Even as the words came out of his mouth, though, Masters knew that wasn’t what the Air Force was going to want to hear. Besides, the TDRS system had proved generally reliable in the past, and all of Jon Masters’ NIRTSats relied on TDRS to beam status and tracking information to his Blytheville, Arkansas, headquarters as well as to the military and government agencies using the satellite.
So the problem had to be on the plane…'.
“Get another system check at Blytheville and another here,” he ordered. “Right now. Get on it.”
Kaddiri had quickly grown tired of being ordered around. “We’ve checked our systems. They’re fine and ready to receive. The problem’s in the TDRS satellite, not with our gear.”
Masters muttered something under his breath, threw off his headset, and got up out of his seat. The senior launch- control technician, Albert “Red” Philips, immediately asked, “Jon, what about the countdown?”
“Continue the countdown, Red,” Jon snapped. “No — hold. I’ll be back in one minute.” He then hurried forward to the flight deck.
Despite the roominess of the launch-control cabin and booster section in the rear cargo hold of the DC-10, the flight deck up front was cramped and relatively uncomfortable. Along with the two pilots, there was the flight engineer’s station behind the copilot, with his complex system of fuel, electrical, hydraulic, and pneumatic cortrols and monitors; he also controlled the aircraft’s weight and balance system, which was designed to compensate for each ALARM booster launch by rapidly distributing fuel and ballast as the boosters were moved or launched.
Behind the pilot’s station, back-to-back with the flight engineer, was the alternate launch-control console and the primary launch-communications center. The system handled the communications interface between satellites and ground stations and the ALARM booster until a few seconds before launch, when the booster’s onboard computer received its last position and velocity update from the launch aircraft and was sent on its way. The ALARM booster’s onboard flight computers continuously navigated for itself and provided steering signals to the launch aircraft to position itself for orbital insertion, but it needed information sent to it through the launch aircraft’s communication system, and'right now the system was not picking up data from the tracking satellites. Helen Kaddiri, who was in charge of the console for this launch, had been trying to restore communications, but with no luck.
She rolled her eyes in exasperation as Masters rushed through the pressurized cabin door. “Jon, if you don’t mind, I can handle this…”
Masters immediately checked the status screen for the launch aircraft’s communication system — everything was still reporting normal. “I asked you to run a self-test of our system, Helen.”
Kaddiri sighed as Masters peered over her left shoulder to watch the test process on the screen…
“There!” Masters announced. “Umbilical fiber optic hardware continuity. Why did you bypass that test?”
“C’mon, Jon, get real,” Kaddiri protested. “That’s not an electronics check, that’s a visual check—”
“Bullshit,” said Masters, dashing out of the cockpit and back into the cargo section.
The ALARM booster, its gray bulk huge and ominous in the bright inspection lights of the cargo section, had been wheeled out of the airlock and back into the cargo section so technicians could look it over again.
“Push her back in and check the umbilical connections,” Masters said. “We might have a bad plug.”
“But we need a safe connectivity readout before we can push her into position,” Red Philips said. He checked the status board on the launch-control panel. “I’m still showing no tracking data from—”
“Bypass the safety locks, Red,” Masters said. “Get the booster into position to launch.”
“We lose all our safety margins if we bypass the safety locks, Jon—” But Philips could see that Masters didn’t care. He punched in instructions in the launch-control console to bypass the safety interlocks, which usually prevented an armed but malfunctioning booster to be wheeled into position for release. The interlocks prevented an accident on board the plane and the inadvertent dropping of a live booster out the launch bay — now there were no safety backups.
The bypass showed up immediately on Helen Kaddiri’s alternate launch-control board. “Jon, I’ve got an ‘Unsafe Warning’ light on. Is the booster locked down? I show the interlocks off.”
“I turned them off, Helen,” Jon said on interphone. He stood with a flashlight at the mouth of the launch-bay airlock as the huge ALARM booster was motored back into launch position. “We’re checking the umbilical plug.”
“You can’t do that, Jon,” Helen warned. “If it’s more than just a plug problem, the booster might proceed to a final launch countdown before you can open the bay doors or before we can inhibit the ignition sequence. You’re cleaning a loaded gun with your finger on the trigger and the hammer pulled back.”
