Night Launch - Vol. 1 Ed. 37
Mar 31, 2021 5:26 am
World Builders' Guild Newsletter
T -20 seconds.
Electronic systems activated.
T -15 seconds.
Throttle to half.
T -10 seconds.
Reaction control and stability augmentation engaged.
T -5 seconds.
Throttle to full. Ignition.
T -0 seconds.
The craft shudders off the launchpad. It shines stark white against the clear black star field beyond. The ocean cradles a glimmering streak of the pyrotechnics laid by the boosters at full. Hazard lights blink synchronously from the distant Space Center like a knowing, digital bon voyage.
T +10 seconds.
Creature and machine careen to the heavens in tense harmony. The craft pitches to arc over the horizon bound for orbit.
T +18 seconds.
The rocket lumbers through the upper atmosphere, its speed dwarfed by the vastness of the planet below. Mesmerized by the coronal light show and the dancing galactic ribbon above, the captain and first officer both fail to lock the craft into optimal attitude. The warning chime goes unheeded.
T +24 seconds.
A crimson flame licks the edge of the crew's porthole. One by one, space helmets snap-turn to gaze upon the disturbance. Now wide-eyed with terror, the crew stares through a solid orange sheet of superheated ionized air molecules.
At this angle, the ship has pushed through too many of them. The prolonged friction heats the ship's shell to its melting point. The fuselage is white hot. Alarm bells grow deafening.
T +31 seconds.
The crew scrambles to cut thrust and engage the abort sequence, but the ship is beyond the safe operating parameters at this angle of attack. The captain attempts to prematurely cut to the next stage and shed the boosters. He hopes the loss of mass and thrust will bring the ship beyond the point of no return.
His tiny clenched fist slams the stage separation lever.
T +39 seconds.
It's too late. The stage separate struts usually pop without fanfare to bump the boosters away from the fuselage in a gentle arc back toward the planet. Instead, the minor explosion is the spark that ignites the hyperhot, paper-thin alloy that was once a fuel tank.
Now, it's a bomb.
T +41 seconds.
A mind-shattering detonation rends the craft into unrecognizable bits. The boosters are consumed in yellow wildfire like two building-sized phosphor candles. Below the command module, the fuselage balloons into an inverted mushroom cloud. The fireball swallows the craft whole.
In the industry, they call it "Rapid Unplanned Disassembly."
T +42 seconds.
Luck is on the crew's side tonight. The staging computer failed spectacularly and in so doing managed to tap the command module away from the main fuselage a split second before the rest of the craft disintegrated.
T +46 seconds.
The conical crew module hurtles over the horizon tumbling out of control. Inside, the three crew members grip their space chairs in terror.
Looking out the window is like watching a washing machine on a broken, turbo-charged spin cycle.
Now lathered with sweat, nearly passed out from the G-forces of the planet-bound dive, the captain manages to re-engage the stability augmentation system and wrest the module into a gentle spiral.
T +58 seconds.
A sigh of relief. The space farers shoot each other a glance of knowing affirmation: the parachute was undamaged. It yawns open high above the marooned craft as it drifts toward the blackness of the ocean's surface below.
T 1:41 minutes.
Splashdown.
The doomed mission is over. The captain radios into mission control. An allied ship steams toward the vessel.
One day, these tiny green pioneers will find their way off of Kerbin and onto the worlds beyond.
Tonight they're just happy to journey back to the Kerbal Space Program HQ in one piece.
To future worlds,
Matt Ventre
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