The First Satellite

[NASAFanboy]

Credit to Stephen Baxter. I'm using some of his words and formatting to get my story started. Very much suggest Voyage if you're looking for a good hard scifi novel.

In the minutes before launch, Gene Kerman heard the frenzied chatter of Ground Control and the click-clack of the half dozen umbilical cords that had been attached to empty sockets on the metal flanks of the Eager One's booster falling onto the launch pad.

The payload of the Eager One was fairly rather modest, A five pound round sphere of steel about the size of ones head. There was barely enough room on the sphere to mount the four panels of the solar array, and there was barely enough room inside it to mount the scientific instruments, which were powered by a small Z-200 industrial grade battery on the bottom of the sphere - as if they had anywhere else to attach it to.

The equipment in Mission Control was coated with switches, dials, circuits and circuit breakers, electrical fuses, and dozens of vacuum tubes, and most of all, a digital microchip around a inch in size; the product of advanced computer engineering.

In his months of working with Wernher, Gene had come to understand the purpose and function of every piece of machinery inside the Control Center. And he knew every step of the mission. He felt as if he were some industrial machine, one that had been programmed to carry out its orders in a predetermined sequence despite the spark of conscience inside his skull.

The day was Friday, August 1955. Kerbalkind, and most of all, the United Provinces were preparing to launch their first satellite into orbit.

Deputy Agency Director Wernher stood at his workstation, scanning the main operations chart. His controllers were working well with their countdown sequences and progress was being made smoothly. There were a dozen of them, all dressed in ties and white shirts as if they were headed to a formal event.

Big black and white TV monitors showed the public video feeds. The news coverage was reaching a climax in a hastily prepared studio somewhere inside the KSC complex. Several environmentalists, primitivists, and religious fanatics protested at the first security perimeter, faced by the Military Police, which stood in a solid, calm line, brandishing their weapons under the summer sun. They weren't a problem for today; the Military had been given orders to guard the facility at all costs by the President himself and would most certainly shoot to kill any protestors who dared sabotage the mission - that is, if they made it past the barbed wire and electrical fences that surrounded the space center.

Compared to the naval ballistic rocketry's ICBM facilities, the Space Center was still crude and unrefined. Mission Control was confined to a heavily modified office building and the VAB and Hangar were both listed as one building. The launch pad was a simple sheet of concrete with a steel tower rising up beside it, isolated from the rest of the center save for the round fuel and oxidizer tanks beside it. For a rocket that would begin a new era in technology, the Eager One was rather crude. The first stage was composed of the fuselage of an Army Kraken-6 nitric acid and alcohol ballistic missile engine while the second stage used an quaint hydrogen-oxygen LV-909A engine attached to a small fuel tank. The contractors at Jebediah Kerman's Junkyard and Spaceship Parts. Co had promised to Wernher that a new engine, called simply the LV-909 would be ready soon, but soon was too long. With the budgetary axe closing in and the Great Union also vying for space leadership, it was absolutely crucial for the United Provinces to take the lead in satellite technology. On top of it all was the satellite itself, the Eager One. Powered with its own solar array, it would be able to hold its own for an extremely long period of time.

Some dust swirled around the bottom of the booster rocket, then dispersed as quickly as it appeared. In a few hours, if the flight was successful, he would be back at home, leaving behind KSC and it's space scientists to visit his family. The last time he had seen them was five months ago in the middle of Spring. The nations industry had been at a standstill due to striking steel miners; the whole country seemed to be on verge of economic collapse. But the threat of financial disaster came and went with no results other than the ruined reputations and fortunes of a few stockbrokers and economists.

The clock began to tick down. Ten...nine....

Gene felt Wernher rest his hand on his shoulder and look out toward the rocket on the launch pad. From a distance, it was nothing but a complex metal toy set against a vast ocean.

Four...three

Gene felt his heart thump as the tension grew in the room. At the two second mark, the main engines roared to life, screaming in defiance to heavens. White smoke blasted out of the vents from under the launch pad and headed out to sea under the careful eyes of firefighters from the local cities.

At zero, the rocket jolted upward as the several explosive bolts exploded, releasing it from its tethers. The spacecraft lifted into the sky on a pillar of fire and smoke, having already left Kerbin. In Ground Control, Gene felt himself overcome by an furious wave of patriotism, both embarrassing and proud. His home country was finally sending something to space, finally reaching for the stars.

The chatter died down in the Main Flight Room as the rocket flew into the upper atmosphere. The booster was slowing tipping to the west for an perfectly equilateral orbit.

One and a half minutes after launch and ninety kilometers above Kerbin, the satellite shuddered into a stop as the explosives bolts in the first stage fired. Second stage ignition, ordered Gene, and almost immediately, it's acceleration resumed, it's LV-909A burning furiously to escape the gravity of Kerbin. Then the second stage fell quiet, then drifted away as the second decoupler fired. Bidding farewell to its companion, the satellite extended its needle-like transmitters and activated, beginning it's mission. Ground Control cheered as the first pictures of Kerbin from orbit were downloaded onto their machines from the satellite.

A new era had begun.

[rasheed]

Awesome man. Just awesome.

[Supersaian117]

Very inspirational. Good writing (or should I say typing) man!