Twenty Nine
“What?” Sam Broadbent took off his earpiece.
Twenty Eight
“Look at that.” Hawkins pointed at the central monitor.
Twenty Seven
“What does that mean, it’s not in the book?”
Twenty Six
“I dunno. No chances though.” Hawkins switched his intercom selector to ‘ALL’, meaning that everyone on line, including the Mission Control Director would hear.
Twenty Five
“We have an anomaly here...” Hawkins said into his mouthpiece.
Twenty Four
“Specify anomaly, comm,” The dry voice returned. Hawkins wasn’t quite sure how to respond. The practice runs had not covered this eventuality.
Twenty Three
“Look up at Video 6. Switching over.” Hawkins tried to remain unflustered.
Twenty Two
“Copy comm. Do you contain?”
Twenty One
“Negative Mission Control. It’s an override.” Hawkins answered.
Twenty - Firing Sequence Nominal
The voice of Mission Control annoyed Hawkins for the first time in his 8 years at NASA.
“Confirm and update.”
Nineteen
Hawkins blew his cool. “Look at the goddamned monitor for Chris-sakes. Just look!” He yelled into the intercom.
Eighteen
“Holy...who’s...please confirm, local analysis,” the sober voice sounded concerned for the first time.
Seventeen
“Confirmed anomaly.” “Confirmed.” “Confirmed.” “Confirmed.” The votes streamed in.
Sixteen
“We have a confirm...”
T-Minus 15 Seconds and Counting
Ten
“We have a go for main engine start.”
Seven
Six
Five
“We have a main engine start...we have a cut off.”
“Columbia, we have a monitor anomaly, holding at T-minus 5.”
“That’s a Roger, Houston,” the commander of Space Shuttle Colum-bia responded calmly.
“We have a manual abort override. Columbia’s on board computers confirm the cut-off. Can you verify, Columbia?”
“That’s a Roger.”
The huge block letter message continued to blaze across the monitors. Craig Volker spoke rapidly into his master intercom system. “Cut network feed. Cut direct feed. Cut now! Now!” All TV networks suddenly lost their signal that was routed through NASA’s huge video switches. NASA’s own satellite feed was simul-taneously cut as well. If NASA didn’t want it going to the public it didn’t get sent.
CNN got the first interview with NASA officials.
“What caused today’s flight to be aborted?”
“We detected a slight leak in the fuel tanks. We believe that the sensors were faulty, that there was no leak, but we felt in the interest of safety it would be best to abort the mission. Orbital alignment is not critical and we can attempt a relaunch within 2 weeks. When we know more we will make further informa-tion available.” The NASA spokesman left abruptly.
The CNN newsman continued. “According to NASA, a malfunctioning fuel monitor was the cause of today’s aborted shuttle launch. However, several seconds before the announced abort, our video signal was cut by NASA. Here is a replay of that countdown again.”
CNN technicians replayed one of their video tapes. The video monitors within Mission Control were not clear on the replay. But the audio was. “Look at the goddamned monitor for Chrissakes. Just look.” Then the video went dead.
Steve Billings received an urgent message on his computer’s E-
Mail when he got home from classes. All it said was