Sky Masters Read online

  Masters was barely in grade school in Manchester, New Hampshire, his

  first-grade teachers showed Jon's parents a one-hundred-page treatise on

  the feasibility of a manned lunar landing, written by a youngster who

  had only learned to write a few months earlier. When asked about the

  essay, Jon sat his parents down and explained all the problems inherent

  in launching a rocket to the moon and returning it safely back to

  Earth-and the Apollo space program had just gotten under way, with the

  first lunar landing still three years away. It didn't take Jon's parents

  a blink of an eye to figure out what to do next: he was enrolled in a

  private high school, which he completed three years later at age ten. He

  enrolled at Dartmouth College and received a bachelor of science degree

  in aeronautical engineering at age thirteen. After receiving a master's

  degree in mathematics from Dartmouth, he enrolled at the Massachusetts

  Institute of Technology and after a tumultuous five years finally earned

  a doctorate in engineering at the age of twenty. The first love of

  Masters' life was and always had been NASA, the National Aeronautics and

  Space Administration, and in 1981 he went to work for the space agency

  immediately after leaving MIT. The Shuttle Transportation System, or

  STS, program was just heating up by then, and Jon Masters was an

  integral part of the development of special applications that could take

  advantage of this new flying workhorse. Almost every satellite and

  delivery subsystem developed for the shuttle between 1982 and 1985 was

  at least partially designed by Jonathan Masters. But, even as the

  shuttle transportation system was gearing up for more launches per year

  and more ambitious projects, including the space statiOn, Jon Masters

  saw a weakness. It was an obvious problem that was creeping into the

  successful STS program-the spacecraft were accumulating a lot of miles,

  with even more miles slated for them each year, and no more orbiters

  were being built. When the success of the shuttle program became

  obvious, Masters thought, NASA should have had one new orbiter per year

  rolling off the assembly lines, plus upgraded solid-rocket boosters and

  avionics. But they had none. Jon Masters took an active interest in the

  numerous small companies that built small space boosters for private and

  commercial applications. In 1984, at age twenty-four, he resigned from

  NASA and accepted a seat on the board of directors of Sky Sciences,

  Inc., a small Tennessee-based commercial space booster company that

  sometimes subcontracted work for the fledgling Strategic Defense

  Intiative Organization, the federal research and development team tasked

  with devising an intercontinental ballistic missile defense system. Soon

  afterward he became vice president in charge of research for the small

  company. Masters' presence on the board gave the company a shot of

  optimism-and a new line of credit-that allowed it to stay fiscally

  afloat. With the NASA shuttles grounded indefinitely following the

  Challenger disaster in 1986, expendable boosters were quickly back in

  vogue. While NASA was refurbishing old Titan ICBM rockets for satellite

  booster duty and bringing back the Delta line of heavy boosters, in 1988

  Jon Masters, now the twenty-eight-year-old chairman of the board and new

  president of Sky Sciences, soon renamed Sky Masters, Inc., announced

  that he had developed a new low-cost space booster that was small and

  easy to transport and operate. Called SCARAB (Small Containerized Air

  Relocatable Alert Booster), it was a groundlaunched rocket that could be

  hauled aboard a Boeing 747 or military cargo plane, set up, and launched

  from almost anywhere in a matter of days or even hours. SCARAB restored

  NASA and the military's ability to launch satellites into Earth orbit on

  short notice. His next project was a booster system similar to SCARAB

  but even more flexible and responsive. Although SCARAB could place a

  two-thousand-pound payload into low Earth orbit from almost anywhere on

  Earth, it still needed a runway for the two cargo aircraft that carried

  the rocket and the ground-launch equipment, an extensive ground-support

  contingent, and at least fifteen hours' worth of work to erect the

  launch structures and get the rocket ready to fly. In several practice

  tests, Masters needed no more than thirty hours from initial

  notification and delivery of the payload to T minus zero. But he wanted

  to do better. That was when ALARM was born. ALARM was merely a SCARAB

  booster downsized to fit in a transport plane and fitted with wings. It

  used the launch aircraft as its first-stage booster, and it used lift

  from its scissor-action wings to help increase the efficiency of the

  smaller first- and second-stage boosters. Two ALARM boosters could be

  standing by on board the carrier aircraft; they would only need to bring

  the payloads on board and take off. With aerial refueling, the ALARM

  carrier aircraft could stay aloft for days, traversing the country or

  even partly around the world, ready to launch the boosters. Masters had

  developed several different payloads for his small air-launched

  boosters. Along with the communications satellites, he had developed a

  small satellite that could take composite radar, infrared, and

  telescopic visual "photos" of the Earth, and the resulting image was

  dozens of times more detailed than standard visual photos. The images

  could be digitized and transmitted to terminals all over the world via

  his small communications satellites, giving commanders real-time

  reconnaissance and intelligence information. Combined with powerful

  computers, users from the Pentagon or White House to individual aircrew

  members on board strike aircraft could conduct their own sophisticated

  photo intelligence, plan and replan missions, and assess bomb damage

  almost instantaneously. With several different payloads on board, the

  flexibility of the ALARM system was unparalleled. A

  communications-satellite launch could immediately change to a

  satellite-retrieval mission or a reconnaissance-satellite mission, or

  even a strike mission. A single ALARM carrier aircraft could become as

  important a national asset as Cape Canaveral. "Fifteen minutes to launch

  window one, " Masters' launch control officer, Helen Kaddiri, announced.

  Kaddiri was the chief of Masters' operations staff and the senior

  launch-control officer, in charge of monitoring all flight systems

  throughout each mission. In her early forties, exotically attractive,

  she'd been born and raised in Calcutta. She and her parents immigrated

  to the United States when she was twelve and she changed her name from

  Helenika to Helen. She was a completely career-minded scientist who

  sometimes found it very frustrating working for someone like Jon

  Masters. She regarded Masters warily with her dark, beautiful,

  almond-shaped eyes as he studied the command console. Masters was so

  relaxed and laid-back that all the uptight techno-types he worked with,

  especially those developing new space technologies, got really

  rankled-herself included. Maybe
it was because Masters seemed to treat

  everyone and everything the same... like work was one big beach party.

  The government officials they dealt with almost always shuddered when

  working with Masters. Even socializing with him was a strain. Kaddiri

  thought that every time they got a new government contract was a matter

  of luck. If it weren't for his genius... "Fourteen minutes to launch

  window one, " she said. "Thanks, Helen, " Jon replied. He pushed his

  baseball cap up higher on his forehead, which made him look even

  youngerlike "Beaver" Cleaver. "Let's get Roosevelt-One in position and

  ready." Kaddiri grimaced at another of Masters' quirks-he named his

  boosters, not just numbered them. He usually named them after American

  presidents or Hollywood actors or actresses. Helen thought that if Jon

  had a dog, he would probably number it instead. Jon swung his headset

  microphone to his lips: "Crew, Roosevelt- 1 is moving stage center.

  Stand by." The interior of Masters' converted DC-10 was arranged much

  like the firing mechanism of a rifle. Like a cartridge magazine, the

  two boosters were stored side by side in the forward section of the

  one-hundred-twenty-feet-long, thirtyfoot-wide cargo bay, which afforded

  plenty of room to move around the fifty-feet-long, four-foot-diameter

  rockets and their stabilizers. Forward of the storage area was the

  control center, with all of the booster monitoring and control systems,

  and forward of the control room was a pressure hatch which led to the

  flight deck-for safety's sake, the flight deck was sealed from the cargo

  section so any pressurization malfunctions in the cargo end would not

  prevent the flight crew from safely recovering the plane. The back fifty

  feet of the cargo hold was occupied by a large cylindrical chamber

  resembling the breech end of a shotgun, composed of heavy steel and

  aluminum with numerous thick Plexiglas viewports all around it. The

  boosters would roll down a track in the center of the cargo hold into

  the chamber, and the chamber would be sealed from the rest of the

  aircraft. Just prior to launch, the chamber would be depressurized

  before opening the "bomb-bay" doors. With this system, the entire cargo

  section of the aircraft did not have to be depressurized before launch.

  Floodlights and high-speed video cameras inside the launch chamber and

  outside the DC-10 launch plane were ready to photograph the entire

  launch sequence. With two of Kaddiri's assistants with flashlights

  watching on either side, the first forty-three-thousand-pound space

  booster began rolling on its tracks toward the center of the cabin. The

  crew, especially the cockpit crew of two pilots and engineer, had to be

  notified whenever one of these behemoth rockets was being moved.

  Whenever they moved a rocket, the flight engineer had to begin

  transferring luel to the side where the booster was moved to keep the

  launch aircraft stable. The booster moved about ten feet per minute,

  which was the same speed that a similar weight in jet fuel could be

  transferred from body tanks to the corresponding wing tanks. In two

  minutes the booster was in position in the center of the launch cabin,

  and it began its slow journey aft into the launch chamber. This time, to

  ensure longitudinal stability as the twenty-one-ton rocket moved aft, a

  large steel drum filled with eight thousand gallons of jet fuel in the

  belowdeck cargo section would slowly move forward as the booster moved

  aft, which would help to keep the aircraft stable; after the booster was

  launched, the drum would quickly move aft to balance the plane. It took

  much longer for the booster to make its way aft, but it was finally

  wheeled into position in the chamber and the heavy steel hatch closed.

  Once in place, retractable clamps held the booster in place over the

  bomb-bay doors. "Roosevelt One in position, " Kaddiri called out as she

  peered through the observation ports in the chamber. "Flight deck,

  confirm lateral and longitudinal trim."

  "Aircraft trim nominal, " the flight engineer reported a few seconds

  later. "Standing by."

  "Roger. Confirm hatch closed and locked." Masters checked the console

  readouts. "Launch-chamber hatch closed, locked, green lights on."

  "Engineer cross-check good, green lights on, " the flight engineer

  reported after checking his readouts from the flight deck. Kaddiri

  reached into a green canvas bag slung over her shoulder into a portable

  oxygen pack and withdrew an oxygen mask, checked the hose and regulator,

  and then clicked the mask's built-in wireless microphone on. Her

  assistants in the aft end of the DC-10 did the same; Masters and Foch

  had already donned their masks. "Oxygen On and Normal, " she said. She

  got thumbs-up from her assistants after they checked their masks, then

  said, "Ready to depressurize launch chamber." Masters got a thumbs-up

  from Foch, then replied, "Oxygen On and Normal at the control console."

  He called up the cargosection pressurization readout and displayed it in

  big numerals on a monitor screen so both he and Foch could read them

  easily-two sets of eyes were always better than one. "Launch chamber

  depressurizing-now." For all that cross-checking and preparation, it was

  quite unspectacular. In two minutes the launch chamber was

  depressurized and the cargo-bay pressure was stable. After monitoring

  it for another minute to check for slow leaks, Masters removed his mask

  and radioed, "Cargo-section pressure checks good, launch chamber fully

  depressurized, no leaks." The computer would continue to monitor the

  cabin pressure and warn the crew of any changes. Masters and everyone

  else kept their masks dangling from their necks . . . just in case.

  "Data-link check." Masters checked to be sure that the booster was

  still exchanging information with the launch computers. The check was

  all automatic, but it still took several long moments. Finally: "Data

  connection nominal. Two min utes to launch window." Masters turned to

  Colonel Foch. "We need final range clearance, Colonel." Foch was

  staring intently at one of the screens on the console, which was

  displaying atmospheric data relayed from the White Sands Missile Range

  headquarters through their extensive sensor network. "I show the winds

  at the maximum Q limits, Doctor Masters, " he said. "We should abort."

  "Roosevelt says he's a go, " Masters replied, ignoring the warning and

  checking the readouts again. "Let's proceed."Jon looked at Kaddiri as

  he hit the intercom button. "Helen?" She removed her oxygen mask as she

  walked back to the command console. "It's pretty risky, Jon."

  "Helen, 'pretty risky' is not a 'no." Unless I hear a definite no, I'd

  say we proceed." Foch cleared his throat. "Doctor, it seems to me

  you're taking a big chance here." He glanced at Kaddiri, expecting a

  bit more support from someone who obviously wasn't sure of what Masters

  was doing, but he got nothing but a blank, noncommittal expression.

  "You're wasting one of your boosters just to prove something. This

  isn't a wartime scenario. "Colonel, this might not be a war we're

  fi
ghting, but to me it's nothing less than an all-out battle, " Masters

  said. "I have to prove to my customers, my stockholders, my board of

  directors, and to the rest of the country that the ALARM system can

  deliver its payload on time, on target." He turned to Foch, and Kaddiri

  could see a very uncharacteristic hardness in Masters' young face. "I

  programmed these boosters with reliability in mindreliability to deliver

  as promised, and reliability to do the mission in conditions such as

  this." Foch leaned forward and spoke directly at Masters in a low voice.

  "You don't have to tell me all this, Doctor. I know what you want. You

  get paid if this thing gets launched. My flight parameters insure both

  safety for ground personnel and reliability of the launch itself. Yours

  only covers the launch. My question is, do you really care what happens

  after that? I think you care more about your business than the results

  of this mission." Masters glared at him. He whipped off his baseball

  cap and stabbed at Foch, punctuating each sentence: "Listen, Ralph,

  that's my name on that booster, my name on those satellites, my name all

  over this project. If it doesn't launch, I take the heat. If it

  doesn't fly, I take the heat. If it doesn't deliver four healthy

  satellites in their proper orbits, I take the heat. "Now you might think

  you know my contracts, Ralph. You're right-I do get paid if

  Roosevelt-One is launched. I get paid if we bring it back without

  launching it, too. I've already gotten deposits for the next six

  launches, and I've already received progress payments for the next ten

  boosters. But you don't know shit about my business, buddy. I've got a

  dozen ways to fail, and each one can put me out of business faster than

  you can take a pee. I do care about that. And still I say, we launch.

  Now if you have any objections, say it and we'll abort. Otherwise issue

  range clearance, sit back, and watch the fireworks." Helen Kaddiri was

  surprised. She'd never seen Jon so wound up. He was right about the

  pressure on him and the company-there were more than a dozen ways to

  fail. Friendly and unfriendly suitors were waiting to snap up the

  company. The aerospace sector had fared very poorly in the recent U.S.

  economic mini-recession, and it was worsened by the declining outlook on