- Apollo 17 landed in the Taurus-Littrow
region, not “Frau [sic] Mauro”. Apollo
14 landed at Fra Mauro.
- In the description of the launch control centre, it is stated
that Houston will assume control “the moment Columbia
lifted a millimeter off the Cape Canaveral pad”. In fact,
Houston assumes control once the launch pad tower has been cleared.
- During the description of the launch, the ingress team sees the
crew access arm start to retract and exclaims “Automatic
launch sequence! We've got to go!”. In fact, the ingress
team leaves the pad before the T−9 minute hold, and the
crew access arm retracts well before the automatic sequence starts
at T−31 seconds.
- There are cameras located all over the launch complex which
feed into the launch control centre. Disabling the camera
in the white room would still leave dozens of other cameras
active which would pick up the hijinks underway at the pad.
- NASA human spaceflight hardware is manufactured and prepared
for flight under the scrutiny of an army of inspectors who
verify every aspect of the production process. Just how could
infiltrators manage to embed payload in the base of the
shuttle's external tank in the manufacturing plant at Michoud,
and how could this extra cargo not be detected anywhere downstream?
If the cargo was of any substantial size,
the tank would fail fit tests on the launch platform, and
certainly some pad rat would have said “that's not
right” just looking at it.
- Severing the data cable between the launch pad and the
firing room would certainly cause the onboard automatic sequencer
to halt the countdown. Even though the sequencer controls
the launch process, it remains sensitive to a cutoff signal from the
control centre, and loss of communications would cause it
to abort the launch sequence. Further, the fact that the
shuttle hatch was not closed would have caused the auto-sequencer
to stop due to a cabin pressure alarm. And the hatch
through which one boards the shuttle is not an
“airlock”.
- The description of the entire terminal countdown and launch
process suffers from the time dilation common in bad movie
thrillers: where several minutes of furious activity occur
as the bomb counts down the last ten seconds.
- The intended crew of the shuttle remains trapped in the
pad elevator when the shuttle lifts off. They are described
as having temporary hearing loss due to the noise. In fact,
their innards would have been emulsified by the acoustic
energy of the solid rocket boosters, then cremated and their
ashes scattered by the booster plume.
- The shuttle is said to have entered a 550 mile orbit with
the external tank (ET) still attached. This is impossible;
the highest orbit ever achieved by the shuttle was around 385
miles on the Hubble deployment and service missions, and this
was a maximum-performance effort. Not only could the shuttle
not reach 550 miles on the main engines, the orbital maneuvering
system (OMS) would not have the
velocity change capability (delta-V) required to circularise
the orbit at this altitude with the ET still attached. And
by the way, who modified the shuttle computer ascent software
to change the launch trajectory and bypass ET jettison, and
who loaded the modified software into the general purpose
computers, and why was the modified software not detected by
the launch control centre's pre-launch validation of the
software load?
- If you're planning a burn to get on a trans-lunar injection
trajectory, you want to do it in as low an Earth
orbit as possible in order to get the maximum assist to
the burn. An orbit as low as used by the later Apollo
missions probably wouldn't work due to the drag of having the
ET attached, but there's no reason you'd want to go as high as
550 miles; that's just wasting energy.
- The “Big Dog” and “Little Dog” engines
are supposed to have been launched on an Indian rocket,
with the mission being camouflaged as a failed communication
satellite launch. But, whatever the magical properties of
Big Dog, a storable propellant rocket (which it must be, since
it's been parked in orbit for months waiting for the shuttle
to arrive) with sufficient delta-V to boost the entire shuttle
onto a trans-lunar trajectory, enter lunar orbit, and then
leave lunar orbit to return to Earth would require a massive
amount of fuel, be physically very large, and hence require a
heavy lift launcher which (in addition to the Indians not
possessing one) would not be used for a communications satellite
mission. The Saturn S-IV B stage which propelled Apollo to the
Moon was 17.8 metres long, 6.6 metres in diameter, and massed
119,000 kg fully fueled, and it was boosting a stack less
massive than a space shuttle, and used only for trans-lunar
injection, not lunar orbit entry and exit, and it used higher
performance hydrogen and oxygen fuel. Big Dog would not be a
bolt-in replacement engine for the shuttle, but rather a massive
rocket stage which could hardly be disguised as a communications
satellite.
- On the proposed “rescue” mission by
Endeavour, commander Grant proposes dropping
the space station node in the cargo bay in a “parking
orbit”, whence the next shuttle mission could capture
it and move it to the Space Station. But in order to
rendezvous with Columbia, Endeavour
would have to launch into its 28.7 degree inclination orbit,
leaving the space station node there. The shuttle OMS does
not remotely have the delta-V for a plane change to the
51 degree orbit of the station, so there is no way the node
could be delivered to the station.
- A first-time astronaut is a “rookie”, not
“rooky”. A rook is a
kind of crow
or a
chess piece.
- Removing a space shuttle main engine (SSME) is a complicated
and lengthy procedure on the ground, requiring special tools
and workstands. It is completely impossible that this could
be done in orbit, especially by two people with no EVA
experience, working in a part of the shuttle where
there are no handgrips or restraints for EVA work, and where
the shuttle's arm (remote manipulator system) cannot reach.
The same goes for attaching Big Dog as a replacement.
- As Endeavour closes in,
her commander worries that “[t]oo much RCS propellant
had been used to sneak up on Columbia”.
But it's the orbital maneuvering system (OMS), not the
reaction control system (RCS) which is used in rendezvous
orbit-change maneuvers.
- It's “Chernobyl”
(Чорнобиль),
not “Chernoble”.
- Why, on a mission where all the margins are stretched
razor-thin, would you bring along a spare lunar lander
when you couldn't possibly know you'd need it?
- Olivia Grant flies from Moscow to Alma-Ata on a
“TU-144
transport”. The TU-144 supersonic transport was
retired from service in 1978 after only 55 scheduled passenger
flights. Even if somebody put a TU-144 back into service, it
certainly wouldn't take six hours for the flight.
- Vice President Vanderheld says, “France, for one, has
spent trillions on thermonuclear energy. Fusion energy would
destroy that investment overnight.” But fusion is
thermonuclear energy!
- When the tethered landing craft is dropped on the Moon from the
shuttle, its forward velocity will be 3,700 miles per hour,
the same as the shuttle's. The only way for it to “hit the
lunar surface at under a hundred miles per hour” would be
for the shuttle to cancel its entire orbital velocity before
dropping the lander and then, in order to avoid crashing into
the lunar surface, do a second burn as it was falling to
restore its orbital velocity. Imparting such a delta-V to
the entire shuttle would require a massive burn, for which
there would be no reason to have provided the fuel in the mission
plan. Also, at the moment the shuttle started the burn to cancel
its orbital velocity, the tether would string out behind the shuttle,
not remain at its altitude above the Moon.
- The Apollo 17 lunar module Challenger's descent
stage is said to have made a quick landing and hence have
“at least half its propellant left”. Nonsense—while
Cernan and Schmitt didn't land on fumes like Apollo 11 (and, to
a lesser extent, Apollo 14), no Apollo mission landed with
the tanks anywhere near half-full. In any case, unless I'm
mistaken, residual descent engine propellant was dumped shortly after
landing; this was certainly done on Apollo 11 (you can hear
the confirmation on my
re-mix
of the Apollo 11 landing as heard in the Eagle's cabin),
and I've never heard if it not being done on later missions.
- Jack connects an improvised plug to the “electronic port
used to command the descent engine” on Challenger.
But there were no such “ports”—connections
between the ascent and descent stages were hard-wired in a
bundle which was cut in two places by a pyrotechnic
“guillotine” when the ascent stage separated. The
connections to the descent engine would be a mass of chopped
cables which would take a medusa of space Barney clips and
unavailable information to connect to.
- Even if there were fuel and oxidiser left in the tanks of the
descent stage, the helium used to pressure-feed the propellants
to the engine would have been long gone. And the hypergolic combustion
wouldn't make a “plume of orange and scarlet” (look
at the Apollo 17 liftoff video), and without a guidance system for
the descent engine, there would be no chance of entering
lunar orbit.
- The tether is supposed to be used to generate electrical power
after the last fuel cell fails. But this is done far from the
Earth, where the gradient in the Earth's magnetic field across
the length of the tether would be much too small to generate the
required power.
- Using the tether as an aerodynamic brake at reentry is absurd.
The tether would have to dissipate the entire energy of a
space shuttle decelerating from Mach 36 to Mach 25. Even if
the tether did not immediately burn away (which it would), it
would not have the drag to accomplish this in the time available
before the shuttle hit the atmosphere (with the payload bay doors
still open!). And the time between the tethered satellite
entering the atmosphere and the shuttle hitting the stony blue
would be a matter of seconds, far too little to close the
payload bay doors.
- “The space agency had gotten out of the operations business
and moved into the forefront of research and development, handing
over its scientific and engineering knowledge to American
commercial space operators.” Now here we have an actually
prophetic passage. Let's hope it comes to pass!
- “[W]hen the sun goes down into the sea, just as it sinks
out of sight, its rays flash up through the water. If you look
fast, you'll see it—a green flash.” Well, no—actually
the green flash
is due to atmospheric refraction and has nothing to do with
water.
Apart from these particulars (and they are just a selection from a
much larger assortment in the novel), the entire story suffers from
what I'll call the “Tom Swift, let's go!” fallacy of
science fiction predating the golden age of the 1930s. The
assumption throughout this book is that people can design fantastically
complicated hardware which interfaces with existing systems, put it into
service by people with no training on the actual hardware and no experience
in the demanding environment in which it will be used, cope with
unexpected reverses on the fly, always having the requisite resources
to surmount the difficulties, and succeed in the end. Actually, I'm
being unfair to
Tom Swift
in identifying such fiction with that character. The original Tom
Swift novels always had him testing his inventions extensively before
putting them into service, and modifying them based upon the test
results. Not here: everything is not only good to go on the first
shot, it is able to overcome disasters because the necessary hardware
has always providentially been brought along.
If you've trudged through the spoiler block at my side, you may be
exasperated and wondering why I'd spend so much time flensing such a
bad novel. Well, it's because I'd hoped for so much and was sorely
disappointed. Had the author not said the goal was to be
“realistic”, I'd have put it down after the first fifty
pages or so and, under the rules of engagement of this chronicle,
you'd have never seen it here. Had it been presented as a
“spaceflight fantasy”, I might have finished it and
remarked about how well the story was told; hey, I give my highest
recommendation to a story about a
