them, had absorbed thousands of man-hours of development and testing. And then every one of them, shaped for a particular location on the orbiter’s complex surface, had had to be fitted individually, by hand. It was a monumental, medieval labor.
But now, teams of technicians were again working on the belly of Atlantis. They were on moveable platforms, and they reached up and scoured and painted and dug; each of them looked like Michelangelo working in the Sistine, she thought vaguely. But what they were doing was far from creative: they were detaching those painfully-applied tiles, one by one. All in the interests of saving weight; on her last mission, Atlantis didn’t even need her thermal protection any more.
Discarded tiles lay around on the floor of the facility, some of them streaked and discolored by Atlantis’s final atmospheric entry.
The tiles on the underside of the craft were coated with a black, reflective glass patina. The shaped surface returned complex highlights from the bright working lights of the Boeing facility. The effect of the ceiling of tiles above her, with its subtle contours, was quite beautiful, she thought; it was like the roof of some modern church.
Libet shook her head. “My God. It’s an act of vandalism. We’re taking fully operational spacecraft, all this mature technology — national treasures, for God’s sake — and stripping them down to serve as garbage scows.”
Fahy smiled at Libet. “We’ve been through this. The only alternative to Shuttle-C is to turn the damn things into cafe bars, like the Russians did to Buran. You can’t tell me you’d prefer that.”
“Hell,” Libet grumbled. “It’s just—”
“What?”
“It’s just, being an astronaut is all I ever wanted to do. Flying in space, travelling to new worlds. To Nimbar, or Vulcan, or Bajor, or through that damn wormhole… But here in the real universe I got nowhere to go, except Titan, and that’s a lethal ice-ball, and we’re having to burn up everything to get there. I keep on feeling I was born in the wrong universe.”
Fahy laughed. “But you’re lucky, Siobhan, At least you are heading out. And there ain’t nobody who’s going to follow you, not in my lifetime, or a long time afterward.”
The party moved on.
They were taken to a balcony overlooking another area of the assembly facility floor. Here — Libet hadn’t been expecting this — Boeing employees, maybe a couple of hundred of them, had gathered. They were standing in their white coats and plastic overshoes, looking up at their visitors.
Jardine started giving them a pep talk. “…We’re scheduled to begin power-on systems testing in a couple more months,” he said. He beamed out at his workers from under the brim of his white hat. “And that puts us significantly under budget and only a month behind schedule, which we will recover. I attribute that to a mature Shuttle program expertise, careful planning and foresight by Boeing and NASA, and, most importantly, the hard work of thousands of people. I mean you people, right here, and I have never worked with a better bunch of quality workers in all my years in this business…”
He got a ripple of applause for that.
Then, to Libet’s horror, Jardine said something about how they were honored to have with them one of the people who this program was all about, the latest chapter in Boeing’s long and proud space tradition… And Libet found herself being pushed forward, until she reached a discreet black microphone on a stand in front of her.
She looked back at Fahy, appealing. Fahy shrugged, apologetically, and held her palms out flat. Take it easy.
Libet looked out over the little pool of faces. Like so many in the space industry, the workers here weren’t young, on average; there were plenty of grey hairs pushing out from under those gleaming white hats. This last effort probably meant the end of their careers, she realized. And they were all looking up at her from the assembly facility floor.
Their faces were — empty. Shining.
I fascinate them, she realized.
Holy shit, she thought. Astronauts nowadays weren’t prepared for this stuff. All her PR training had been about playing down the wonder stuff. Being an astronaut was just a job, right?
But this was different. It was as if she was John Glenn, ready to go off to the high frontier. Maybe to die. Evidently Paula had been right in her hunch that this Titan mission would, one last time, grab the imagination of the people.
But, Libet thought, what in hell do I say?
Then the question came, called up from the floor. What’s it like to fly in space?
There was a ripple of nervous laughter.
She held the microphone and tried to reply. “…It’s like nothing you can imagine. The photos, the IMAX films, the VRs, nothing captures it. I feel like a child. I feel like I’ve been to a secret place. And now you guys are sending me back…”
They were watching her, expectant, silent.
She remembered stories of early astronauts as they’d toured similar facilities, fifty years ago. And she remembered what Grissom, or Cooper or Glenn or Shepard, had said in one such place, at Convair or McDonnell Douglas or Boeing.
She leaned forward to the microphone, and said: “Do good work.”
There was a long silence.
Then applause started rippling around the assembly area floor, vigorous, laced by a couple of whistles.
Billy Ray Jardine’s heavy hand clapped her back.
Deeply embarrassed, she retreated.