Chapter 7• Cygnus
*Day 3 of Origenes Crisis*
My wake-up call came at 5:30am on the dot. Oddly enough, I didn't feel the least bit groggy upon waking. I was full of energy.
In fact, I remained as anxious as I would have been mid-rescue on a normal day.
The next thirty minutes flew by, of course, as I scarfed down the breakfast they had silently delivered right outside my hotel door.
"Did NASA rent out this entire floor for us, or the entire hotel? Or did they just pick random hotels for each of us, making sure we didn't meet before it's time?", I wondered.
I spoke, of course, about the eight other astronaut pups.
I was concerned that I might encounter one of them on my walk to whatever vehicle was waiting for me outside of the lobby. Then the thought hit me; What was I so afraid of?
Of course, I'm a NASA….something, now, I thought.
I'm not an astrophysicist or a mathematician (not really anyway), but I definitely know how to fix things. These people have never seen me in person before, so if I walked in there with the utmost confidence like I knew what was going on, they wouldn't suspect I didn't belong there.
I DO belong here, I corrected my own thought.
I walked outside. Palm trees swayed and a wet heat hung in the air, despite the sun not being up yet.
I was told by the driver of a NASA sedan that my pup-house, my other luggage, and anything left in my room would be transferred to my quarters later that day if it hadn't been already.
I was to arrive with nothing, so I had nothing to worry about.
The forty-something year-old man behind the wheel introduced himself as Whit and I shook his hand.
I made my best attempts at small talk with him, but the fierce nature of confidentiality pretty much clung to everything. He just talked about random things, tourist sites, and funny stories of times spent before his NASA tenure.
In a blink, we were there.
It was a very plain-looking building. Off-white exterior with nothing but the address *4331 Zulch Drive* and the number 3 in roman numerals *III*.
We checked the clock- 5:58am.
"Always early", Whit remarked proudly, "Best of luck, boss!"
I smiled and nodded.
Whit pulled around the corner. I noticed a man in a black suit at the door next to a small table with a notebook on it.
Not suspicious looking at all, I thought.
I remembered from the last set of documents- all of us were supposed to sign under the name "Sam Lowe"- a gender neutral name both inconspicuous and somewhat forgettable.
Top-secret to be sure, although I was beginning to wonder as to why assembling a team to deal with a problem that has been all over the news required secrecy of such a high level. I hoped the answer wasn't that NASA was afraid to admit that canine astronauts were a plausible solution to their issue.
I grabbed the pen and signed "Sam Lowe" on the last line available, with eight other Sam Lowe's above mine. That means I was the last one in, and all eyes would be on me.
The man checked my signature and clicked a button on his radio. He then nodded as two other suited fellows came from the front doors and held them open.
I felt myself getting nervous, but I took a breath. I hadn't done anything wrong thus far, and on such short notice.
Two more emerged; a duo that was much friendlier looking.
They smiled and greeted me. They bent down to my level, and I shook everyone's hands.
A third man, in a grey suit and glasses, guided me down the halls.
"Good to see you sir, right this way", he said.
There was nothing on the walls, but the building felt like something halfway between an event center and a lecture hall.
And then we stopped at a door. He slid his ID through a key-card slot, and it opened.
Security cameras were everywhere. It was at this point that two men in hazmat suits came and swabbed every square inch of my body, checked my retinas, temperature, and told me where to go next.
"Down the hall, third set of doors on the right."
I followed and reached the doors; these were wooden unlike all the others. As if on cue, the doors were opened by another two suited men and a third woman in formal NASA attire.
She spoke, "Ah yes, you're Rocky, correct? From Adventure Bay?"
"Yes ma'am, that's me", I replied with pride.
"Great, just a minute", she said. She then put a lanyard around my neck that only had my picture and the NASA logo on it (the retro version of the icon, affectionately dubbed "The Worm" for its simplistic design).
She pressed another button on her walkie talkie and led me through an identical set of wooden doors.
When I walked through them, I saw a somewhat familiar area. This was where some astronauts conducted their pre-mission press conferences. It was a medium-sized auditorium with a long stage.
A lanky brown-haired man with green eyes was at the podium. There were about thirty people present total, both human and dog. Some looked like they were with media while others sat as though they spent every day there. Many sat and scribbled down notes on pads and tablets.
The lady then told me, "Your seat is 1/25."
Some of the people turned to look as I walked down the side aisle.
It was kind of odd. I'd actually never seen so many adult dogs and humans in the same professional setting. Adventure Bay was one thing, but most dogs there were pets, these dogs had lanyards too- titles and jobs.
It wasn't unheard of for dogs to make names for themselves without human masters, but these had to be the best of the best.
When I hit the first row, I saw Kingsley in the second row next to a ton of NASA execs, but that wasn't all. From the first seat onward sat a pup, with two empty seats in between.
1/4/7/10/13/16/19/22
Farthest from me, in seat 1, was a White Labrador retriever.
Then in seat 4, there was a brown and white Bernese Mountain dog.
Rounding out that crew was a grey Irish Wolfhound in seat 7.
Seat 10 held the only female astro in the lineup. A beautiful dark brown and white female Border Collie, the only dog smaller in stature than me. Although she was far away, I tried not to stare.
In seat 13 was a lighter brown and white German Shorthaired Pointer. If there was any non-human in that room who looked like they meant business, it was that dog.
In seat 16 sat a reddish-brown labradoodle.
Then were the pups closest to my seat; my two counterparts for this process, if seating was any indicator.
In seat 19 sat a Jack Russel Terrier, slate grey and white. He was the only pup in the line who actually looked at me. He nodded and turned back to the front. For some odd reason, I felt a little better at the time.
Seat 22 held a Shiba Inu, I could just tell he was in his element.
Since he was closest to me, I could glance to see his lanyard without making it obvious. However, the side that his name was printed on was turned towards his body.
I sat in seat 25.
This is it, I thought.
The man standing at the podium finally spoke, "Seems we're all here."
His voice was authoritative and harsh (in a matter-of- fact kind of way).
"I want to extend a gracious greeting to all nine of the newest NASA prospects, the first to do so during a crisis such as this, and the first to be made up of exclusively canine members."
He paused, "You're all here right now, so that means someone on NASA's staff has some kind of faith in you. However, my background as a college professor of twenty years demands that I make everything I do as equally 'cruel and unbiased' as possible to get the most out of you."
He smiled, but it wasn't a joyful sign of approval, more like a sly indication that our usefulness to the mission remained to be revealed.
He went on, "my name is Dr. Charles Dotson, and I am sharing launch operations manager-responsibilities for this upcoming venture. You'll meet Dr. Kirk Rosen later. I want to make the following painfully clear; this is an emergency situation and any failure to treat it as such on your part will be FATAL to your careers- be they NASA-related or otherwise. Before we hit logistics though, I wouldn't be doing my job if I didn't include a history lesson."
I couldn't help but perk up at the mention of History, my tail almost started wagging, but I stopped myself.
"We all know the famous odyssey of the best and brightest of our country. The first lunar landing in July of 1969. Neil Armstrong, Buzz Aldrin, Michael Collins- The only mission anyone born after the Apollo Era seems to care about. But that's an ignorant person's world, and I hope you all aren't like that."
He then paused to cue up a slideshow, as if this actually were an academy lecture.
Dr. Dotson continued, "It's so easy to forget that our space program had been little more than hot dung on a sidewalk for the majority of the 1950's and 60's. Our rockets blew to bits on the launchpad and collapsed before reaching atmosphere in the years leading up to the Mercury mission era", he said while pacing up and down the stage; passing in front of each one of us at least once every 40 seconds.
He took long strides, almost like a general assessing his troops.
"The mercury rockets were weak and couldn't translate worth a damn. And yet, aside from Astronaut 'Gus' Grissom's liberty bell 7 capsule sinking to the bottom of the ocean without him in it, the Mercury astronauts got out of it unscathed", he remarked somewhat sarcastically. I saw the Shiba Inu next to me suppress a giggle.
Dotson continued, "Then Gemini, the next steps to a series of grotesque failures that would somehow land us on the moon."
**{Quick Note from the Author: Gemini spacecrafts were made up of 2 separate rockets. An unmanned rocket called an Agena- basically a giant fuel tube equipped with experiments and dust collectors-went up first. Then, the rocket with people on it; The Titan II, would go up to meet it. I can't assume that you know that going in, but you do now!}**
"The comedy of errors started when Gemini 5's Titan 'new and improved' fuel cells almost died in orbit- damn near killing Gordon Cooper and Pete Conrad. Gemini 6's Agena target vehicle lifts off, disappears from radar and blows up on the edge of space. Gemini 6A- meant to meet up with another manned spacecraft in orbit-shuts down on the pad at launch time due to some incompetent engineer leaving a plastic dust cover inside the booster's gas generator that blocked the flow of oxidizer. A stuck thruster on Gemini 8 sent the manned craft into a death-spiral in orbit- marking the first of two separate instances where NASA almost killed the aforementioned Neil Armstrong. Research the 2nd on your own time. Gemini 9's Agena failed to separate properly and ruined the mission, all of this capped off by Dick Gordon's 'Spacewalk from Hell' where afterwards it was discovered that he had a pound of sweat within each boot of his spacesuit due to the physical stress on the body. Both of these programs were essential for humans to reach the moon, unfortunately."
Charles Dotson said all of this without taking a breath and without breaking stride.
I seriously considered the possibility that I should have been taking notes.
He sipped from a cup of water, then kept going. None of the pups in the front row dared break from his gaze, me included.
"If you're still with me, let's look forward to Apollo. I know you're all familiar with the tragic launchpad fire that took the lives of the Apollo I crew. Just shy of two years delay and cost-concerns later and NASA managed to string together a string consecutive successful Apollo missions, all the way through #12 barring a little lightning strike. That is, until another "bright" engineer dropped an oxygen tank on the floor of the manufacturing plant for Apollo 13 and decided to stick the then-equivalent of a ticking bomb, back on the craft's side. This of course led to the explosion on route to the moon, and the greatest rescue mission in our nation's space-travel history to get them home safe."
Dr. Dotson continued to push forward and arrived at the Space Shuttle years.
The first loss- Cedar, 1986- and its disintegration seconds into its third attempt at launch.
The failure of the O-ring seals, a breach in the Solid Rocket Booster joint, allowing pressurized burning gas in where gas shouldn't be.
At that point, I couldn't help but take a few glances behind me. Some of the NASA personnel started shifting, maybe in discomfort.
It was easy to get lost in the picturesque successes of space travel and consider the sacrifices worth it. In reality, one human life lost was already too steep a cost.
At least, in my view it was.
The way he presented them in rapid succession, with nothing to cushion the blows, was uncomfortable to say the least.
I was hoping he'd stop, but he wasn't done.
"So then, in 2003 we sent another shuttle up to do something very important, to perform maintenance on the Origenes telescope. This information was not given to you, but it has been recently declassified for the public, so you can go ahead and tell who you need. The Space shuttle Atalanta spent its last mission servicing the Origenes, and it didn't make it back as you all know- burned up in the atmosphere due to a breach in the leading edge of the left wing caused by insulating foam shed during its launch. So, for those of you keeping 'score', our dear National Aeronautics and Space Administration sits at seventeen lives in the hole."
I failed to see why that detail was necessary.
Dotson's words had been harsh, almost to the point where anyone would have questioned whose side he's really on. It seemed like no-one planned to check him.
He then changed the slide to a schematic of a launch vehicle that the world had never seen, set up alongside a model of the Origenes telescope.
"These errors have two common themes. Firstly, in every single instance I have shared, a large conglomeration of people knew something was wrong- either lost through misplaced confidence or through a lack of communication. I assure you, there won't be any lapses in communication under my care. Because, if you aren't going to put 100% of yourselves into this, you wouldn't just be risking your lives and those of your fellow astros out there, but you'd be screwing me over too. My name is on the line here, I'm just as attached to this as you are and I'm certain that we could pull someone from somewhere who would be willing to do a better job."
He took a breath.
"Secondly, these accidents are far from 'NASA's finest moments.' Ladies and gentlemen, I cannot stress enough that the events that have brought us all together today have all the makings of becoming yet another one of those 'not-quite-finest moments.' In about 26-hours' time- we believe- this ridiculously expensive telescope is going to lose its orbit and hit the moon. There is nothing we can do to stop it, but, we sure as hell can give fixing it a try."
Was this the same guy that was practically insulting us a moment ago? I thought.
"Keep in mind, you're only sitting in groups of three for organizational purposes. Today is Day 3, and by Day 13 there will be a Lunar module pilot, a Command module pilot, and a Mission Specialist engineer lifting off from the pad on our Cygnus RSV3 launch vehicle. Training will reveal who gets prime crew, who gets backup crew, and who gets reserve crew", he said stepping away from the podium.
A lady then approached the microphone as Dotson stood to the side.
"Well-said Mr.….oh, sorry… Dr. Dotson. Hello everyone, I just wanted to speak on some logistics. I'm Dr. Cynthia Ulrich by the way. We want to let you all know from the beginning that this rocket was one of the rejected models for both the upcoming human missions to Mars and the Artemis return missions to the moon. However, they will be fully manufactured, completed, and altered to accommodate a crew of three astros for the trip to and from the moon."
At this point, one of my fellow astros had had enough. It was the German Shorthaired Pointer in seat 13.
He raised his paw and was quickly given a microphone. His voice was just as authoritative as Dotson's.
"Walt here, 4th Canine astro corps, graduate 2."
"Ah yes, it's great to finally meet you Walt", Dr. Ulrich said warmly.
"Thank you for the formalities and…... theatrics, but I don't think anyone here is going to be scared off. We're in this thing, but what you all failed to mention is why we're looking at exclusively canine astronauts in consideration today. Maybe that's just a NASA thing, but SpaceX has always planned to send co-ed pairs of both canine and humans up on inter-species missions….I mean…just a question."
No-one had to educate me on the heights a pup could reach outside of the guidance of humans, but this Walt was amazing- I could tell. I wasn't even aware that there were canine astronauts, but I really hoped I'd be with him if I really was going to do this thing.
"Well, this unprecedented-"
She didn't get to finish her thought before Dotson stepped back to the mic, obviously irritated.
"I don't really care about whatever they do over at Elon's summer camp, you're here- which makes you a NASA prospect. I'll tell you straight- and this goes the same for you all. It's no secret that NASA has next to zero funding, which is evident when you see NASA commissioning Boeing and SpaceX to build rockets to 'kickstart' human spaceflight. But NASA is your 'sponsor' now. As far as human astronauts go, there are none to spare from any space agency- NASA, SpaceX, Boeing, Virgin Galactic, and Blue Origin included-in case you didn't read."
This was obviously half-information and half-insult, but Walt didn't bite.
At that moment, the White Labrador retriever in seat 1 spoke into a microphone he'd grabbed.
"That's complete bullshit! Walt may not want to say it, but I don't mind", he barked, "It's obvious to anyone with a brain that they weren't willing to put a human on the Cygnus- it's a deathtrap! There's a reason they picked those other rockets. God forbid we cost too much money, right? Just slap some weird, dog-sized command module on top of a rocket and send the puppies to do the work nobody else wants to. Well screw that, I didn't get dragged over here just to be your Laika."
**{Note: Laika was the dog that the USSR sent into orbit back during the space race with the United States (1960's) She didn't make it back, sadly }**
With that, he dropped the microphone and all eyes watched him storm out. One of the NASA employees tried to reach out to him at the door, but I could tell he was seeing red and didn't want to hear it.
The doors closed and all was silent.
Oddly enough though, I kinda understood where he was coming from. This was a tall order, especially since only humans had ever maintained telescopes of this size.
Now we'd be riding a human-made rocket that hadn't even had an unmanned testing-phase yet, we'd also be charged with fixing another human-made orbital telescope that very well may be beyond help by the time we reach it.
Even so, I also felt embarrassed for myself in an odd way. I hadn't even thought about the Atalanta or any of the other shuttle crews that spent years training to fix and maintain this telescope. Their legacies were quite literally hurtling towards the moon, and I had been feeling doubt instead of inspiration. That wasn't right- I still had a lot to learn.
/
Author's EndNote:
Sorry, that was a very full Chapter I know, but there was a lot to cover. I decided to switch to some fictional names of real space shuttles- I mean no disrespect by this choice. Of course, my deepest condolences go to those fallen crew members of Challenger and Columbia (renamed Cedar and Atalanta in-story) as well as all those lost during the space race and in the pursuit of space travel as a whole. I was debating whether I wanted to rename everything (Apollo, Mercury, Gemini programs, etc.) and work with the real-world equivalents under altered names. However, I didn't want to rename the actual historical figures- Armstrong, Aldrin, Collins, Grissom, Conrad, etc.- so I just landed in the middle with a few things being completely renamed but the majority keeping its real-world history.
I hope this one wasn't too droning/ oddly paced- but stay with me because it's about to get good. Until next time!
***End of Chapter 7***