Nathan H. Green's Blog, page 2
December 2, 2022
Artemis I Has A Stowaway - Day 17
December 2nd, 2022
I swear to god I was woken up by the Red Alert siren from a Shatner Star Trek movie. One of my little quirks, I’m not a good waker-upper. You catch me in the middle of my sleep and whatever dream I was having becomes the initial conditions on reality, and it takes a minute before 1+1=2 again.
The alert stops. I don’t know exactly how long it was playing, five seconds, ten seconds, depends on how long it took to wake me up in the first place.
Orion’s alarm for radiation was the Apollo 13, airplane cockpit, shrill buzzy kind of thing.
But there’s no going back to sleep after something like that, and if for no other reason than to make sure I’m not crazy I “get up” (and by the way if you think it’s hard to get your day started when you climb out of bed, walk over to your coffee machine, and pour yourself a warm cup, you can’t even imagine what it feels like when you’re always, always, just peacefully floating wherever you are, so comfy, so warm, so easy to just close your eyes… And not a drop of coffee aboard).
“Mark, am I going crazy? I thought I just heard an alarm,” I said, no need to tell him what alarm. By the way, do you think Starfleet would change their alarm sound every few decades? Or like the captain of every ship gets to pick from a list like a phone ring tone?
“Not going crazy Alex, that shouldn’t have happened, and we fixed it on our end. Nothing to worry about.”
I’ve only got ten Skor bars left, and I’m really hungry. Eat one now and be slightly less hungry all day? Or save it for dinner and fall asleep with a not-totally-empty stomach? Ahh the glorious choices of space travel.
I eat the Skor bar. Future Alex can be angry with me; he usually is. Speaking of things future Alex is going to be angry with me about. Aside from another exciting day of septuple checking valves and gauges, I’m going to write Jess a letter. I know what you’re thinking: ‘Oh Alex no, don’t write a pathetic letter to your ex trying to win her back!’
Don’t worry! This one is going to be classy!
Red Alert! Only the first couple of tones play, and then it’s gone again. “Mark, just had it go off again. What’s up?”
“Yeah…” he draws the word out, “we’re working that, Alex. Nothing you need to worry about. This one’s a Charlie problem, you’re fine.”
Why is the flight director working a problem on the ground that I don’t need to worry about? Why does a non-standard alarm keep going off? Why isn’t Mark telling me about some error in the ship’s food rehydration system or something bonkers like that?
You know what I hate? Rhetorical questions when my life is on the line. I give the old instrument panel a once over. Nothing red and blinking leaps out at me. So that’s good. The radio controls do have a caution warning. It’s one of those triangles made of three pieces of string with an exclamation mark inside it, and then X2 besides that. Just a small icon at the top of the display.
Then it flashes clear. That’s weird. So, it’s some kind of radio problem, but I can talk to Mark just fine. Just a technical error? But why would a radio sub-system error play the Star Trek red alert sound?
Interesting thing about rhetorical questions: sometimes they have an answer. Why would a NASA engineer, someone very much like me, program in a Star Trek Red Alert sound? Answer: They thought it would be funny.
No way that went through an official approval. This has to be something buried so deep in the radio system’s code that no one even bothered to test it out.
A problem that even NASA thought wouldn’t come up, and a problem that the engineer working on it thought was funny.
Back to the bible I guess. If you’ve never seen an index that has three library-dictionary-style pages for “radio” then you’re really missing out in life.
No one is ever checking manuals in Star Trek. No one could possibly know this stupid book back to front. You always like to imagine astronauts more like the swash buckling heroes of sea stories, but this whole experience feels more like playing the world’s most complicated board game - with a gun to your head. Can you imagine what the checklists for the Enterprise would look like? Millions of pages. Yet no one is ever checking manuals.
The alarm goes off again! This time though I look up in time to see a dialogue box pop up on the radio LCD “Incoming Distress…” and it’s gone, alarm squelched by NASA. A caution triangle appears on the LCD screen, and a second later it blinks away. Someone down on the ground really has their finger on the trigger.
Radio plus Distress, oh mighty index of the ship, what wisdom can you bestow upon this lowly stow-away? Page 3,145. Nice.
Well, this is a kick in the stomach.
“Mark, why is the Orion receiving distress calls?”
There’s a very long five minute’s wait. Always pay attention to pauses. They say something. If the system had a screw loose and was throwing off random incorrect warnings, Mark would have happily spent an hour talking my ear off about it. That he needed so long to figure out what to say meant it wasn’t that, which meant it was a real distress call and NASA was trying to figure out how to tell me about it.
“Hey Alex, sorry for the delay,” Mark’s voice came back - finally.
“Not a problem, as long as you tell me what’s up.”
I can feel him sigh over the radio. “A SpaceX launch for the ISS had a chunk of space debris take out an engine. The crew saved the ship - minor miracle there, but they’re not going to be able to get to the ISS, and it doesn’t look like they’re going to be able to perform the braking burn needed for re-entry.”
“So, they’re stuck?”
“We don’t know that yet. They’ve got resupplies for the ISS but would have to do a spacewalk to get the oxygen tanks in their hold, and then they’re not the same fittings for their own systems. Their orbit isn’t great either but, depending on exactly how much drag they pick up, they could last as long as a month up there. We’re working with SpaceX, the ESA, even the Chinese space agency, and we think we can put together a rescue mission.”
Alright, so why are they calling me? “Alright, so why are they calling me?”
Long silence. “A month is on the very optimistic side of how long they have until their orbit degrades, on the very optimistic side of how long it would take to put together a rescue, and on the very optimistic side of how long they can last with the consumables they have.”
“And I assume they think I could help them. So why don’t we?”
“About a dozen reasons. The biggest one though is that we don’t have the fuel. Between making up for correction burns when the computers went down, and what the radiation storm cost us, you’re running very lean. To meet up with them, and transfer the crew over, would take more fuel than you have.”
“You told them that, and they’re still calling.”
“They have an idea that pulls off the intercept, on paper, but first it would bring you below safety margins for re-entry, still technically above the red line, but we’re talking about your fuel tanks going dry and using up the majority of what’s left over in the piping. Second there’d be no way around you doing some manual flying. You’d be making the intercept with them in space suits drifting out to you. Radar and video are just not accurate enough to handle that.”
“But that means if you so much as tap your orientation controls one too many times you won’t have enough fuel to re-enter. Also, their plan has them breathing fumes by the time they get to you. It’s a four person crew, and they won’t have time to cycle Orion’s airlock four times. You’d have to depressurize Orion, leave both inner and outer airlock doors open, and fly the ship like that for the whole intercept. Plus, your flight suit wasn’t great before, and having duct taped it up won’t have done it any favors.”
Can I be honest here? I’ve always been a bit of a fan of bad-ass last words. Voltaire was getting his head cut off for blasphemy and on the execution block they asked him if he renounced Satan and all his evils. Voltaire said, “Now’s not the time to be making enemies.”
How much of the bad-assery of famous quotes would be lost if you could hear their voices shaking as they said them? Because Christ, just objectively this was the coolest thing I’d ever said in my life, but I could barely get the words out. Come to think of it, Neil Armstrong had his own moment of performance anxiety in front of a live audience. Maybe history is lessened by having video evidence.
“Are you going to help me, or am I doing this on my own?”
*******
I’m Nathan H. Green, a science-fiction writer with a degree in aerospace engineering, and I’m going to be doing daily semi-fictional stories tracking the Artemis I mission. You can follow along through my reddit (u/authornathanhgreen).
Artemis I Has A Stowaway is a work of semi-fiction. All incidents, events, dialogue and sentiments (which are not part of the mission’s official history), are entirely fictional. Where real historical figures appear, the situations, incidents, sentiments, and dialogues concerning those persons are entirely fictional and are not intended to depict actual events, personality, disposition, or attitudes of the real person, nor to change the entirely fictional nature of the work. Save the above, any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, events, or locales is entirely coincidental.
© 2022 Nathan H. Green
I swear to god I was woken up by the Red Alert siren from a Shatner Star Trek movie. One of my little quirks, I’m not a good waker-upper. You catch me in the middle of my sleep and whatever dream I was having becomes the initial conditions on reality, and it takes a minute before 1+1=2 again.
The alert stops. I don’t know exactly how long it was playing, five seconds, ten seconds, depends on how long it took to wake me up in the first place.
Orion’s alarm for radiation was the Apollo 13, airplane cockpit, shrill buzzy kind of thing.
But there’s no going back to sleep after something like that, and if for no other reason than to make sure I’m not crazy I “get up” (and by the way if you think it’s hard to get your day started when you climb out of bed, walk over to your coffee machine, and pour yourself a warm cup, you can’t even imagine what it feels like when you’re always, always, just peacefully floating wherever you are, so comfy, so warm, so easy to just close your eyes… And not a drop of coffee aboard).
“Mark, am I going crazy? I thought I just heard an alarm,” I said, no need to tell him what alarm. By the way, do you think Starfleet would change their alarm sound every few decades? Or like the captain of every ship gets to pick from a list like a phone ring tone?
“Not going crazy Alex, that shouldn’t have happened, and we fixed it on our end. Nothing to worry about.”
I’ve only got ten Skor bars left, and I’m really hungry. Eat one now and be slightly less hungry all day? Or save it for dinner and fall asleep with a not-totally-empty stomach? Ahh the glorious choices of space travel.
I eat the Skor bar. Future Alex can be angry with me; he usually is. Speaking of things future Alex is going to be angry with me about. Aside from another exciting day of septuple checking valves and gauges, I’m going to write Jess a letter. I know what you’re thinking: ‘Oh Alex no, don’t write a pathetic letter to your ex trying to win her back!’
Don’t worry! This one is going to be classy!
Red Alert! Only the first couple of tones play, and then it’s gone again. “Mark, just had it go off again. What’s up?”
“Yeah…” he draws the word out, “we’re working that, Alex. Nothing you need to worry about. This one’s a Charlie problem, you’re fine.”
Why is the flight director working a problem on the ground that I don’t need to worry about? Why does a non-standard alarm keep going off? Why isn’t Mark telling me about some error in the ship’s food rehydration system or something bonkers like that?
You know what I hate? Rhetorical questions when my life is on the line. I give the old instrument panel a once over. Nothing red and blinking leaps out at me. So that’s good. The radio controls do have a caution warning. It’s one of those triangles made of three pieces of string with an exclamation mark inside it, and then X2 besides that. Just a small icon at the top of the display.
Then it flashes clear. That’s weird. So, it’s some kind of radio problem, but I can talk to Mark just fine. Just a technical error? But why would a radio sub-system error play the Star Trek red alert sound?
Interesting thing about rhetorical questions: sometimes they have an answer. Why would a NASA engineer, someone very much like me, program in a Star Trek Red Alert sound? Answer: They thought it would be funny.
No way that went through an official approval. This has to be something buried so deep in the radio system’s code that no one even bothered to test it out.
A problem that even NASA thought wouldn’t come up, and a problem that the engineer working on it thought was funny.
Back to the bible I guess. If you’ve never seen an index that has three library-dictionary-style pages for “radio” then you’re really missing out in life.
No one is ever checking manuals in Star Trek. No one could possibly know this stupid book back to front. You always like to imagine astronauts more like the swash buckling heroes of sea stories, but this whole experience feels more like playing the world’s most complicated board game - with a gun to your head. Can you imagine what the checklists for the Enterprise would look like? Millions of pages. Yet no one is ever checking manuals.
The alarm goes off again! This time though I look up in time to see a dialogue box pop up on the radio LCD “Incoming Distress…” and it’s gone, alarm squelched by NASA. A caution triangle appears on the LCD screen, and a second later it blinks away. Someone down on the ground really has their finger on the trigger.
Radio plus Distress, oh mighty index of the ship, what wisdom can you bestow upon this lowly stow-away? Page 3,145. Nice.
Well, this is a kick in the stomach.
“Mark, why is the Orion receiving distress calls?”
There’s a very long five minute’s wait. Always pay attention to pauses. They say something. If the system had a screw loose and was throwing off random incorrect warnings, Mark would have happily spent an hour talking my ear off about it. That he needed so long to figure out what to say meant it wasn’t that, which meant it was a real distress call and NASA was trying to figure out how to tell me about it.
“Hey Alex, sorry for the delay,” Mark’s voice came back - finally.
“Not a problem, as long as you tell me what’s up.”
I can feel him sigh over the radio. “A SpaceX launch for the ISS had a chunk of space debris take out an engine. The crew saved the ship - minor miracle there, but they’re not going to be able to get to the ISS, and it doesn’t look like they’re going to be able to perform the braking burn needed for re-entry.”
“So, they’re stuck?”
“We don’t know that yet. They’ve got resupplies for the ISS but would have to do a spacewalk to get the oxygen tanks in their hold, and then they’re not the same fittings for their own systems. Their orbit isn’t great either but, depending on exactly how much drag they pick up, they could last as long as a month up there. We’re working with SpaceX, the ESA, even the Chinese space agency, and we think we can put together a rescue mission.”
Alright, so why are they calling me? “Alright, so why are they calling me?”
Long silence. “A month is on the very optimistic side of how long they have until their orbit degrades, on the very optimistic side of how long it would take to put together a rescue, and on the very optimistic side of how long they can last with the consumables they have.”
“And I assume they think I could help them. So why don’t we?”
“About a dozen reasons. The biggest one though is that we don’t have the fuel. Between making up for correction burns when the computers went down, and what the radiation storm cost us, you’re running very lean. To meet up with them, and transfer the crew over, would take more fuel than you have.”
“You told them that, and they’re still calling.”
“They have an idea that pulls off the intercept, on paper, but first it would bring you below safety margins for re-entry, still technically above the red line, but we’re talking about your fuel tanks going dry and using up the majority of what’s left over in the piping. Second there’d be no way around you doing some manual flying. You’d be making the intercept with them in space suits drifting out to you. Radar and video are just not accurate enough to handle that.”
“But that means if you so much as tap your orientation controls one too many times you won’t have enough fuel to re-enter. Also, their plan has them breathing fumes by the time they get to you. It’s a four person crew, and they won’t have time to cycle Orion’s airlock four times. You’d have to depressurize Orion, leave both inner and outer airlock doors open, and fly the ship like that for the whole intercept. Plus, your flight suit wasn’t great before, and having duct taped it up won’t have done it any favors.”
Can I be honest here? I’ve always been a bit of a fan of bad-ass last words. Voltaire was getting his head cut off for blasphemy and on the execution block they asked him if he renounced Satan and all his evils. Voltaire said, “Now’s not the time to be making enemies.”
How much of the bad-assery of famous quotes would be lost if you could hear their voices shaking as they said them? Because Christ, just objectively this was the coolest thing I’d ever said in my life, but I could barely get the words out. Come to think of it, Neil Armstrong had his own moment of performance anxiety in front of a live audience. Maybe history is lessened by having video evidence.
“Are you going to help me, or am I doing this on my own?”
*******
I’m Nathan H. Green, a science-fiction writer with a degree in aerospace engineering, and I’m going to be doing daily semi-fictional stories tracking the Artemis I mission. You can follow along through my reddit (u/authornathanhgreen).
Artemis I Has A Stowaway is a work of semi-fiction. All incidents, events, dialogue and sentiments (which are not part of the mission’s official history), are entirely fictional. Where real historical figures appear, the situations, incidents, sentiments, and dialogues concerning those persons are entirely fictional and are not intended to depict actual events, personality, disposition, or attitudes of the real person, nor to change the entirely fictional nature of the work. Save the above, any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, events, or locales is entirely coincidental.
© 2022 Nathan H. Green
December 1, 2022
Artemis I Has A Stowaway - Day 16
December 1st, 2022
Good news, bad news. The good news is that the radiation storm ended. It started trending down at 04:38 UTC and by 11:00 UTC it was over. I used the head, ate three Skor bars, and thanked god for turning off the microwave oven.
Bad news, NASA had absolutely done the math on radiation levels and by 11:30 UTC Mark got on the radio to give me the results.
“There’s no easy way to say this Alex, but our health sciences division is telling me you got enough radiation that there’s a 43% chance you’ll develop cancer because of it. That’s a lifetime risk mind. We’re not talking about today or tomorrow or next year even. But you’re going to need to keep a close eye on your health and if it happens, catch it as early as you can.”
I went to space and all I got was this lousy tumor. They had probably been giving this a few days of thought, because if you could tell me one thing that might have made that news go down a bit easier, it was what Mark said next.
“One day we really are going to have science-fiction worthy starships, but it’s going to cost hundreds, maybe even thousands, of lives for us to learn the lessons we need to learn to build them. No matter how careful, there’s always trial and error Alex. Thanks to you, we know we have to do more for radiation protection. That’s a lesson we were going to learn the hard way sooner or later, and you just saved a whole crew from being in the same position as you are right now. You’ve helped humanity get a step closer to the future we all want.”
43%. Not a bad trade for helping all of humanity, is it? You know the funny thing? We judge ourselves based on outcomes. If I actually get cancer I’m probably going to look back on this and think it was pretty stupid. If I don’t then this is clearly the coolest thing I ever did. If the rocket blew up on launch - stupid. If aliens docked with Orion and I got to make first contact - brilliant.
There’s a formula: If [something outside of my control] happens, then [my actions] are [good / bad]. How does that equation make sense? Does that mean there are people sitting at home right now who are every bit as amazing and smart and insightful as Elon Musk, but random chance delivered them failure, and that’s how they see themselves? Failures? For want of luck?
Mark noticed the long pause. NASA did their absolute best to keep me too busy to dwell on things for the rest of the day. They even sent me a book and had a suggestion for the evening that sounded pretty fun to me.
***
“This is Alex Whelm, and for the next hour we’ll be spinning classic hits that just keep hitting and taking your calls from the moon.” Nasa’s the switchboard, and this broadcast is going out live, world-wide.
Space disk jockey! I love it.
NASA even got permission from Adele (did you hear that we’ve all been pronouncing her name wrong? It’s Uh - Dale not ah - Dell), and CCR (my dad’s favorite) for us to play some of their songs between questions. And so, in compliance with NASA’s contractual license obligations, I’d like to thank Adele and CCR for their generous support of space exploration and discovery. I wonder if I’m going to be shilling for Skor when I get back to Earth? As long as I don’t have to eat another one.
“Artemis, this is Mike from Denver. How are you feeling up there?”
“Hey Mike from Denver. I’m alright. Glowing in the dark a little, but with advances in modern medicine I could live another fifty, maybe even sixty, minutes. Seriously though I’m ok. Just a lot of doctors trips in the future so if anything happens we catch it early. I snuck into the unknown and that means taking some chances, right?”
“Artemis, this is Sarah from Long Beach. Have you talked to Jess since you’ve been up there? Any chance you’ll patch things up?”
“Hey Sarah. If your grill’s uncovered you should watch out, I see some weather moving in on you!” I click off the radio and take a breath. You’re allowed to do that you know. Pause, think about things, no one’s ever going to penalize you for taking five seconds to think, unless you’re on Jeopardy.
“You ever go out for New Years Eve to some big party? That’s a lot like a relationship. Everyone thinks of the countdown, the fireworks, the kiss, and honestly you could pretty well take any two random people, stick them together, and imagine them having a dang good time for the big five minutes. But when you actually do go out for New Years Eve it’s totally different. It’s hours figuring out your plans for the night, getting dressed to go out, driving to the party, finding parking which is both hard and expensive. Then there’s hours and hours waiting around before midnight. When you head home it’s fighting a traffic jam. You’re tired, and everyone’s driving badly around you.”
“All that other stuff - that’s life. You really, really, really, need to fit together with a person if you’re going to enjoy being stuck in traffic with them, or searching for parking, or waiting in line for an over-priced drink. If you’ve still got stuff to talk with them about, laugh with them about, joke about, after all the cliched new years stuff has been said. Jess didn’t think we clicked that way, and honestly I was so swept up in how much fun I had with her for the countdown, that I wasn’t thinking about how compatible we really were once the fireworks stopped. But if we weren’t clicking for her, then by definition we weren’t clicking. It sucks, but… yeah.”
“Artemis this is Brad from Kansas. I hear you’re reading science fiction up there. Any recommendations?”
“I surely do Brad. NASA was kind enough to send me a new release. Just out today. Woe to the Victor. You can probably guess I’m a hard sci-fi fan and this has been scratching that itch!”
Did you know Tom Clancy got his start because Ronald Reagan was reading the Hunt for Red October and got asked for a book recommendation? Anyways, I hope Nathan H. Green appreciates the free global publicity. I should get a cut, I’m unemployed after all.
“Artemis, this is Cathy from Sarasota. But you really loved Jess. Everyone’s saying how sweet your love letters to her are, and the launch was so delayed you only tried to stow away after the break up. I think it’s super romantic you were trying to win her back by doing this huge thing.”
Excuse me? Jess released the letters I wrote her? The fuck.
“Sarah from Long Beach, this is Artemis. I didn’t know those letters were out in the world.”
“Artemis, this is Sam from Palm Springs. After your Oprah interview a British tabloid published a bunch of your letters and cards to Jess. She’s saying it was her room mate who sold them. I’m wondering what it felt like to have to fly the Orion yourself. You had no idea what you were doing?”
There’s no good way to be angry in outer space. You can’t pace. You really shouldn’t punch anything. I’m also pretty sure complaining on the radio to the whole world isn’t a good idea.
‘Alex Whelm goes on profanity filled rant,’ isn’t a good headline for NASA. ‘Alex Whelm threatens Tabloid Boss,’ isn’t great either. And, by the way, thanks NASA!
“Hey Sam. Thanks for that. I didn’t know. Let me answer your questions first though.” Better to give myself a few seconds to cool.
“I had absolutely zero idea how to fly Orion myself. I mean there are joysticks that look like they are flight controls, but you’d have exactly as good an idea of how to do it as me. So, it felt crazy dangerous.”
“On the letters… I guess I should think about Jess in this. I’m the one who went and did something crazy, and I should probably accept whatever media stuff is going to come from it. I can’t really complain right? But Jess doesn’t deserve any of that, and if Katie really did sell those letters, I’m sure Jess is feeling really betrayed and hurt.”
“Artemis, Rasham from Tampa. You really think you shouldn’t go to jail yo? My bud Max snuck into an old power plant, and he got ten years. You like, stole a spaceship.”
Wow, I really pissed off someone in NASA PR.
“Hey, Rasham. Well, it isn’t up to me right. There’s going to be a judge who ends up deciding what should happen to me just like everyone else. But I also think that almost everyone can think of many, many, times when something happens with the courts that just doesn’t seem fair, or right, and that’s a big problem. Things should be fair, and I think most of us don’t think they are, or at least, worry that maybe they aren’t.”
“Anyways folks we’re going to take a break for some music, and then I’ll be back to answer more of your questions!”
You can think about the human brain in two ways. If you’re a Star Trek optimist, then you can think about it like Microsoft Word. It’s a tool that can be used for an infinite variety of tasks, but it still has some order and form that can influence how it works, and how efficiently, or inefficiently, it handles different things.
If you’re a Black Mirror pessimist, the human mind is much more like the computer at an auto-repair shop. It is so specialized for the tasks of gathering berries and hunting elk, that you’re always having to find work-arounds to handle anything even slightly non-standard and if someone came into the shop and said “hey can you use this computer to help manage an intergalactic treaty negotiation?” The shop would just have to say no, sorry, this software can’t do that.
So, which is true? I’m super, super, super pissed off and just want to cuss everyone out. But I also know that would be wrong to do and that I shouldn’t. Am I MS Word and I can just write a few more nice sentences, even though for some reason it keeps trying to autocorrect “NASA” to “those assholes”. Or am I the auto-repair shop computer system and we’re just going to have to live with the fact the customer name’s been changed from ‘NASA’ to ‘Asshole’ and the system won’t let us change it back.
“Alex,” Mark’s voice cuts in over the radio. “The broadcast’s on music, we’re off the air. I’m so sorry about that. Those questions never should have gotten up to you. You did a great job dealing with it though.”
I exhale. Other people can do a lot to make it easier to be MS Word.
*******
I’m Nathan H. Green, a science-fiction writer with a degree in aerospace engineering, and I’m going to be doing daily semi-fictional stories tracking the Artemis I mission. You can follow along through my reddit (u/authornathanhgreen).
Artemis I Has A Stowaway is a work of semi-fiction. All incidents, events, dialogue and sentiments (which are not part of the mission’s official history), are entirely fictional. Where real historical figures appear, the situations, incidents, sentiments, and dialogues concerning those persons are entirely fictional and are not intended to depict actual events, personality, disposition, or attitudes of the real person, nor to change the entirely fictional nature of the work. Save the above, any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, events, or locales is entirely coincidental.
© 2022 Nathan H. Green
Good news, bad news. The good news is that the radiation storm ended. It started trending down at 04:38 UTC and by 11:00 UTC it was over. I used the head, ate three Skor bars, and thanked god for turning off the microwave oven.
Bad news, NASA had absolutely done the math on radiation levels and by 11:30 UTC Mark got on the radio to give me the results.
“There’s no easy way to say this Alex, but our health sciences division is telling me you got enough radiation that there’s a 43% chance you’ll develop cancer because of it. That’s a lifetime risk mind. We’re not talking about today or tomorrow or next year even. But you’re going to need to keep a close eye on your health and if it happens, catch it as early as you can.”
I went to space and all I got was this lousy tumor. They had probably been giving this a few days of thought, because if you could tell me one thing that might have made that news go down a bit easier, it was what Mark said next.
“One day we really are going to have science-fiction worthy starships, but it’s going to cost hundreds, maybe even thousands, of lives for us to learn the lessons we need to learn to build them. No matter how careful, there’s always trial and error Alex. Thanks to you, we know we have to do more for radiation protection. That’s a lesson we were going to learn the hard way sooner or later, and you just saved a whole crew from being in the same position as you are right now. You’ve helped humanity get a step closer to the future we all want.”
43%. Not a bad trade for helping all of humanity, is it? You know the funny thing? We judge ourselves based on outcomes. If I actually get cancer I’m probably going to look back on this and think it was pretty stupid. If I don’t then this is clearly the coolest thing I ever did. If the rocket blew up on launch - stupid. If aliens docked with Orion and I got to make first contact - brilliant.
There’s a formula: If [something outside of my control] happens, then [my actions] are [good / bad]. How does that equation make sense? Does that mean there are people sitting at home right now who are every bit as amazing and smart and insightful as Elon Musk, but random chance delivered them failure, and that’s how they see themselves? Failures? For want of luck?
Mark noticed the long pause. NASA did their absolute best to keep me too busy to dwell on things for the rest of the day. They even sent me a book and had a suggestion for the evening that sounded pretty fun to me.
***
“This is Alex Whelm, and for the next hour we’ll be spinning classic hits that just keep hitting and taking your calls from the moon.” Nasa’s the switchboard, and this broadcast is going out live, world-wide.
Space disk jockey! I love it.
NASA even got permission from Adele (did you hear that we’ve all been pronouncing her name wrong? It’s Uh - Dale not ah - Dell), and CCR (my dad’s favorite) for us to play some of their songs between questions. And so, in compliance with NASA’s contractual license obligations, I’d like to thank Adele and CCR for their generous support of space exploration and discovery. I wonder if I’m going to be shilling for Skor when I get back to Earth? As long as I don’t have to eat another one.
“Artemis, this is Mike from Denver. How are you feeling up there?”
“Hey Mike from Denver. I’m alright. Glowing in the dark a little, but with advances in modern medicine I could live another fifty, maybe even sixty, minutes. Seriously though I’m ok. Just a lot of doctors trips in the future so if anything happens we catch it early. I snuck into the unknown and that means taking some chances, right?”
“Artemis, this is Sarah from Long Beach. Have you talked to Jess since you’ve been up there? Any chance you’ll patch things up?”
“Hey Sarah. If your grill’s uncovered you should watch out, I see some weather moving in on you!” I click off the radio and take a breath. You’re allowed to do that you know. Pause, think about things, no one’s ever going to penalize you for taking five seconds to think, unless you’re on Jeopardy.
“You ever go out for New Years Eve to some big party? That’s a lot like a relationship. Everyone thinks of the countdown, the fireworks, the kiss, and honestly you could pretty well take any two random people, stick them together, and imagine them having a dang good time for the big five minutes. But when you actually do go out for New Years Eve it’s totally different. It’s hours figuring out your plans for the night, getting dressed to go out, driving to the party, finding parking which is both hard and expensive. Then there’s hours and hours waiting around before midnight. When you head home it’s fighting a traffic jam. You’re tired, and everyone’s driving badly around you.”
“All that other stuff - that’s life. You really, really, really, need to fit together with a person if you’re going to enjoy being stuck in traffic with them, or searching for parking, or waiting in line for an over-priced drink. If you’ve still got stuff to talk with them about, laugh with them about, joke about, after all the cliched new years stuff has been said. Jess didn’t think we clicked that way, and honestly I was so swept up in how much fun I had with her for the countdown, that I wasn’t thinking about how compatible we really were once the fireworks stopped. But if we weren’t clicking for her, then by definition we weren’t clicking. It sucks, but… yeah.”
“Artemis this is Brad from Kansas. I hear you’re reading science fiction up there. Any recommendations?”
“I surely do Brad. NASA was kind enough to send me a new release. Just out today. Woe to the Victor. You can probably guess I’m a hard sci-fi fan and this has been scratching that itch!”
Did you know Tom Clancy got his start because Ronald Reagan was reading the Hunt for Red October and got asked for a book recommendation? Anyways, I hope Nathan H. Green appreciates the free global publicity. I should get a cut, I’m unemployed after all.
“Artemis, this is Cathy from Sarasota. But you really loved Jess. Everyone’s saying how sweet your love letters to her are, and the launch was so delayed you only tried to stow away after the break up. I think it’s super romantic you were trying to win her back by doing this huge thing.”
Excuse me? Jess released the letters I wrote her? The fuck.
“Sarah from Long Beach, this is Artemis. I didn’t know those letters were out in the world.”
“Artemis, this is Sam from Palm Springs. After your Oprah interview a British tabloid published a bunch of your letters and cards to Jess. She’s saying it was her room mate who sold them. I’m wondering what it felt like to have to fly the Orion yourself. You had no idea what you were doing?”
There’s no good way to be angry in outer space. You can’t pace. You really shouldn’t punch anything. I’m also pretty sure complaining on the radio to the whole world isn’t a good idea.
‘Alex Whelm goes on profanity filled rant,’ isn’t a good headline for NASA. ‘Alex Whelm threatens Tabloid Boss,’ isn’t great either. And, by the way, thanks NASA!
“Hey Sam. Thanks for that. I didn’t know. Let me answer your questions first though.” Better to give myself a few seconds to cool.
“I had absolutely zero idea how to fly Orion myself. I mean there are joysticks that look like they are flight controls, but you’d have exactly as good an idea of how to do it as me. So, it felt crazy dangerous.”
“On the letters… I guess I should think about Jess in this. I’m the one who went and did something crazy, and I should probably accept whatever media stuff is going to come from it. I can’t really complain right? But Jess doesn’t deserve any of that, and if Katie really did sell those letters, I’m sure Jess is feeling really betrayed and hurt.”
“Artemis, Rasham from Tampa. You really think you shouldn’t go to jail yo? My bud Max snuck into an old power plant, and he got ten years. You like, stole a spaceship.”
Wow, I really pissed off someone in NASA PR.
“Hey, Rasham. Well, it isn’t up to me right. There’s going to be a judge who ends up deciding what should happen to me just like everyone else. But I also think that almost everyone can think of many, many, times when something happens with the courts that just doesn’t seem fair, or right, and that’s a big problem. Things should be fair, and I think most of us don’t think they are, or at least, worry that maybe they aren’t.”
“Anyways folks we’re going to take a break for some music, and then I’ll be back to answer more of your questions!”
You can think about the human brain in two ways. If you’re a Star Trek optimist, then you can think about it like Microsoft Word. It’s a tool that can be used for an infinite variety of tasks, but it still has some order and form that can influence how it works, and how efficiently, or inefficiently, it handles different things.
If you’re a Black Mirror pessimist, the human mind is much more like the computer at an auto-repair shop. It is so specialized for the tasks of gathering berries and hunting elk, that you’re always having to find work-arounds to handle anything even slightly non-standard and if someone came into the shop and said “hey can you use this computer to help manage an intergalactic treaty negotiation?” The shop would just have to say no, sorry, this software can’t do that.
So, which is true? I’m super, super, super pissed off and just want to cuss everyone out. But I also know that would be wrong to do and that I shouldn’t. Am I MS Word and I can just write a few more nice sentences, even though for some reason it keeps trying to autocorrect “NASA” to “those assholes”. Or am I the auto-repair shop computer system and we’re just going to have to live with the fact the customer name’s been changed from ‘NASA’ to ‘Asshole’ and the system won’t let us change it back.
“Alex,” Mark’s voice cuts in over the radio. “The broadcast’s on music, we’re off the air. I’m so sorry about that. Those questions never should have gotten up to you. You did a great job dealing with it though.”
I exhale. Other people can do a lot to make it easier to be MS Word.
*******
I’m Nathan H. Green, a science-fiction writer with a degree in aerospace engineering, and I’m going to be doing daily semi-fictional stories tracking the Artemis I mission. You can follow along through my reddit (u/authornathanhgreen).
Artemis I Has A Stowaway is a work of semi-fiction. All incidents, events, dialogue and sentiments (which are not part of the mission’s official history), are entirely fictional. Where real historical figures appear, the situations, incidents, sentiments, and dialogues concerning those persons are entirely fictional and are not intended to depict actual events, personality, disposition, or attitudes of the real person, nor to change the entirely fictional nature of the work. Save the above, any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, events, or locales is entirely coincidental.
© 2022 Nathan H. Green
November 30, 2022
Artemis I Has A Stowaway - Day 15
November 30th, 2022
How hungry do you need to be to take a 1% chance of getting cancer in return for some chocolate bars? I’d left my Skor bars back at my cot, and the thought of wading through a sea of deadly radiation to get them has kept me hungry. Well, NASA’s also been perfectly clear that I’m to sit exactly where I am no matter what.
Thus, I’ve also peed my pants. Three times. You know what they don’t have onboard Artemis I? A washing machine, or a wardrobe. I’m going to be stuck with these clothes for the rest of the mission.
NASA’s been trying to figure out the source of this radiation storm to get a handle on when it might pass, but when it comes to space weather, they’re in the dark.
Anyways with the radiation sensor exposed to the full power of the storm I can watch its progress. Since yesterday it’s done nothing but go up. 650,000 𝝻Sv/hr with the “little numbers” changing so fast I can’t read them.
I am back in touch with NASA though. They very helpfully let me know that, if not for the water tank radiation shield, I would be in fatal doses of radiation within hours territory, and yet I don’t see anything around me reacting. You could forget it was happening if not for this tingling on your teeth like they’re dirty. Then again, my teeth are dirty, I hadn’t thought to bring a tooth brush.
There’s some house keeping work that NASA is handling. The Orion’s orbit around the moon is causing some fluctuations in orientation that NASA’s had to updated the flight controls to handle. The computer freeze resulted in a few missed correction burns that they’ve been trying to figure out how to make up for. They’re upset I used so much fuel figuring out where the radiation came from. Blah, blah, blah. Mark straight up told me they still have more than enough fuel to get me home - so this is all just worrying for nothing.
They claim to be busy. I’m just sitting, without even a book to read or a gage to be checked.
The other thing is that I asked NASA a question this morning, and they haven’t answered.
“Hey guys, just how strong can this storm get before my water-tank radiation shield won’t be enough?”
“We’re doing the math on that now Alex. Let you know just as soon as we can,” Mark said.
Then silence. As though I forgot. As though that isn’t the only thing on my mind. Well, I guess they accomplished that, now I’m also thinking about why they aren’t answering.
They did tell me to change up my little radiation vest fort, taking off the one I was wearing and using it as a headrest. That’s a nice thought, that the water tank isn’t giving me enough protection on its own to shield my brain.
Assuming I don’t just die of this, I’m starting to think I’m definitely going to get cancer.
You know the worst part about cancer? The hope. If you just told me I had 6 months before I’d need constant care, and after 1 years I’d be dead, then I’d make the six months count.
I’d party it up like crazy, then I’d go off into the woods with a spear and have a fight with a grizzly bear. I’d want to arrive at heaven and have God say, “dude, why would you have done that?!”
By the way, Jess hated that idea.
With cancer you’ve got that hope. Treatments, experimental drugs, surgeries, five year survival rates with double digit percentages. But really, almost always, you’re actually talking about spending the last months, and years, of your life thinking about nothing but your health, always sick and feeling terrible, and getting more and more worn down until one day you just… stop.
I know this is a personal thing, and honestly to each their own, I don’t judge. But I spent my whole life hoping for long shots to pay off. That I’d be an astronaut, go into space, maybe even be the first person on Mars or something amazing like that. I’m sick of hope. So fuck cancer.
Anyways, frequently asked questions about using your drinking water as a radiation shield: if the water is absorbing the radiation, won’t it get radioactive? I got a lot of days left in this mission and drinking water is non-negotiable.
Welcome to radiation shields 101 with your host: the guy who’s logicing this shit out right now. So first of all, “radiation”, in the common usage, is really just a catchall term for a whole bunch of different “particles” that can damage human cells.
Uranium isn’t radiation - uranium gives off radiation. There are all different types of radiation but as one example gamma rays, and x-rays, are just light, regular photons like what come out of a flashlight - just at different frequencies. ‘But light doesn’t damage things!’ ah but it does given time and intensity. Haven’t you seen a piece of paper that’s left in the sun get yellowed over time? Well imagine that’s your DNA. Turns out as you change the frequency of light you also change how well it can penetrate materials and the damage it does to DNA. Steel, which is totally opaque to the visible light spectrum, is like glass to x-rays.
In the case of gamma rays or x-rays the photons hit the water molecules shed their energy into heat and are gone. So the water isn’t radioactive, it is just warmer. If you shine a flashlight onto a swimming pool it won’t charge up and start to glow when you shut off the light, so if you shine x-rays onto the pool it won’t start glowing back x-rays. And yes, for you overly eager students in the front row, the water will start to glow but in the harmless infrared spectrum.
But there are other kinds of radiation as well that involve protons or other subatomic particles. Again though, it isn’t about those particles simple existence, it’s about their speed. You bump them into something and get rid of that speed and they become inert.
So, the way I see it, a radiation shield should work by putting atoms between me and the radiation source. The particles of radiation cascade in, hit the atoms of the shield, and lose their energy going from deadly radiation to harmless slow moving particles. My water stays safe to drink, and I don’t get cancer.
Riddle me this though: why is the water in a nuclear reactor radioactive? The uranium is encased, so what’s getting into the water that is radioactive? I remember something about neutron flux from a documentary… But I can’t remember the details. I ask NASA, they promise to get back to me.
Regardless, by inference this all means that blocking radiation is a % thing. For such and such a thickness of water X% of the particles that make up the radiation should pass through, missing the water’s atoms, and then hit my two radiation blocking vests on the chair, and the two panels of the vest I’m now using as a head-rest.
When I was messing about with the Orion’s orientation to try and figure out where the radiation was coming from, the radiation sensor basically dropped down to zero. Say 99% radiation blocking. The vests, specially designed for this, figure they’re 60% shields, each panel. And there are 4 panels between my chest and the radiation source. So, 0.4, 0.24, 0.142, 0.0852%. That means I’m blocking 99.9148% of the radiation.
That sounds pretty darn good, until you consider how small and pathetic us humans are compared to the grandeur of the universe. 650,000 𝝻Sv/hr is what the radiation sensor is reading, so call it about 580 𝝻Sv/hr that’s getting through the shield. The alarm triggered at 130 𝝻Sv/hr. Fantastic. Just fantastic.
I bet a real astronaut would be sitting here and just thinking heroic, stoic, thoughts. They wouldn’t be imagining dying in a hospital bed from radiation poisoning or wondering how getting fired from NASA affects their health insurance. How long do you have after you get fired to sign up for COBRA? And, by the way, what's with that name? That's like naming a program to feed the homeless FAMINE. Where do you even find a bear?
A real astronaut would just be quietly sitting here, maybe looking out the window at the unmoving pinprick stars and thinking about their training or the mission.
They’d probably be thinking that this cloud of radiation is from two black holes slamming into one another, and even after traveling for millions of years, it is still strong enough to kill us puny humans.
I’m hungry, my underwear is wet and clammy, and all I can think about is what a frail, pathetic, stupid, idiot I am.
Seriously, my biggest accomplishment in life was basically figuring out how to do a magic trick where I swapped out the dummy Moonikin for the bigger dummy ‘the amazing radioactive Alex!’
I’m not very good company today.
***
I’m Nathan H. Green, a science-fiction writer with a degree in aerospace engineering, and I’m going to be doing daily semi-fictional stories tracking the Artemis I mission. You can follow along through my reddit (u/authornathanhgreen).
Artemis I Has A Stowaway is a work of semi-fiction. All incidents, events, dialogue and sentiments (which are not part of the mission’s official history), are entirely fictional. Where real historical figures appear, the situations, incidents, sentiments, and dialogues concerning those persons are entirely fictional and are not intended to depict actual events, personality, disposition, or attitudes of the real person, nor to change the entirely fictional nature of the work. Save the above, any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, events, or locales is entirely coincidental.
© 2022 Nathan H. Green
How hungry do you need to be to take a 1% chance of getting cancer in return for some chocolate bars? I’d left my Skor bars back at my cot, and the thought of wading through a sea of deadly radiation to get them has kept me hungry. Well, NASA’s also been perfectly clear that I’m to sit exactly where I am no matter what.
Thus, I’ve also peed my pants. Three times. You know what they don’t have onboard Artemis I? A washing machine, or a wardrobe. I’m going to be stuck with these clothes for the rest of the mission.
NASA’s been trying to figure out the source of this radiation storm to get a handle on when it might pass, but when it comes to space weather, they’re in the dark.
Anyways with the radiation sensor exposed to the full power of the storm I can watch its progress. Since yesterday it’s done nothing but go up. 650,000 𝝻Sv/hr with the “little numbers” changing so fast I can’t read them.
I am back in touch with NASA though. They very helpfully let me know that, if not for the water tank radiation shield, I would be in fatal doses of radiation within hours territory, and yet I don’t see anything around me reacting. You could forget it was happening if not for this tingling on your teeth like they’re dirty. Then again, my teeth are dirty, I hadn’t thought to bring a tooth brush.
There’s some house keeping work that NASA is handling. The Orion’s orbit around the moon is causing some fluctuations in orientation that NASA’s had to updated the flight controls to handle. The computer freeze resulted in a few missed correction burns that they’ve been trying to figure out how to make up for. They’re upset I used so much fuel figuring out where the radiation came from. Blah, blah, blah. Mark straight up told me they still have more than enough fuel to get me home - so this is all just worrying for nothing.
They claim to be busy. I’m just sitting, without even a book to read or a gage to be checked.
The other thing is that I asked NASA a question this morning, and they haven’t answered.
“Hey guys, just how strong can this storm get before my water-tank radiation shield won’t be enough?”
“We’re doing the math on that now Alex. Let you know just as soon as we can,” Mark said.
Then silence. As though I forgot. As though that isn’t the only thing on my mind. Well, I guess they accomplished that, now I’m also thinking about why they aren’t answering.
They did tell me to change up my little radiation vest fort, taking off the one I was wearing and using it as a headrest. That’s a nice thought, that the water tank isn’t giving me enough protection on its own to shield my brain.
Assuming I don’t just die of this, I’m starting to think I’m definitely going to get cancer.
You know the worst part about cancer? The hope. If you just told me I had 6 months before I’d need constant care, and after 1 years I’d be dead, then I’d make the six months count.
I’d party it up like crazy, then I’d go off into the woods with a spear and have a fight with a grizzly bear. I’d want to arrive at heaven and have God say, “dude, why would you have done that?!”
By the way, Jess hated that idea.
With cancer you’ve got that hope. Treatments, experimental drugs, surgeries, five year survival rates with double digit percentages. But really, almost always, you’re actually talking about spending the last months, and years, of your life thinking about nothing but your health, always sick and feeling terrible, and getting more and more worn down until one day you just… stop.
I know this is a personal thing, and honestly to each their own, I don’t judge. But I spent my whole life hoping for long shots to pay off. That I’d be an astronaut, go into space, maybe even be the first person on Mars or something amazing like that. I’m sick of hope. So fuck cancer.
Anyways, frequently asked questions about using your drinking water as a radiation shield: if the water is absorbing the radiation, won’t it get radioactive? I got a lot of days left in this mission and drinking water is non-negotiable.
Welcome to radiation shields 101 with your host: the guy who’s logicing this shit out right now. So first of all, “radiation”, in the common usage, is really just a catchall term for a whole bunch of different “particles” that can damage human cells.
Uranium isn’t radiation - uranium gives off radiation. There are all different types of radiation but as one example gamma rays, and x-rays, are just light, regular photons like what come out of a flashlight - just at different frequencies. ‘But light doesn’t damage things!’ ah but it does given time and intensity. Haven’t you seen a piece of paper that’s left in the sun get yellowed over time? Well imagine that’s your DNA. Turns out as you change the frequency of light you also change how well it can penetrate materials and the damage it does to DNA. Steel, which is totally opaque to the visible light spectrum, is like glass to x-rays.
In the case of gamma rays or x-rays the photons hit the water molecules shed their energy into heat and are gone. So the water isn’t radioactive, it is just warmer. If you shine a flashlight onto a swimming pool it won’t charge up and start to glow when you shut off the light, so if you shine x-rays onto the pool it won’t start glowing back x-rays. And yes, for you overly eager students in the front row, the water will start to glow but in the harmless infrared spectrum.
But there are other kinds of radiation as well that involve protons or other subatomic particles. Again though, it isn’t about those particles simple existence, it’s about their speed. You bump them into something and get rid of that speed and they become inert.
So, the way I see it, a radiation shield should work by putting atoms between me and the radiation source. The particles of radiation cascade in, hit the atoms of the shield, and lose their energy going from deadly radiation to harmless slow moving particles. My water stays safe to drink, and I don’t get cancer.
Riddle me this though: why is the water in a nuclear reactor radioactive? The uranium is encased, so what’s getting into the water that is radioactive? I remember something about neutron flux from a documentary… But I can’t remember the details. I ask NASA, they promise to get back to me.
Regardless, by inference this all means that blocking radiation is a % thing. For such and such a thickness of water X% of the particles that make up the radiation should pass through, missing the water’s atoms, and then hit my two radiation blocking vests on the chair, and the two panels of the vest I’m now using as a head-rest.
When I was messing about with the Orion’s orientation to try and figure out where the radiation was coming from, the radiation sensor basically dropped down to zero. Say 99% radiation blocking. The vests, specially designed for this, figure they’re 60% shields, each panel. And there are 4 panels between my chest and the radiation source. So, 0.4, 0.24, 0.142, 0.0852%. That means I’m blocking 99.9148% of the radiation.
That sounds pretty darn good, until you consider how small and pathetic us humans are compared to the grandeur of the universe. 650,000 𝝻Sv/hr is what the radiation sensor is reading, so call it about 580 𝝻Sv/hr that’s getting through the shield. The alarm triggered at 130 𝝻Sv/hr. Fantastic. Just fantastic.
I bet a real astronaut would be sitting here and just thinking heroic, stoic, thoughts. They wouldn’t be imagining dying in a hospital bed from radiation poisoning or wondering how getting fired from NASA affects their health insurance. How long do you have after you get fired to sign up for COBRA? And, by the way, what's with that name? That's like naming a program to feed the homeless FAMINE. Where do you even find a bear?
A real astronaut would just be quietly sitting here, maybe looking out the window at the unmoving pinprick stars and thinking about their training or the mission.
They’d probably be thinking that this cloud of radiation is from two black holes slamming into one another, and even after traveling for millions of years, it is still strong enough to kill us puny humans.
I’m hungry, my underwear is wet and clammy, and all I can think about is what a frail, pathetic, stupid, idiot I am.
Seriously, my biggest accomplishment in life was basically figuring out how to do a magic trick where I swapped out the dummy Moonikin for the bigger dummy ‘the amazing radioactive Alex!’
I’m not very good company today.
***
I’m Nathan H. Green, a science-fiction writer with a degree in aerospace engineering, and I’m going to be doing daily semi-fictional stories tracking the Artemis I mission. You can follow along through my reddit (u/authornathanhgreen).
Artemis I Has A Stowaway is a work of semi-fiction. All incidents, events, dialogue and sentiments (which are not part of the mission’s official history), are entirely fictional. Where real historical figures appear, the situations, incidents, sentiments, and dialogues concerning those persons are entirely fictional and are not intended to depict actual events, personality, disposition, or attitudes of the real person, nor to change the entirely fictional nature of the work. Save the above, any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, events, or locales is entirely coincidental.
© 2022 Nathan H. Green
November 29, 2022
Artemis I Has A Stowaway - Day 14
November 29th, 2022
I was wrong. The second time the master alarm goes off and I’m no more composed than the first time. This is helped by the fact that I’m on the dark side of the moon in radio shadow, so it is impossible for NASA to be running this as a test.
“Oh god, oh god, oh god, oh god, no-no-no-no-no.”
Like so much of space travel, this is one of those good news, bad news, situations. Good news. The LCD display was flashing red and wasn’t saying something totally incomprehensible. It might have said “Error code: x92284022”. It might have said “DSR - 5 Failure!” And I’d have no bloody idea what was wrong. “Radiation warning 130 𝝻Sv/hr“ was perfectly understandable.
Bad news: Radiation Warning 130 𝝻Sv/hr. I’m absolutely not going to get super powers from this.
NASA’s testing out these new radiation vests with this mission. I was already wearing Moonikin’s, because I’d be an idiot not to. But there are another two on sensor packages strapped into the Orion’s other seats. Sorry NASA… I take the vests off their sensor packages and put them on. You know the old saying, “you can never have enough radiation shielding”.
I put the first vest on over top of the one I’m already wearing, doubling up protection. And I was about to put the third one on over top of that when I got thinking. I wrap the final vest around my waist like a skirt.
While I’m doing that, I’m having a little mental debate: just how much radiation is this? Earth’s magnetic field is an amazing radiation shield. Inside the field’s protection (which extends up into the kinds of orbit’s the international space station and space shuttle fly at), you really don’t have to worry much about radiation. Out by the moon you’re basically getting full buck of what the universe can throw at you.
That can range from “nuclear power plant worker”, to the scene in RoboCop where the bad guy falls into the pool of chemicals and melts.
So just how bad is this? Do I have time for NASA to weigh in or do I need to do something now to try and save my life?
So, let’s see… 1 rad of radiation is enough radiation to raise the temperature of 1 liter of water by 1 degree Celsius in 1 minute. Then just convert over to Sv using the left hand conversion rule… I’m joking. I have no bloody idea on any of this. I know 3.6 roentgen is not great, not terrible. But I have no idea what a roentgen is, what a Sv is, or how to convert between them.
But there’s another way to do this. NASA does have some worry warts, but if an alarm is going off then it’s an issue. I could check the manual, figure out what the threshold amount is, and if I’m way over the line then it’s “I’m melting, melting, what a world, what a world,” time. But that’s when I look back at the alarm. 30,000 𝝻Sv/hr and the last three digits are basically illegible because they’re whirring up.
Well that was easy. I’m going to die. Now, how to save my life?
I need something that blocks radiation. There’s not much stuff on Orion that I could use to build a shield, and I have no idea how good a radiation block a 1 kg test weight is. Orion’s water tank is probably going to be the best radiation shield I could get.
Back to the emergency procedures manual. It takes a few minutes (and by the way, flipping through an index book while the clock on your life is ticking is a whole kind of fun), but eventually I figure out where the radiation sensor is mounted. The next part is something NASA’s not going to be happy about. I’m going to have to start flying the Orion.
Now, I’m an engineer, not a pilot, and looking at the gimbles, or artificial horizons, or whatever the hell you call those balls with the sky and ground painted on them that airplanes and spaceships have, looking at those things and the control stick this feels very much like something a pilot should be doing. Anyways, I strap myself in, and very gently pull the joystick back. Nothing happens. Ok, makes sense. There’s probably an ‘on’ button I need to press first.
I give up, unstrap, and get the emergency procedures manual. Fortunately for me, “orientation control failure” starts with just making sure you had set the system up right in the first place, and I follow along until I pull back on the control stick and Orion’s thrusters fire in response, the ship slowly starting to roll upwards.
“Fucking fucking fuck!” I slip out of the commander’s chair like a bar of soap off the edge of a tub. Always buckle up. I have to climb back into the seat which is all kinds of awkward and weird because of how it, and me, are rotating. I buckle up.
I’m watching two things, the artificial horizon, and the radiation meter, which is now up to 45,000 𝝻Sv/hr. I complete a full spin without obvious effect on radiation readings. I use another small jolt of thrust to stop the spin. Then I push the control stick to the side and Orion starts a very, very, very, slow spin like a frisbee. I stop it after about ten degrees, and again spin the ship end over end in a very slow tumble. The first three spins are totally exhilarating and terrifying. By the sixth, with the radiation meter doing nothing but rocket up, my brain is starting to wander.
You know… Technically I am now actually commanding the Orion to do things… Without permission… In international waters…
See, this is why engineers are a completely different breed from regular folk. This is what my brain chooses to think about. Or maybe it’s radiation sickness hitting already.
I’m either a nerd, or suffering radiation poisoning. Though the latter one is a very space pirate thing to suffer from.
The radiation meter hiccups, the 4, of 49,000 drops to a 1 then bounds back up. I stop the spin, then very, very, very, slowly, bring Orion back. The radiation meter drops down to 150 𝝻Sv/hr, and I stop the ship, right there, copying down my bearings.
Ok, situation: the radiation is now coming in, hitting Orion’s water tank, and the radiation sensor is in the shadow of the tank. Even better, the water tank is blocking a ton of radiation. I don’t know how good for me 150 𝝻Sv/hr is, but I do know it’s 99.7% better than 50,000 𝝻Sv/hr. More importantly, I’ve got a vector for the radiation. I need to get myself into that shadow. A quick look at the emergency manual’s schematic of Orion, and I float myself very quickly to a spot about 18 inches from the summers. Nope, I hate that. I’m just going to call it a head.
In theory this spot should be in the water tank’s radiation shadow.
New problem. Well new problems. Problem 1) I’m too far away from Orion’s controls to use the radio or see what the radiation meter is saying. I can’t just stay here forever, and I can’t really know when I can leave. Problem 2) remember when I said I “stopped” Orion on this bearing? That was a lie.
See, without friction, there is no such thing as zero motion. In space you’re always constantly twisting and turning on every axis. Your speed could be 0.001 degrees per second, or so slowly that a bacterium would be asking you to get out of its way you slow-poke, but over a thousand seconds (or sixteen point six minutes) you’ve still rotated a degree. Anyways, there’s no way I slowed to 0.001 degrees per second, Orion’s probably rotating at a couple of degrees every minute. This little area of shadow I’ve made for myself is at best ten minutes away from being out of the shadow.
What I need to do is figure out the heading to turn Orion onto in order to cast the water tank’s shadow onto the commander’s chair.
I go to work in the margins of the emergency manual. In space, radiation sources can just be thought of as a direction since everything’s so far away. Basically, like an umbrella blocking the rain, the radiation sensor is now in the shadow of Orion’s most radiation blocking part. Technically I’ve figured out a 3D vector for where the radiation is coming from. Now I need to figure out the 3D vector between the water tank and the commander’s chair (which is where I’m going to need to be), and then how to rotate the Orion to bring those two vectors into alignment.
Thank god a degree in aerospace engineering is good for something. Doesn’t even take ten minutes. The radiation sensor goes back to being baked, but according to my math I’m in the shade. For good measure I take off my two extra radiation vests and put them on the seat behind me - which is where the radiation is coming from. That way I should have five layers of protection in addition to the water tank between my chest and the radiation source.
There’s a problem to all this though - I’m not a good pilot and every few minutes I have to give Orion a nudge of thrusters to keep her where she needs to be. I can’t keep that up indefinitely because I’m burning fuel.
Small bit of pride. A full ten minutes before I get the radio back up with NASA, I find a control panel button labeled “or - lock” and just like that, Orion’s computers are doing the flying again.
So I'm stuck, in the commanders seat, until I figure out how to fix a radiation storm. I probably should have used the head when I had the chance. Note to self.
*******
I’m Nathan H. Green, a science-fiction writer with a degree in aerospace engineering, and I’m going to be doing daily semi-fictional stories tracking the Artemis I mission. You can follow along through my reddit (u/authornathanhgreen).
Artemis I Has A Stowaway is a work of semi-fiction. All incidents, events, dialogue and sentiments (which are not part of the mission’s official history), are entirely fictional. Where real historical figures appear, the situations, incidents, sentiments, and dialogues concerning those persons are entirely fictional and are not intended to depict actual events, personality, disposition, or attitudes of the real person, nor to change the entirely fictional nature of the work. Save the above, any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, events, or locales is entirely coincidental.
© 2022 Nathan H. Green
I was wrong. The second time the master alarm goes off and I’m no more composed than the first time. This is helped by the fact that I’m on the dark side of the moon in radio shadow, so it is impossible for NASA to be running this as a test.
“Oh god, oh god, oh god, oh god, no-no-no-no-no.”
Like so much of space travel, this is one of those good news, bad news, situations. Good news. The LCD display was flashing red and wasn’t saying something totally incomprehensible. It might have said “Error code: x92284022”. It might have said “DSR - 5 Failure!” And I’d have no bloody idea what was wrong. “Radiation warning 130 𝝻Sv/hr“ was perfectly understandable.
Bad news: Radiation Warning 130 𝝻Sv/hr. I’m absolutely not going to get super powers from this.
NASA’s testing out these new radiation vests with this mission. I was already wearing Moonikin’s, because I’d be an idiot not to. But there are another two on sensor packages strapped into the Orion’s other seats. Sorry NASA… I take the vests off their sensor packages and put them on. You know the old saying, “you can never have enough radiation shielding”.
I put the first vest on over top of the one I’m already wearing, doubling up protection. And I was about to put the third one on over top of that when I got thinking. I wrap the final vest around my waist like a skirt.
While I’m doing that, I’m having a little mental debate: just how much radiation is this? Earth’s magnetic field is an amazing radiation shield. Inside the field’s protection (which extends up into the kinds of orbit’s the international space station and space shuttle fly at), you really don’t have to worry much about radiation. Out by the moon you’re basically getting full buck of what the universe can throw at you.
That can range from “nuclear power plant worker”, to the scene in RoboCop where the bad guy falls into the pool of chemicals and melts.
So just how bad is this? Do I have time for NASA to weigh in or do I need to do something now to try and save my life?
So, let’s see… 1 rad of radiation is enough radiation to raise the temperature of 1 liter of water by 1 degree Celsius in 1 minute. Then just convert over to Sv using the left hand conversion rule… I’m joking. I have no bloody idea on any of this. I know 3.6 roentgen is not great, not terrible. But I have no idea what a roentgen is, what a Sv is, or how to convert between them.
But there’s another way to do this. NASA does have some worry warts, but if an alarm is going off then it’s an issue. I could check the manual, figure out what the threshold amount is, and if I’m way over the line then it’s “I’m melting, melting, what a world, what a world,” time. But that’s when I look back at the alarm. 30,000 𝝻Sv/hr and the last three digits are basically illegible because they’re whirring up.
Well that was easy. I’m going to die. Now, how to save my life?
I need something that blocks radiation. There’s not much stuff on Orion that I could use to build a shield, and I have no idea how good a radiation block a 1 kg test weight is. Orion’s water tank is probably going to be the best radiation shield I could get.
Back to the emergency procedures manual. It takes a few minutes (and by the way, flipping through an index book while the clock on your life is ticking is a whole kind of fun), but eventually I figure out where the radiation sensor is mounted. The next part is something NASA’s not going to be happy about. I’m going to have to start flying the Orion.
Now, I’m an engineer, not a pilot, and looking at the gimbles, or artificial horizons, or whatever the hell you call those balls with the sky and ground painted on them that airplanes and spaceships have, looking at those things and the control stick this feels very much like something a pilot should be doing. Anyways, I strap myself in, and very gently pull the joystick back. Nothing happens. Ok, makes sense. There’s probably an ‘on’ button I need to press first.
I give up, unstrap, and get the emergency procedures manual. Fortunately for me, “orientation control failure” starts with just making sure you had set the system up right in the first place, and I follow along until I pull back on the control stick and Orion’s thrusters fire in response, the ship slowly starting to roll upwards.
“Fucking fucking fuck!” I slip out of the commander’s chair like a bar of soap off the edge of a tub. Always buckle up. I have to climb back into the seat which is all kinds of awkward and weird because of how it, and me, are rotating. I buckle up.
I’m watching two things, the artificial horizon, and the radiation meter, which is now up to 45,000 𝝻Sv/hr. I complete a full spin without obvious effect on radiation readings. I use another small jolt of thrust to stop the spin. Then I push the control stick to the side and Orion starts a very, very, very, slow spin like a frisbee. I stop it after about ten degrees, and again spin the ship end over end in a very slow tumble. The first three spins are totally exhilarating and terrifying. By the sixth, with the radiation meter doing nothing but rocket up, my brain is starting to wander.
You know… Technically I am now actually commanding the Orion to do things… Without permission… In international waters…
See, this is why engineers are a completely different breed from regular folk. This is what my brain chooses to think about. Or maybe it’s radiation sickness hitting already.
I’m either a nerd, or suffering radiation poisoning. Though the latter one is a very space pirate thing to suffer from.
The radiation meter hiccups, the 4, of 49,000 drops to a 1 then bounds back up. I stop the spin, then very, very, very, slowly, bring Orion back. The radiation meter drops down to 150 𝝻Sv/hr, and I stop the ship, right there, copying down my bearings.
Ok, situation: the radiation is now coming in, hitting Orion’s water tank, and the radiation sensor is in the shadow of the tank. Even better, the water tank is blocking a ton of radiation. I don’t know how good for me 150 𝝻Sv/hr is, but I do know it’s 99.7% better than 50,000 𝝻Sv/hr. More importantly, I’ve got a vector for the radiation. I need to get myself into that shadow. A quick look at the emergency manual’s schematic of Orion, and I float myself very quickly to a spot about 18 inches from the summers. Nope, I hate that. I’m just going to call it a head.
In theory this spot should be in the water tank’s radiation shadow.
New problem. Well new problems. Problem 1) I’m too far away from Orion’s controls to use the radio or see what the radiation meter is saying. I can’t just stay here forever, and I can’t really know when I can leave. Problem 2) remember when I said I “stopped” Orion on this bearing? That was a lie.
See, without friction, there is no such thing as zero motion. In space you’re always constantly twisting and turning on every axis. Your speed could be 0.001 degrees per second, or so slowly that a bacterium would be asking you to get out of its way you slow-poke, but over a thousand seconds (or sixteen point six minutes) you’ve still rotated a degree. Anyways, there’s no way I slowed to 0.001 degrees per second, Orion’s probably rotating at a couple of degrees every minute. This little area of shadow I’ve made for myself is at best ten minutes away from being out of the shadow.
What I need to do is figure out the heading to turn Orion onto in order to cast the water tank’s shadow onto the commander’s chair.
I go to work in the margins of the emergency manual. In space, radiation sources can just be thought of as a direction since everything’s so far away. Basically, like an umbrella blocking the rain, the radiation sensor is now in the shadow of Orion’s most radiation blocking part. Technically I’ve figured out a 3D vector for where the radiation is coming from. Now I need to figure out the 3D vector between the water tank and the commander’s chair (which is where I’m going to need to be), and then how to rotate the Orion to bring those two vectors into alignment.
Thank god a degree in aerospace engineering is good for something. Doesn’t even take ten minutes. The radiation sensor goes back to being baked, but according to my math I’m in the shade. For good measure I take off my two extra radiation vests and put them on the seat behind me - which is where the radiation is coming from. That way I should have five layers of protection in addition to the water tank between my chest and the radiation source.
There’s a problem to all this though - I’m not a good pilot and every few minutes I have to give Orion a nudge of thrusters to keep her where she needs to be. I can’t keep that up indefinitely because I’m burning fuel.
Small bit of pride. A full ten minutes before I get the radio back up with NASA, I find a control panel button labeled “or - lock” and just like that, Orion’s computers are doing the flying again.
So I'm stuck, in the commanders seat, until I figure out how to fix a radiation storm. I probably should have used the head when I had the chance. Note to self.
*******
I’m Nathan H. Green, a science-fiction writer with a degree in aerospace engineering, and I’m going to be doing daily semi-fictional stories tracking the Artemis I mission. You can follow along through my reddit (u/authornathanhgreen).
Artemis I Has A Stowaway is a work of semi-fiction. All incidents, events, dialogue and sentiments (which are not part of the mission’s official history), are entirely fictional. Where real historical figures appear, the situations, incidents, sentiments, and dialogues concerning those persons are entirely fictional and are not intended to depict actual events, personality, disposition, or attitudes of the real person, nor to change the entirely fictional nature of the work. Save the above, any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, events, or locales is entirely coincidental.
© 2022 Nathan H. Green
November 28, 2022
Artemis I Has A Stowaway - Day 13
November 28th, 2022
With comms back up properly the flight surgeon has a look at my toes, and says they’ll probably be ok. NASA spends six hours of horror making me re-enact everything that I did to try and “fix” things. Horror? Remember how I was telling you I could hear Mark cringe over the radio? Yeah, he’s horrified at some of the buttons I decided to mash.
I’ve missed them.
Eventually though they’re down to having me measure how much duct tape is left on the roll, and I’m feeling like life’s getting back to normal. It’s a bit like I just survived some kind of natural disaster and I’ve come home to a dad that can’t really relate, so all he says when he sees me is, “I’m so glad you’re safe - take out the garbage.”
I love you too NASA.
“Alex, this is Charlie,” the radio call comes in while I’m elbow deep in the toilet’s pluming, though at least it’s very clean plumbing. Charlie’s got a really expressive voice actually, good radio voice. I could tell when she was pissed the first time we talked, I could tell when she was thrilled when we got back in touch, and now I can tell she’s in a more business as usual mode.
“Hey Charlie. How’s it going down there?” What else do you say to your former boss’s boss’s boss?
“Honestly Alex, it’s a complete circus. We really would have preferred you not have told folks what was going on when you were trying to get in touch. It’s kicked off a media storm down here.”
“I’m surprised you hadn’t told everyone about me. I mean wouldn’t they find out when I had a trial?”
“The plan was to give you a choice when you got back. A very loud trial with a very long sentence, or a silent plea bargain with a light sentence and the promise this all stays quiet. “
“Magnanimous of NASA.”
“Yeah, well that’s all off the table now. But…” she says, and I can see why radio procedure comes in handy, it would be nice if everyone had to say ‘over’ when they are done with a sentence.
She wasn’t done and continued. “You’ve got a hell of a story right now Alex and we can turn this into a win-win. You give some interviews, tell your tale, emphasize what a good job NASA is doing and what a good ship Orion is, and once you’re back maybe public opinion is so much in your favour, and NASA is so happy with how it all turned out in the end, a slap on the wrist is in the cards.”
“Seriously?” In retrospect I think that was the dumbest thing I’ve ever said in my life. I am pretty sure it made me sound like a five-year-old who had been naughty, and it would have played out for the entire control room to hear.
On the other hand, if you ever do something really cringy and feel terrible about yourself, just close your eyes and imagine a NASA control room. Imagine that huge room filled with the world’s leading experts in their fields, professionals at the heights of their careers, and I guarantee they’ve all done far cringier things than whatever it was you just did.
Long story short, I’m having a radio interview with Oprah. Oh, and I’m not going to jail. Probation, lots and lots of probation, but not jail - assuming Oprah likes me.
Fun story, true story, you know how long I had between “hey maybe it would be a good idea if you did an interview with Oprah, and if you do well you don’t go to jail,” and “hey Oprah, it’s great to meet you”? Thirty-seven minutes.
Mark gave me some good advice going into it though, or, rather he gave me some advice, and I’ll know how good or bad it is once I’m back. “Just talk to her like you would a friend. Be honest, be yourself, don’t worry about making her or her audience like you. Just let them see who you are. People like authenticity and there’s no time to polish you up or focus group what you’re saying, so don’t even try.”
Anyways, Oprah, nice lady. Mostly it was just retelling the story backwards. How I saved Artemis I, then how I snuck onboard. Then the conversation turned to why I snuck onboard.
“You had a pretty recent breakup, didn’t you?” Oprah asked. She has a remarkably soft voice. Is that why she’s so famous? She asks these personal questions and it kind of feels like you’re sitting in the office of a guidance counselor who just wants what’s best for you.
“Yeah. But I didn’t do this to win Jess back if that’s what you mean.” And that was true. But if she happened to come to see me in a different light, and if that light happened to show her why my weird personality quirks were actually admirable skills, and if that revelation made her want to get back together…
“I was wondering how the breakup changed your outlook,” she said.
I probably should have prepared for this. Honestly when I imagined monologuing about what I’d done it was always to a judge and jury, never to the press. The truth? When you love someone, think they’re amazing, want to go see the world with them and have little babies you can dress up as Tesla and Edison… Well, you really want that person to feel the same way about you, to admire you like you admire them. And when, instead, they dump you… they don’t even like you… That sucks in all kinds of ways.
Are you actually worthless? I mean hey you also just got that form rejection letter from NASA telling you that you’re not good enough for your childhood dream. Sure, a degree in aerospace engineering isn’t nothing, but that just means I’m good at math, society’s least sexy and valued skill. I mean seriously if you were playing the video game of life and you could be good at anything, “math” would be a stupid skill tree to select.
I know what you’re thinking, ‘whatever you say to Oprah, don’t say that stuff.’ I said that stuff.
“It sounds a bit like you feel you were in the wrong place. Do you feel like you’re in the right one now?”
“I just saw this empty seat on Artemis I and couldn’t stand the idea of everything I’d always wanted just being… an empty seat that no one was going to take.”
“You’ve broken some laws doing this.”
“Yeah. I didn’t actually stop to figure out which laws exactly, or what the punishment was. But like… it’s obviously got to be all kinds of illegal to do this.”
“What do you think should happen to you when you get back?” Oprah asked.
I really wish I had a PR person. What’s the answer to that? When in doubt, go with the truth.
“Same thing as I think should happen to everyone else who breaks a law. You look at the harm caused, the need to make sure the victims feel vindicated, the need to deter other people from doing what I did or some variation of it, what it would take to stop me from doing this again, and whether I’m a danger to society and need to be isolated. Mix that stuff all together and figure out how long I should be in jail.”
“It sounds like you’re saying you shouldn’t be in jail very long,” Oprah said and, there’s this ambiguity in her tone. I have no idea what she thinks. Is she amused? Is she testing? Is she just putting it out there because I dodged the question.
“I don’t think I’m an evil person… Just naughty.”
NASA didn’t feel like telling me how they thought I did. So I had a Skor bar and when I closed my eyes to sleep, I thanked god that the interview wasn’t playing back in my mind as a horror reel.
***
I’m Nathan H. Green, a science-fiction writer with a degree in aerospace engineering, and
I’m going to be doing daily semi-fictional stories tracking the Artemis I mission. You can follow along through my reddit (u/authornathanhgreen).
Artemis I Has A Stowaway is a work of semi-fiction. All incidents, events, dialogue and sentiments (which are not part of the mission’s official history), are entirely fictional. Where real historical figures appear, the situations, incidents, sentiments, and dialogues concerning those persons are entirely fictional and are not intended to depict actual events, personality, disposition, or attitudes of the real person, nor to change the entirely fictional nature of the work. Save the above, any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, events, or locales is entirely coincidental.
© 2022 Nathan H. Green
With comms back up properly the flight surgeon has a look at my toes, and says they’ll probably be ok. NASA spends six hours of horror making me re-enact everything that I did to try and “fix” things. Horror? Remember how I was telling you I could hear Mark cringe over the radio? Yeah, he’s horrified at some of the buttons I decided to mash.
I’ve missed them.
Eventually though they’re down to having me measure how much duct tape is left on the roll, and I’m feeling like life’s getting back to normal. It’s a bit like I just survived some kind of natural disaster and I’ve come home to a dad that can’t really relate, so all he says when he sees me is, “I’m so glad you’re safe - take out the garbage.”
I love you too NASA.
“Alex, this is Charlie,” the radio call comes in while I’m elbow deep in the toilet’s pluming, though at least it’s very clean plumbing. Charlie’s got a really expressive voice actually, good radio voice. I could tell when she was pissed the first time we talked, I could tell when she was thrilled when we got back in touch, and now I can tell she’s in a more business as usual mode.
“Hey Charlie. How’s it going down there?” What else do you say to your former boss’s boss’s boss?
“Honestly Alex, it’s a complete circus. We really would have preferred you not have told folks what was going on when you were trying to get in touch. It’s kicked off a media storm down here.”
“I’m surprised you hadn’t told everyone about me. I mean wouldn’t they find out when I had a trial?”
“The plan was to give you a choice when you got back. A very loud trial with a very long sentence, or a silent plea bargain with a light sentence and the promise this all stays quiet. “
“Magnanimous of NASA.”
“Yeah, well that’s all off the table now. But…” she says, and I can see why radio procedure comes in handy, it would be nice if everyone had to say ‘over’ when they are done with a sentence.
She wasn’t done and continued. “You’ve got a hell of a story right now Alex and we can turn this into a win-win. You give some interviews, tell your tale, emphasize what a good job NASA is doing and what a good ship Orion is, and once you’re back maybe public opinion is so much in your favour, and NASA is so happy with how it all turned out in the end, a slap on the wrist is in the cards.”
“Seriously?” In retrospect I think that was the dumbest thing I’ve ever said in my life. I am pretty sure it made me sound like a five-year-old who had been naughty, and it would have played out for the entire control room to hear.
On the other hand, if you ever do something really cringy and feel terrible about yourself, just close your eyes and imagine a NASA control room. Imagine that huge room filled with the world’s leading experts in their fields, professionals at the heights of their careers, and I guarantee they’ve all done far cringier things than whatever it was you just did.
Long story short, I’m having a radio interview with Oprah. Oh, and I’m not going to jail. Probation, lots and lots of probation, but not jail - assuming Oprah likes me.
Fun story, true story, you know how long I had between “hey maybe it would be a good idea if you did an interview with Oprah, and if you do well you don’t go to jail,” and “hey Oprah, it’s great to meet you”? Thirty-seven minutes.
Mark gave me some good advice going into it though, or, rather he gave me some advice, and I’ll know how good or bad it is once I’m back. “Just talk to her like you would a friend. Be honest, be yourself, don’t worry about making her or her audience like you. Just let them see who you are. People like authenticity and there’s no time to polish you up or focus group what you’re saying, so don’t even try.”
Anyways, Oprah, nice lady. Mostly it was just retelling the story backwards. How I saved Artemis I, then how I snuck onboard. Then the conversation turned to why I snuck onboard.
“You had a pretty recent breakup, didn’t you?” Oprah asked. She has a remarkably soft voice. Is that why she’s so famous? She asks these personal questions and it kind of feels like you’re sitting in the office of a guidance counselor who just wants what’s best for you.
“Yeah. But I didn’t do this to win Jess back if that’s what you mean.” And that was true. But if she happened to come to see me in a different light, and if that light happened to show her why my weird personality quirks were actually admirable skills, and if that revelation made her want to get back together…
“I was wondering how the breakup changed your outlook,” she said.
I probably should have prepared for this. Honestly when I imagined monologuing about what I’d done it was always to a judge and jury, never to the press. The truth? When you love someone, think they’re amazing, want to go see the world with them and have little babies you can dress up as Tesla and Edison… Well, you really want that person to feel the same way about you, to admire you like you admire them. And when, instead, they dump you… they don’t even like you… That sucks in all kinds of ways.
Are you actually worthless? I mean hey you also just got that form rejection letter from NASA telling you that you’re not good enough for your childhood dream. Sure, a degree in aerospace engineering isn’t nothing, but that just means I’m good at math, society’s least sexy and valued skill. I mean seriously if you were playing the video game of life and you could be good at anything, “math” would be a stupid skill tree to select.
I know what you’re thinking, ‘whatever you say to Oprah, don’t say that stuff.’ I said that stuff.
“It sounds a bit like you feel you were in the wrong place. Do you feel like you’re in the right one now?”
“I just saw this empty seat on Artemis I and couldn’t stand the idea of everything I’d always wanted just being… an empty seat that no one was going to take.”
“You’ve broken some laws doing this.”
“Yeah. I didn’t actually stop to figure out which laws exactly, or what the punishment was. But like… it’s obviously got to be all kinds of illegal to do this.”
“What do you think should happen to you when you get back?” Oprah asked.
I really wish I had a PR person. What’s the answer to that? When in doubt, go with the truth.
“Same thing as I think should happen to everyone else who breaks a law. You look at the harm caused, the need to make sure the victims feel vindicated, the need to deter other people from doing what I did or some variation of it, what it would take to stop me from doing this again, and whether I’m a danger to society and need to be isolated. Mix that stuff all together and figure out how long I should be in jail.”
“It sounds like you’re saying you shouldn’t be in jail very long,” Oprah said and, there’s this ambiguity in her tone. I have no idea what she thinks. Is she amused? Is she testing? Is she just putting it out there because I dodged the question.
“I don’t think I’m an evil person… Just naughty.”
NASA didn’t feel like telling me how they thought I did. So I had a Skor bar and when I closed my eyes to sleep, I thanked god that the interview wasn’t playing back in my mind as a horror reel.
***
I’m Nathan H. Green, a science-fiction writer with a degree in aerospace engineering, and
I’m going to be doing daily semi-fictional stories tracking the Artemis I mission. You can follow along through my reddit (u/authornathanhgreen).
Artemis I Has A Stowaway is a work of semi-fiction. All incidents, events, dialogue and sentiments (which are not part of the mission’s official history), are entirely fictional. Where real historical figures appear, the situations, incidents, sentiments, and dialogues concerning those persons are entirely fictional and are not intended to depict actual events, personality, disposition, or attitudes of the real person, nor to change the entirely fictional nature of the work. Save the above, any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, events, or locales is entirely coincidental.
© 2022 Nathan H. Green
November 27, 2022
Artemis I Has A Stowaway - Day 12
November 27th, 2022
Zero gravity sounds like a lot of fun. But it’s also weird. For example, try celebrating in zero-g. You can’t jump up and down. You can’t run around the room. Most satisfying thing is a kind of twisty half-dancing thing. Anyways, I’m doing that in the commander’s chair of Orion as the computer finishes booting up and doesn’t immediately crash.
The same error message with instructions pops up again, but I’m not paying that much attention.
Now I get that no one likes to eat humble pie, but is NASA seriously so raw about needing my help that they are not going to immediately call and congratulate me on getting Orion fixed?
Surely automated systems onboard are connecting to NASA’s systems and sending them mountains of data about the ship’s current status. Surely…
I try the radio. No answer.
Orion wasn’t designed to have its computer crash - twice. Could the computer be damaged? I spend a minute clicking my tongue, then look a little more closely at NASA’s message to me.
“Error: Comms Frequency Format”, is the dialogue box’s header.
“Freq. Invalid: Alex:Faulty_ARC-5sensor_must_be_disconnected>>EVA>PANEL17>CABL_BUNDL3>CUT_GOLD+RED_WIRE>RESTART”.
Is it possible that NASA managed to update the communication’s system’s frequency to a text string to generate an error message on reboot, and now I’ve got a radio that’s forgotten what frequency it should be on?
Back to my old friend, the emergency procedures manual. Radio - loss of signal. Fortunately, there is actually a segment of the console that looks specialized for radio controls and it’s nice and easy to find all the buttons I’m looking to mash.
I’m making pretty good progress. Good moment for a break. Mostly I’ve been taking breaks to eat when shit is going wrong, and it would be nice to see what it’s like to eat breakfast without the fear of impending doom.
When I get back to Earth I’m never eating a chocolate bar again. They do almost nothing to satisfy hunger.
While I eat, I look at my toes. They swelled up overnight. They basically look like pink/purple balloons at this point, and four toe nails have popped right off. But the good news is that if I try to move them, they hurt more. I think that means the muscles are doing something. Up, and down, both ways hurt. That’s good right?
I wonder what Jess is doing right now? Probably yoga. Why is yoga so much more popular with women than men? Shouldn’t it be a 50/50 thing and stretching feels good to everyone? Actually, how do I know more women than men do yoga? It’s just a guess but none of my male friends have ever asked me to come to the yoga studio with them.
Alright, back to work.
Item 74 on the radio checklist. “Settings > Frequency > Frequency/Encryption > Verify frequency and ACS-1024 encryption enabled”.
The sub-menu opens up easily enough and there is a dialogue box with “ACS-1024”. But then there’s another field, “frequency”, and it says: Alex:Faulty_ARC-5sensor_must_be_disconnected>>EVA>PANEL17>CABL_BUNDL3>CUT_GOLD+RED_WIRE>RESTART”. Well, that’s your problem right there.
You want to know the funniest thing about engineers? Part of our job is to write the documentation for our design work. You know how many essays you need to write to get a degree in aerospace engineering? Zero. You know how may essays you need to write to get a masters in engineering? Zero. You know how many essays you need to write to get a PHD in engineering? One, if you consider a few sentences joining pages and pages of equations, as an “essay”. Point is, you can get through a PHD level engineering program writing fewer sentences than are in the college’s orientation pamphlet. Then you get out into the world, start working, and one of your jobs is to document the heck out of your work.
Someone on the radio’s engineering team either forgot to actually include the frequency I’m supposed to be checking, or just figured every astronaut would have it memorized the same way I know pi to eight digits.
But there is supposed to be a number in that field, and instead it’s instructions.
I tap the blank field and a keypad pops up. It is pretty standard and has a decimal place marker. ‘1,000.0’ the computer accepts that number. ‘1,000.00’ the computer rejects that number. ‘10,000’? Nope. Ok. Progress. ‘80.0’? Rejected.
It takes about a half hour of trail and error but the computer is willing to accept values between 200.0 and 1,800.0. Which means there are only 16,000 possible numbers I could plug in.
If each number takes one minute then it would take 11 days, without sleep or distraction (and I get distracted), to cycle through them all. I’ll be out of air by then, or food, or water, or something else I need to live.
I start at 1,000.0. Why build something with a 1600 demarcation range if you’re going to be at the very top or bottom of it?
Five hours later and I’m up to 1,050.0. I’m going to die because engineers suck at writing. Typical.
When confronted with an absurd task it’s always a good idea to take a step back and ask if you’ve forgotten something, and I had. I forgot the power of nerds. Unforgivable.
Encryption > Off. Frequency > 1,200.0
“Hey! Anyone receiving this!”
Nope. 1,199.8. “Hey! Anyone receiving this? I need some help here.”
Nope. 1,198.6. “Hey! Anyone out there? This is Alex Whelm and I need help!”
Didn’t even make it to 1,180 before I hit pay dirt.
“This is Dallas ATC, please get off this channel.”
Air traffic control in Tampa was even ruder and let me know the FCC was going to be getting a call about my antics. But I guess it was a slow airplane day in Toledo because after the typical ‘stop bothering us’ they came back with a real question: “What’s going on?”
So, I explained it.
“Bull.”
Reality check time. No one was going to believe me. But, do I need them to believe me?
1,186.4. “My name is Alex Whelm, I stowed away aboard Artemis I and the ship suffered a computer failure. I’m trying to find NASA’s frequency but am just scrolling down in 0.2 increments right now. Every hour, on the hour, I’m going to check 800.0 for anything from NASA.”
1,186.2. Same. On the hour I click over to 800.0. “Anyone there?”
“KRC-5 to Alex Whelm - is this a joke? Over”
“No joke KRC-5. I get that you don’t want to call NASA because this really must seem like a prank. But just tweet at them or tag them on Instagram or something, let them know that there is some crazy guy claiming to be Alex Whelm gumming up the radio spectrum trying to find them and that I’ll be at 800.0 on the hour every hour till I find them.”
“KRC-5 to Alex - you’re going to get in a lot of trouble for this you know. Over.”
“We’ll just have to see about that, won’t we. See you in an hour KRC-5.”
I cycle through another thirty calls before the hour’s up. By the time I get back 800.0 is so crowded I can barely hear anyone. They very kindly explain to me I should be using proper radio slang which I guess I knew from movies but on a crowded channel it’s important.
Everyone’s curious. NASA had wanted to keep the whole ‘we have a stow away aboard Artemis I thing’ a secret. Opps.
I do another hour of prank calling the radio spectrum, then zip back to 800.0.
The channel’s dead silent. For about ten seconds. “Artemis I mission control to Alex Whelm, over.” Charlie’s voice might just be the best sound I’ve ever heard.
I think I just made a lot of ham radio operator’s year.
***
I’m Nathan H. Green, a science-fiction writer with a degree in aerospace engineering, and I’m going to be doing daily semi-fictional stories tracking the Artemis I mission. You can follow along through my reddit (u/authornathanhgreen).
Artemis I Has A Stowaway is a work of semi-fiction. All incidents, events, dialogue and sentiments (which are not part of the mission’s official history), are entirely fictional. Where real historical figures appear, the situations, incidents, sentiments, and dialogues concerning those persons are entirely fictional and are not intended to depict actual events, personality, disposition, or attitudes of the real person, nor to change the entirely fictional nature of the work. Save the above, any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, events, or locales is entirely coincidental.
© 2022 Nathan H. Green
Zero gravity sounds like a lot of fun. But it’s also weird. For example, try celebrating in zero-g. You can’t jump up and down. You can’t run around the room. Most satisfying thing is a kind of twisty half-dancing thing. Anyways, I’m doing that in the commander’s chair of Orion as the computer finishes booting up and doesn’t immediately crash.
The same error message with instructions pops up again, but I’m not paying that much attention.
Now I get that no one likes to eat humble pie, but is NASA seriously so raw about needing my help that they are not going to immediately call and congratulate me on getting Orion fixed?
Surely automated systems onboard are connecting to NASA’s systems and sending them mountains of data about the ship’s current status. Surely…
I try the radio. No answer.
Orion wasn’t designed to have its computer crash - twice. Could the computer be damaged? I spend a minute clicking my tongue, then look a little more closely at NASA’s message to me.
“Error: Comms Frequency Format”, is the dialogue box’s header.
“Freq. Invalid: Alex:Faulty_ARC-5sensor_must_be_disconnected>>EVA>PANEL17>CABL_BUNDL3>CUT_GOLD+RED_WIRE>RESTART”.
Is it possible that NASA managed to update the communication’s system’s frequency to a text string to generate an error message on reboot, and now I’ve got a radio that’s forgotten what frequency it should be on?
Back to my old friend, the emergency procedures manual. Radio - loss of signal. Fortunately, there is actually a segment of the console that looks specialized for radio controls and it’s nice and easy to find all the buttons I’m looking to mash.
I’m making pretty good progress. Good moment for a break. Mostly I’ve been taking breaks to eat when shit is going wrong, and it would be nice to see what it’s like to eat breakfast without the fear of impending doom.
When I get back to Earth I’m never eating a chocolate bar again. They do almost nothing to satisfy hunger.
While I eat, I look at my toes. They swelled up overnight. They basically look like pink/purple balloons at this point, and four toe nails have popped right off. But the good news is that if I try to move them, they hurt more. I think that means the muscles are doing something. Up, and down, both ways hurt. That’s good right?
I wonder what Jess is doing right now? Probably yoga. Why is yoga so much more popular with women than men? Shouldn’t it be a 50/50 thing and stretching feels good to everyone? Actually, how do I know more women than men do yoga? It’s just a guess but none of my male friends have ever asked me to come to the yoga studio with them.
Alright, back to work.
Item 74 on the radio checklist. “Settings > Frequency > Frequency/Encryption > Verify frequency and ACS-1024 encryption enabled”.
The sub-menu opens up easily enough and there is a dialogue box with “ACS-1024”. But then there’s another field, “frequency”, and it says: Alex:Faulty_ARC-5sensor_must_be_disconnected>>EVA>PANEL17>CABL_BUNDL3>CUT_GOLD+RED_WIRE>RESTART”. Well, that’s your problem right there.
You want to know the funniest thing about engineers? Part of our job is to write the documentation for our design work. You know how many essays you need to write to get a degree in aerospace engineering? Zero. You know how may essays you need to write to get a masters in engineering? Zero. You know how many essays you need to write to get a PHD in engineering? One, if you consider a few sentences joining pages and pages of equations, as an “essay”. Point is, you can get through a PHD level engineering program writing fewer sentences than are in the college’s orientation pamphlet. Then you get out into the world, start working, and one of your jobs is to document the heck out of your work.
Someone on the radio’s engineering team either forgot to actually include the frequency I’m supposed to be checking, or just figured every astronaut would have it memorized the same way I know pi to eight digits.
But there is supposed to be a number in that field, and instead it’s instructions.
I tap the blank field and a keypad pops up. It is pretty standard and has a decimal place marker. ‘1,000.0’ the computer accepts that number. ‘1,000.00’ the computer rejects that number. ‘10,000’? Nope. Ok. Progress. ‘80.0’? Rejected.
It takes about a half hour of trail and error but the computer is willing to accept values between 200.0 and 1,800.0. Which means there are only 16,000 possible numbers I could plug in.
If each number takes one minute then it would take 11 days, without sleep or distraction (and I get distracted), to cycle through them all. I’ll be out of air by then, or food, or water, or something else I need to live.
I start at 1,000.0. Why build something with a 1600 demarcation range if you’re going to be at the very top or bottom of it?
Five hours later and I’m up to 1,050.0. I’m going to die because engineers suck at writing. Typical.
When confronted with an absurd task it’s always a good idea to take a step back and ask if you’ve forgotten something, and I had. I forgot the power of nerds. Unforgivable.
Encryption > Off. Frequency > 1,200.0
“Hey! Anyone receiving this!”
Nope. 1,199.8. “Hey! Anyone receiving this? I need some help here.”
Nope. 1,198.6. “Hey! Anyone out there? This is Alex Whelm and I need help!”
Didn’t even make it to 1,180 before I hit pay dirt.
“This is Dallas ATC, please get off this channel.”
Air traffic control in Tampa was even ruder and let me know the FCC was going to be getting a call about my antics. But I guess it was a slow airplane day in Toledo because after the typical ‘stop bothering us’ they came back with a real question: “What’s going on?”
So, I explained it.
“Bull.”
Reality check time. No one was going to believe me. But, do I need them to believe me?
1,186.4. “My name is Alex Whelm, I stowed away aboard Artemis I and the ship suffered a computer failure. I’m trying to find NASA’s frequency but am just scrolling down in 0.2 increments right now. Every hour, on the hour, I’m going to check 800.0 for anything from NASA.”
1,186.2. Same. On the hour I click over to 800.0. “Anyone there?”
“KRC-5 to Alex Whelm - is this a joke? Over”
“No joke KRC-5. I get that you don’t want to call NASA because this really must seem like a prank. But just tweet at them or tag them on Instagram or something, let them know that there is some crazy guy claiming to be Alex Whelm gumming up the radio spectrum trying to find them and that I’ll be at 800.0 on the hour every hour till I find them.”
“KRC-5 to Alex - you’re going to get in a lot of trouble for this you know. Over.”
“We’ll just have to see about that, won’t we. See you in an hour KRC-5.”
I cycle through another thirty calls before the hour’s up. By the time I get back 800.0 is so crowded I can barely hear anyone. They very kindly explain to me I should be using proper radio slang which I guess I knew from movies but on a crowded channel it’s important.
Everyone’s curious. NASA had wanted to keep the whole ‘we have a stow away aboard Artemis I thing’ a secret. Opps.
I do another hour of prank calling the radio spectrum, then zip back to 800.0.
The channel’s dead silent. For about ten seconds. “Artemis I mission control to Alex Whelm, over.” Charlie’s voice might just be the best sound I’ve ever heard.
I think I just made a lot of ham radio operator’s year.
***
I’m Nathan H. Green, a science-fiction writer with a degree in aerospace engineering, and I’m going to be doing daily semi-fictional stories tracking the Artemis I mission. You can follow along through my reddit (u/authornathanhgreen).
Artemis I Has A Stowaway is a work of semi-fiction. All incidents, events, dialogue and sentiments (which are not part of the mission’s official history), are entirely fictional. Where real historical figures appear, the situations, incidents, sentiments, and dialogues concerning those persons are entirely fictional and are not intended to depict actual events, personality, disposition, or attitudes of the real person, nor to change the entirely fictional nature of the work. Save the above, any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, events, or locales is entirely coincidental.
© 2022 Nathan H. Green
November 26, 2022
Artemis I Has A Stowaway - Day 11
November 26th, 2022
“Hi, this is the mummified corpse floating outside the Orion spaceship. I can’t tell you how curious I am about who you are! Did Orion just die in lunar orbit and you’re some kind of space salvage person in the distant future? Are you some kind of explorer and Artemis I has become one of those lost ships of the golden age of discovery? Did NASA put together a salvage mission and you’re an astronaut?
Did NASA ever end up going public with the fact that one Alex Whelm stowed away aboard Artemis I and died while trying to repair a faulty sensor causing a computer crash. Because if you’re reading this - that’s exactly what happened.
On the off chance it’s still the early 2000’s when you find this, I’d like to ask a favor. There’s this girl back in Florida, Jessica Hargrave. Could you let her know what happened to me? Let her know I’m sorry that I never really valued how she was trying to help me grow as a person, but that she did make me a better man and I can see that now. Let her know I love her, and she was in my thoughts until the end.
Also, let NASA know their repair instructions sucked!”
You’d think I would have written a goodbye note back on Earth before I left. I probably should have, this is crazy dangerous and was always going to be. Fact of the matter though, it didn’t even occur to me until I stepped into the airlock, and then writing a quick note seemed like a great excuse to avoid going out.
Inventory: You remember that little emergency tool kit? I got that and put it into the thigh pocket on my flight suit. Then I imagined being out in space, opening the case, and all the tools bursting out and floating away in different directions. So, I opened it inside Orion’s cabin, and that’s exactly what happened. Thus, I put a different tool in a different pocket until my flight suit was basically full. The wire cutters went into my right thigh pocket, an adjustable wrench went into my left thigh pocket, the mini-flashlight went into my left forearm pocket, and so on.
For extra fun, I couldn’t find any rope. Rope? You ask. Yeah, rope. See a space suit has little thrusters to let you move around. Puff, puff, puff, and you drift over to the other side of Orion. Puff, puff, pull, and you park yourself within hand distance of hatch 17. Puff, puff, puff, you fly back to the airlock safe and sound. A flight suit on the other hand lacks these things, and so the second you drift away from Orion by more than your arm’s length, you’re lost in space and will die. Thus, tying oneself to the ship would be a good idea - if I had rope. That might have been what one of those plastic ballast cubes were replacing.
Actually, if we’re going to start getting raw about things, how about the fact that the damn space suits are still not ready despite being in development since forever. That’s right folks, NASA is having a heck of a time buying space suits. Not bitter.
You’re probably curious about my legs, since I don’t have the rubber pressure pieces for them, am I just going out into space with bare legs? That would be a bad idea.
It probably wouldn’t kill me. But it could well kill my legs, and I use my legs a lot.
However, my legs are pretty undemanding all things considered. They don’t breathe and I don’t even really need to move them around much. The only real danger that space presents to them is a pressure difference. So, I’ve wrapped both my legs, and feet, tightly with duct tape. Thankfully the rubber pressure bladder underwear is easier to get on this time, and I’ve put about thirty loops of duct tape at the interface point with my legs so that it hopefully won’t leak too much.
The only other thing I’ve got with me is the leg sized air tank from the emergency atmospheric controls. I removed it and attached it to my flight suit’s air intake at my thigh. The valves are compatible, and the tank has a regulator on its valve. Yes, NASA does do a lot of things right.
I was complaining before about the airlock controls. That was also a bit unjust of me. They aren’t that complicated - if you’re a scientist - and I did figure them out.
So, time to do something stupid! I get into the airlock, seal the inner door, and start to depressurize the airlock. When pressure’s at about 50% the regulator on the tank opens automatically and starts to replace the air being lost through the ill fitting rubber pieces, with frigid air from the emergency tank. I immediately stop the decompression. Thankfully there’s a big “abort” button that’s easy to push.
I spend a few minutes feeling stupid. PV=nRT. Idiot PV equals idiot nRT.
The issue is this. When compressed gas expands, such as when it is being released from a high pressure tank into a flight suit, its temperature drops. Which means as soon as that vent on my suit opened, I got a blast of pretty chilly air.
The problem is that this isn’t a “temperature” thing, it’s an energy thing. That probably doesn’t make much sense. Let me explain. Let’s say it’s a cool day and you’re sitting out on a patio feeling cold. The cold air washes over you and sucks a bit of energy from your body. You pull your limbs in, you tighten up your collar, you put on a hat, you do what you can to reduce the energy you’re losing to the air. You have a temperature problem and you can mitigate it by insulating yourself from that temperature difference.
That’s a bit like being poor and owing the bank some money. There are transaction charges, interest, and you can’t afford to do the things you want to do. It sucks. But you cut back as much as you can and it’s a long, slow, suck that will make you miserable for months or years.
You’re probably thinking the air flowing through my suit is like that. A cool breeze on a patio. A bank loan. A temperature problem and I could put on a sweater.
No. I’ve got an energy problem. This is like being in debt to Tony Soprano and he wants his fucking money. That’s the expanding gas from a pressure vessel. It demands a certain amount of energy to expand, and it gets colder, and colder, and colder, in order to strip that energy from the space it is expanding into. I’m a nice, balmy 98.6 degrees? It blows in at a chilly 50 - fuck you, where’s my money. I get cold and drop to 95 degrees? Fuck you, where’s my money? It blows in at a frigid 30. I start going into hypothermia? Fuck you, where’s my money? It blows in at 0. It will rip energy out of my body to expand and all the sweaters in the world won’t help. I might make it a few minutes, but not long.
So… How to borrow money from Tony Soprano and live to tell the tale?
The obvious solution is to borrow a tiny amount of money. The less you borrow, the less the vig kills you. I assume vig means interest. I actually don’t know though. Not a good idea to use slang you’re not sure of, but whatever, I’m about to die.
My flight suit is losing air through the rubber joints in the bladder, if I can stop that then I won’t have to borrow as much from Tony.
The obvious solution involves the glue NASA has onboard to patch leaks in the hull. If I put some of that onto the rubber where it overlaps I can lock it in place, even if it’s not a perfect seal, it would improve things. You ever seen the Wizard of Oz where Dorothy is oiling the Tin Man and freeing up his joints? Well I’d be doing the opposite. The more glue I use, the less I can move. Plus, once I glue this together how do I get it off?
Just cut the flight suit off? Ok, but that makes leaving Orion a one shot thing. I’m in space and it would be nice to have a backup if I need it.
How about more duct tape? How much pressure can a piece of duct tape really hold? Let’s use my life to find out!
The trick is putting the duct tape on the inside of the joints. Takes some doing, but I get there eventually.
Attempt 2. This time it’s a lot better. I get to 70% vacuum before the valve opens, and then it’s an open - close - open - close kind of situation. The air’s cold. But I can probably make it a few minutes. After all, I just have to cut a cable.
However, around the same time I’m thinking about a win on that front, my toes start to hurt - a lot. The duct tape on my legs seems to be doing its job, and even my feet feel ok, but my toes are screaming. Sorry piggies…
I get a bit of luck when the outer airlock hatch opens. Just outside the hatch, on the exterior of Orion, is a panel with four spooled cables. I clip one onto a harness point on my flight suit, and I’m off. I have about the same range of motion as your ninety year old grandfather, but so long as I go slowly, I make progress.
For the first few minutes I’m actually glad for the cold air. I’m sweating. Between my air tank seeming to have a mind of its own and insisting that I hug it against my body, constantly feeling like I’m drifting away from Orion and going to die in space, and my toes insisting that some madman with a vice is trying to crush them, it’s a pretty stressful experience.
Fortunately for me, panel 17 has a simple hand operated latch to open - which I do.
Unfortunately for me, panel 17 opens into a mysterious world of wires. I’d been imagining a nice, slick, clean layout with maybe, maybe, a half a dozen different wire bundles. Actually, I was really hoping there would be exactly five bundles so I could be sure it was the middle one I needed. Oh my god, I was thinking of Star Trek. Every time they open a hatch in engineering it’s so clean and organized and nice, and that’s what I’d been thinking of. I’m an aerospace engineer and I was taking design tips from Star Trek.
There have to be at least thirty damn bundles running through this thing, and now that I’m not moving, the air blowing into my suit is freezing cold.
I’m going to need my hands, and my left is busy holding me onto Orion, so I let go of the air tank. I’m tethered to it by the air feed anyways… Nope. I grab it back. I’d just had a visions of it slowly twisting and somehow unclasping itself from the vent in my thigh and then happily spinning off into space while I asphyxiate. Ok… I sandwich it between my legs. The pen light is a life saver and I start at the top of the mess. It turns out the cable bundles are clearly labeled (thanks NASA), and it only takes a few minutes to find the third. The problem is that cable bundle 3 has at least thirty different wires, and three of them are potentially red and gold.
If I were naming them, I’d say ‘Sunflower - Crimson’, ‘School Bus - Rust’, and ‘Post-it - Brick’. So what to do? I could cut all three, but that seems needlessly risky. This is a decision that’s being made while arctic-cold air is blasting me in the face, and the madman is turning the toe crusher’s screws.
I’m going with School Bus. If it doesn’t work, and I need to come back out and cut another one, then so be it. Pen away, wire cutters out, snip, then fold up the ends of the wires so they’re not in the way, tuck the bundle of cables back as best I can, close the hatch, and bob’s your uncle.
I’m giving some serious thought to the problem of whether I should close my eyes to try and warm them up, or if they might freeze shut if I do that. The air coming into the suit is insanely cold and I’m getting brain freeze just from the air keeping me alive. I try not to blink.
Once the airlock’s pressurized I pop my helmet and spend a few minutes crying. My eyes hurt something fierce. It takes an hour to get the flight suit off and when I strip the duct tape from my legs I take every strand of hair with them. Why women do this voluntarily…
My toes are purple, throbbing, and I can’t move them. It’s hard not to look at them and imagine them turning black and dead. If I had to amputate them, the flight suit’s survival kit has a knife in it… I throw up imagining that. Pro-tip: don’t throw up in space! I’ll be smelling it for days.
I really should try to reboot the computer, but everything hurts. I think I strained my back moving myself around on the space walk, my toes are on fire, my head feels like someone took a hammer to it, and my eye balls are cold against my skull in their sockets. I’m going to bed.
Hey, here’s a funny question: if I cut the wrong wire and I need to fix it, how the heck am I going to do that? Good thoughts to have as you’re drifting off to sleep. But that’s a life-or-death problem for tomorrow.
***
I’m Nathan H. Green, a science-fiction writer with a degree in aerospace engineering, and I’m going to be doing daily semi-fictional stories tracking the Artemis I mission. You can follow along through my reddit (u/authornathanhgreen).
Artemis I Has A Stowaway is a work of semi-fiction. All incidents, events, dialogue and sentiments (which are not part of the mission’s official history), are entirely fictional. Where real historical figures appear, the situations, incidents, sentiments, and dialogues concerning those persons are entirely fictional and are not intended to depict actual events, personality, disposition, or attitudes of the real person, nor to change the entirely fictional nature of the work. Save the above, any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, events, or locales is entirely coincidental.
© 2022 Nathan H. Green
“Hi, this is the mummified corpse floating outside the Orion spaceship. I can’t tell you how curious I am about who you are! Did Orion just die in lunar orbit and you’re some kind of space salvage person in the distant future? Are you some kind of explorer and Artemis I has become one of those lost ships of the golden age of discovery? Did NASA put together a salvage mission and you’re an astronaut?
Did NASA ever end up going public with the fact that one Alex Whelm stowed away aboard Artemis I and died while trying to repair a faulty sensor causing a computer crash. Because if you’re reading this - that’s exactly what happened.
On the off chance it’s still the early 2000’s when you find this, I’d like to ask a favor. There’s this girl back in Florida, Jessica Hargrave. Could you let her know what happened to me? Let her know I’m sorry that I never really valued how she was trying to help me grow as a person, but that she did make me a better man and I can see that now. Let her know I love her, and she was in my thoughts until the end.
Also, let NASA know their repair instructions sucked!”
You’d think I would have written a goodbye note back on Earth before I left. I probably should have, this is crazy dangerous and was always going to be. Fact of the matter though, it didn’t even occur to me until I stepped into the airlock, and then writing a quick note seemed like a great excuse to avoid going out.
Inventory: You remember that little emergency tool kit? I got that and put it into the thigh pocket on my flight suit. Then I imagined being out in space, opening the case, and all the tools bursting out and floating away in different directions. So, I opened it inside Orion’s cabin, and that’s exactly what happened. Thus, I put a different tool in a different pocket until my flight suit was basically full. The wire cutters went into my right thigh pocket, an adjustable wrench went into my left thigh pocket, the mini-flashlight went into my left forearm pocket, and so on.
For extra fun, I couldn’t find any rope. Rope? You ask. Yeah, rope. See a space suit has little thrusters to let you move around. Puff, puff, puff, and you drift over to the other side of Orion. Puff, puff, pull, and you park yourself within hand distance of hatch 17. Puff, puff, puff, you fly back to the airlock safe and sound. A flight suit on the other hand lacks these things, and so the second you drift away from Orion by more than your arm’s length, you’re lost in space and will die. Thus, tying oneself to the ship would be a good idea - if I had rope. That might have been what one of those plastic ballast cubes were replacing.
Actually, if we’re going to start getting raw about things, how about the fact that the damn space suits are still not ready despite being in development since forever. That’s right folks, NASA is having a heck of a time buying space suits. Not bitter.
You’re probably curious about my legs, since I don’t have the rubber pressure pieces for them, am I just going out into space with bare legs? That would be a bad idea.
It probably wouldn’t kill me. But it could well kill my legs, and I use my legs a lot.
However, my legs are pretty undemanding all things considered. They don’t breathe and I don’t even really need to move them around much. The only real danger that space presents to them is a pressure difference. So, I’ve wrapped both my legs, and feet, tightly with duct tape. Thankfully the rubber pressure bladder underwear is easier to get on this time, and I’ve put about thirty loops of duct tape at the interface point with my legs so that it hopefully won’t leak too much.
The only other thing I’ve got with me is the leg sized air tank from the emergency atmospheric controls. I removed it and attached it to my flight suit’s air intake at my thigh. The valves are compatible, and the tank has a regulator on its valve. Yes, NASA does do a lot of things right.
I was complaining before about the airlock controls. That was also a bit unjust of me. They aren’t that complicated - if you’re a scientist - and I did figure them out.
So, time to do something stupid! I get into the airlock, seal the inner door, and start to depressurize the airlock. When pressure’s at about 50% the regulator on the tank opens automatically and starts to replace the air being lost through the ill fitting rubber pieces, with frigid air from the emergency tank. I immediately stop the decompression. Thankfully there’s a big “abort” button that’s easy to push.
I spend a few minutes feeling stupid. PV=nRT. Idiot PV equals idiot nRT.
The issue is this. When compressed gas expands, such as when it is being released from a high pressure tank into a flight suit, its temperature drops. Which means as soon as that vent on my suit opened, I got a blast of pretty chilly air.
The problem is that this isn’t a “temperature” thing, it’s an energy thing. That probably doesn’t make much sense. Let me explain. Let’s say it’s a cool day and you’re sitting out on a patio feeling cold. The cold air washes over you and sucks a bit of energy from your body. You pull your limbs in, you tighten up your collar, you put on a hat, you do what you can to reduce the energy you’re losing to the air. You have a temperature problem and you can mitigate it by insulating yourself from that temperature difference.
That’s a bit like being poor and owing the bank some money. There are transaction charges, interest, and you can’t afford to do the things you want to do. It sucks. But you cut back as much as you can and it’s a long, slow, suck that will make you miserable for months or years.
You’re probably thinking the air flowing through my suit is like that. A cool breeze on a patio. A bank loan. A temperature problem and I could put on a sweater.
No. I’ve got an energy problem. This is like being in debt to Tony Soprano and he wants his fucking money. That’s the expanding gas from a pressure vessel. It demands a certain amount of energy to expand, and it gets colder, and colder, and colder, in order to strip that energy from the space it is expanding into. I’m a nice, balmy 98.6 degrees? It blows in at a chilly 50 - fuck you, where’s my money. I get cold and drop to 95 degrees? Fuck you, where’s my money? It blows in at a frigid 30. I start going into hypothermia? Fuck you, where’s my money? It blows in at 0. It will rip energy out of my body to expand and all the sweaters in the world won’t help. I might make it a few minutes, but not long.
So… How to borrow money from Tony Soprano and live to tell the tale?
The obvious solution is to borrow a tiny amount of money. The less you borrow, the less the vig kills you. I assume vig means interest. I actually don’t know though. Not a good idea to use slang you’re not sure of, but whatever, I’m about to die.
My flight suit is losing air through the rubber joints in the bladder, if I can stop that then I won’t have to borrow as much from Tony.
The obvious solution involves the glue NASA has onboard to patch leaks in the hull. If I put some of that onto the rubber where it overlaps I can lock it in place, even if it’s not a perfect seal, it would improve things. You ever seen the Wizard of Oz where Dorothy is oiling the Tin Man and freeing up his joints? Well I’d be doing the opposite. The more glue I use, the less I can move. Plus, once I glue this together how do I get it off?
Just cut the flight suit off? Ok, but that makes leaving Orion a one shot thing. I’m in space and it would be nice to have a backup if I need it.
How about more duct tape? How much pressure can a piece of duct tape really hold? Let’s use my life to find out!
The trick is putting the duct tape on the inside of the joints. Takes some doing, but I get there eventually.
Attempt 2. This time it’s a lot better. I get to 70% vacuum before the valve opens, and then it’s an open - close - open - close kind of situation. The air’s cold. But I can probably make it a few minutes. After all, I just have to cut a cable.
However, around the same time I’m thinking about a win on that front, my toes start to hurt - a lot. The duct tape on my legs seems to be doing its job, and even my feet feel ok, but my toes are screaming. Sorry piggies…
I get a bit of luck when the outer airlock hatch opens. Just outside the hatch, on the exterior of Orion, is a panel with four spooled cables. I clip one onto a harness point on my flight suit, and I’m off. I have about the same range of motion as your ninety year old grandfather, but so long as I go slowly, I make progress.
For the first few minutes I’m actually glad for the cold air. I’m sweating. Between my air tank seeming to have a mind of its own and insisting that I hug it against my body, constantly feeling like I’m drifting away from Orion and going to die in space, and my toes insisting that some madman with a vice is trying to crush them, it’s a pretty stressful experience.
Fortunately for me, panel 17 has a simple hand operated latch to open - which I do.
Unfortunately for me, panel 17 opens into a mysterious world of wires. I’d been imagining a nice, slick, clean layout with maybe, maybe, a half a dozen different wire bundles. Actually, I was really hoping there would be exactly five bundles so I could be sure it was the middle one I needed. Oh my god, I was thinking of Star Trek. Every time they open a hatch in engineering it’s so clean and organized and nice, and that’s what I’d been thinking of. I’m an aerospace engineer and I was taking design tips from Star Trek.
There have to be at least thirty damn bundles running through this thing, and now that I’m not moving, the air blowing into my suit is freezing cold.
I’m going to need my hands, and my left is busy holding me onto Orion, so I let go of the air tank. I’m tethered to it by the air feed anyways… Nope. I grab it back. I’d just had a visions of it slowly twisting and somehow unclasping itself from the vent in my thigh and then happily spinning off into space while I asphyxiate. Ok… I sandwich it between my legs. The pen light is a life saver and I start at the top of the mess. It turns out the cable bundles are clearly labeled (thanks NASA), and it only takes a few minutes to find the third. The problem is that cable bundle 3 has at least thirty different wires, and three of them are potentially red and gold.
If I were naming them, I’d say ‘Sunflower - Crimson’, ‘School Bus - Rust’, and ‘Post-it - Brick’. So what to do? I could cut all three, but that seems needlessly risky. This is a decision that’s being made while arctic-cold air is blasting me in the face, and the madman is turning the toe crusher’s screws.
I’m going with School Bus. If it doesn’t work, and I need to come back out and cut another one, then so be it. Pen away, wire cutters out, snip, then fold up the ends of the wires so they’re not in the way, tuck the bundle of cables back as best I can, close the hatch, and bob’s your uncle.
I’m giving some serious thought to the problem of whether I should close my eyes to try and warm them up, or if they might freeze shut if I do that. The air coming into the suit is insanely cold and I’m getting brain freeze just from the air keeping me alive. I try not to blink.
Once the airlock’s pressurized I pop my helmet and spend a few minutes crying. My eyes hurt something fierce. It takes an hour to get the flight suit off and when I strip the duct tape from my legs I take every strand of hair with them. Why women do this voluntarily…
My toes are purple, throbbing, and I can’t move them. It’s hard not to look at them and imagine them turning black and dead. If I had to amputate them, the flight suit’s survival kit has a knife in it… I throw up imagining that. Pro-tip: don’t throw up in space! I’ll be smelling it for days.
I really should try to reboot the computer, but everything hurts. I think I strained my back moving myself around on the space walk, my toes are on fire, my head feels like someone took a hammer to it, and my eye balls are cold against my skull in their sockets. I’m going to bed.
Hey, here’s a funny question: if I cut the wrong wire and I need to fix it, how the heck am I going to do that? Good thoughts to have as you’re drifting off to sleep. But that’s a life-or-death problem for tomorrow.
***
I’m Nathan H. Green, a science-fiction writer with a degree in aerospace engineering, and I’m going to be doing daily semi-fictional stories tracking the Artemis I mission. You can follow along through my reddit (u/authornathanhgreen).
Artemis I Has A Stowaway is a work of semi-fiction. All incidents, events, dialogue and sentiments (which are not part of the mission’s official history), are entirely fictional. Where real historical figures appear, the situations, incidents, sentiments, and dialogues concerning those persons are entirely fictional and are not intended to depict actual events, personality, disposition, or attitudes of the real person, nor to change the entirely fictional nature of the work. Save the above, any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, events, or locales is entirely coincidental.
© 2022 Nathan H. Green
November 25, 2022
Artemis I Has A Stowaway - Day 10
November 25th, 2022
There’s opportunity in crisis. Never do two stupid things at the same time. Haste can make any crisis worse. Indecision is worse than wrong decision. The right tool for the right job. There isn’t anything duct tape can’t fix.
The thing about sayings is that you can usually find two completely contradictory ones for any situation - save and except for leading horses to water and pulling cows up trees, those two are just great.
Point is, you technically could look at my situation as a good thing. Somehow, in my button mashing, I’d managed to turn off Orion. And as we all know, the best way to fix a frozen computer is to turn it off and on again. I’d inadvertently turned it off - along with everything else for that matter. Really, at this point, I just need to find an ‘on’ button, and that should be relatively easy… right?
It gets even better from there. The frozen computer checklist is 50 pages long and involves doing things all the hell over the Orion capsule. Probably it’s about diagnosing the problem and fixing it gently instead of just doing a giant power off/on switch flip (which can’t be great for Orion).
The power restart checklist is only one page long and all of the buttons for it seem like they are on a single console, and all pretty obviously labeled. That’s nice.
What’s less nice is that the computer freeze checklist involved a lot of little, anonymous, unassuming buttons. Sure, they were buttons on a spaceship and each one had the potential to kill me in slow and painful ways. But if there was a “blow the ship up” switch you’d figure NASA would have put it behind a plastic cover, and made it red and foreboding…
All the switches on the powerup checklist look exactly as foreboding as that. Plastic protective covers over them, red and yellow caution paint around them, and a very “push this at the wrong moment and everyone dies,” feel to them.
I eat a Skor bar. 500 calories a day is a crappy diet and if I’m going to die, I’d like to do it feeling less hungry.
I feel like if this were a proper space drama there would be something I need to do before I do this. Like move ballast around the ship or rig up some kind of contraption to keep an airlock closed because the reboot cycle automatically opens it.
My problem here is that I literally don’t know how any of this stuff actually works, so I’m just a slightly well educated button masher with poor decision making skills. Well, no point to being a button masher who’s afraid to mash buttons.
“Main Breaker - Reset,” I don’t die.
“Main battery - On,” I don’t die.
“Power Dis. - Auto,” I don’t die.
Three minutes of not dying later and I flip the plastic cover open on a red button labeled “master power”, and say, “On!”
The Orion’s cabin lights flicker and come on. The computers start to hum! The LCD screens burst alive with lines of code cascading over them! I was less excited the first time I saw boobs.
When the boot up finishes, the displays flip back to the same screens they had been frozen on, this time numbers slowly ticking away. I’m reaching for the radio when a dialog box pops up on the display in front of me - and the screen freezes like that.
“Error: Comms Frequency Format” The popup box is labeled.
The contents read:
“Freq. Invalid: Alex:Faulty_ARC-5sensor_must_be_disconnected>>EVA>PANEL17>CABL_BUNDL3>CUT_GOLD+RED_WIRE>RESTART”.
I try the radio. Dead. The computer’s back in a deep freeze and I’m looking at that error message, reading it again, and again, and again.
I need another chocolate bar. Actually, I need a bourbon, but a chocolate bar is all I’ve got.
It takes me four hours to be sure of what NASA’s asking me to do. Why so long? Because I really, really, really, really, want to be wrong about my first impression of that message. I’m just not.
Question: What’s wrong with the ship? Answer: The ARC-5 sensor is faulty. It must be feeding data into the computer that’s unexpected and causing a freeze. Let’s ignore how frustrating it is that NASA’s software is doing that.
Solution: Disconnect the ARC-5 sensor. Sounds simple enough. What is the ARC-5 sensor and should one want to disconnect it, where would one go?
Among the hundreds of index pages in the emergency manual I found two entries for the ARC-5 sensor. Both entries are for checklists relating to Orion’s lunar altimeters. Ok, so it’s some kind of sensor that measures how far Orion is from the moon. Which would explain why this issue popped up in lunar orbit.
So how to disconnect it? Thus begins the real fun of NASA’s message.
You ever wonder whether it’s actually you who’s wrong and everyone else that’s right? Maybe aluminum really should be pronounced alu-min-ium. Maybe vehicle really should be pronounced Vee-hickle. Because, as much as I try, I literally can’t pronounce the phrase extra-vehicular-activity without saying it as extra-Vee-hick-u-lar-activity.
EVA. NASA wants me, the untrained button masher, to go out into space, alone, and tinker with their multi-billion dollar spaceship. I want to put that in context for you, because it kind of sounds semi-reasonable when you just say it. I mean here I am, in space, and when you’re in space, at some point, you’re going to put on a space suit and do something outside the ship, it’s almost expected, like going to Nevada and visiting the grand canyon.
But NASA literally spends years training astronauts for this. Just putting on a space suit is a two man - three hour - job that is practiced again and again and again, because it is so easy to get wrong.
I also do not have a space suit. I have a flight suit (not its official name, but the space suit is the white one, and the flight suit is the orange one). One might think they are similar, except for the color, but they are not.
Let’s say you want to spend the next five hours floating around in space in a space suit. Here’s what that suit needs to do. First of all, it has to hold pressure. It isn’t enough to just have extra air because if it leaks, those leaks are going to push the astronaut around, so it can’t do that.
Second it needs to deliver “air” to the astronaut. You’re probably thinking oxygen. But oxygen isn’t air. Air is a mixture of mostly nitrogen, a dash of oxygen, and a very, very, small percentage of CO2. Too much oxygen and not enough nitrogen? That’s actually toxic over the long haul, and explosive. Not enough oxygen? Ironically that hold your breath feeling comes from the body detecting too much CO2, not a lack of oxygen. You won’t notice it if you’re running low on oxygen, you’ll just start to get giddy, euphoric, and then… sleepy. Dead sleepy.
But that’s an easy problem, really just making sure two valves get twisted in the right ways, compared to the much bigger problem of CO2. Too much CO2 and, well it’s the plastic bag over your head experience. Anyways, in a space suit there are filters that absorb the CO2. The only other alternative is to flush out perfectly good oxygen and nitrogen just because they’re mixed in with the CO2.
A space suit has a complex nitrogen, oxygen, and CO2 filter life support system.
Space is also super hot and super cold without there being a lot of good ways to cool stuff down. Space suits have internal water systems to keep the astronaut at a comfortable temperature, and even then it’s not easy.
There’s also the whole “suit” part of things. People imagine clothing that an astronaut can put on and take off. Really though, you should be thinking mini-space ship. The ISS uses Russian space suits that are popular because they are the only ones in existence that can be put on, or taken off, by one person. They accomplish this by literally having a metal hatch on the back of the suit that you climb in and out of. From crotch to top of the head, the entire back is just metal hatch. Other space suits rely on segments with pressure seals and you kind of assemble the suit around a person.
A flight suit does absolutely none of that stuff. You’re only supposed to wear it in the Orion, and then while you’re strapped into your chair, and instead of all those systems I just talked about the flight suit plugs into Orion and it’s Orion’s systems that handle all that stuff.
It’s also not airtight. The hell you say. No, seriously.
If, and only if, you’re wearing a flight suit that was specifically fitted for you (and you haven’t been on a crash diet and losing weight like crazy), and you’re in a seated position taking advantage of the pressure from being strapped into your seat, then a layer inside the suit made up of overlapping rubber segments will hold a very low pressure seal (and leak moderately while doing so). But you’re plugged into Orion and have all the air in the world so why worry? The pressure the flight suit holds is equivalent to 30,000 feet on earth, or less than half of what you’d get on a beach.
Next problem… I kind of threw away some of those rubber segments back on Earth. Moonikin’s feet were smaller than mine, and my thighs were a lot bigger than its. So the custom made segments just didn’t fit and I tossed them.
Next. I literally don’t even know how to work the airlock. I went and looked. It doesn’t have any buttons that say either “close” or “open”. So thanks for that NASA.
So, EVA, to panel 17. The emergency operations manual, which I’m really starting to think of as a bible at this point, does have a sketch of Orion’s external panels, and there is a panel 17. It’s on the other side of the ship from the airlock, but it exists.
Now once I open that panel - and by the way I have no idea if it’s riveted, screwed, or just latched, shut - I have to find a cable bundle 3.
Question: Do you think that when I open the panel and see a bunch of bundles of cables, there will be some kind of label to tell me which is number 3? Do you think NASA intends me to find a diagram of panel 17 hidden somewhere inside this, literally, 7,482 page emergency manual before I go out there to try this? Or do you think I’m supposed to go out there and it’s the third bundle from the left, or the top which I’m supposed to work on? Because I’ve got no idea.
I can imagine the engineering classes of the future, “so there Alex was, wondering what he should do next, all the while not realizing that the answer was right there in the emergency manual if he’d just thought to look up…” Look up what?
I’m too angry to even read a book.
***
I’m Nathan H. Green, a science-fiction writer with a degree in aerospace engineering, and I’m going to be doing daily semi-fictional stories tracking the Artemis I mission. You can follow along through my reddit (u/authornathanhgreen).
Artemis I Has A Stowaway is a work of semi-fiction. All incidents, events, dialogue and sentiments (which are not part of the mission’s official history), are entirely fictional. Where real historical figures appear, the situations, incidents, sentiments, and dialogues concerning those persons are entirely fictional and are not intended to depict actual events, personality, disposition, or attitudes of the real person, nor to change the entirely fictional nature of the work. Save the above, any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, events, or locales is entirely coincidental.
© 2022 Nathan H. Green
There’s opportunity in crisis. Never do two stupid things at the same time. Haste can make any crisis worse. Indecision is worse than wrong decision. The right tool for the right job. There isn’t anything duct tape can’t fix.
The thing about sayings is that you can usually find two completely contradictory ones for any situation - save and except for leading horses to water and pulling cows up trees, those two are just great.
Point is, you technically could look at my situation as a good thing. Somehow, in my button mashing, I’d managed to turn off Orion. And as we all know, the best way to fix a frozen computer is to turn it off and on again. I’d inadvertently turned it off - along with everything else for that matter. Really, at this point, I just need to find an ‘on’ button, and that should be relatively easy… right?
It gets even better from there. The frozen computer checklist is 50 pages long and involves doing things all the hell over the Orion capsule. Probably it’s about diagnosing the problem and fixing it gently instead of just doing a giant power off/on switch flip (which can’t be great for Orion).
The power restart checklist is only one page long and all of the buttons for it seem like they are on a single console, and all pretty obviously labeled. That’s nice.
What’s less nice is that the computer freeze checklist involved a lot of little, anonymous, unassuming buttons. Sure, they were buttons on a spaceship and each one had the potential to kill me in slow and painful ways. But if there was a “blow the ship up” switch you’d figure NASA would have put it behind a plastic cover, and made it red and foreboding…
All the switches on the powerup checklist look exactly as foreboding as that. Plastic protective covers over them, red and yellow caution paint around them, and a very “push this at the wrong moment and everyone dies,” feel to them.
I eat a Skor bar. 500 calories a day is a crappy diet and if I’m going to die, I’d like to do it feeling less hungry.
I feel like if this were a proper space drama there would be something I need to do before I do this. Like move ballast around the ship or rig up some kind of contraption to keep an airlock closed because the reboot cycle automatically opens it.
My problem here is that I literally don’t know how any of this stuff actually works, so I’m just a slightly well educated button masher with poor decision making skills. Well, no point to being a button masher who’s afraid to mash buttons.
“Main Breaker - Reset,” I don’t die.
“Main battery - On,” I don’t die.
“Power Dis. - Auto,” I don’t die.
Three minutes of not dying later and I flip the plastic cover open on a red button labeled “master power”, and say, “On!”
The Orion’s cabin lights flicker and come on. The computers start to hum! The LCD screens burst alive with lines of code cascading over them! I was less excited the first time I saw boobs.
When the boot up finishes, the displays flip back to the same screens they had been frozen on, this time numbers slowly ticking away. I’m reaching for the radio when a dialog box pops up on the display in front of me - and the screen freezes like that.
“Error: Comms Frequency Format” The popup box is labeled.
The contents read:
“Freq. Invalid: Alex:Faulty_ARC-5sensor_must_be_disconnected>>EVA>PANEL17>CABL_BUNDL3>CUT_GOLD+RED_WIRE>RESTART”.
I try the radio. Dead. The computer’s back in a deep freeze and I’m looking at that error message, reading it again, and again, and again.
I need another chocolate bar. Actually, I need a bourbon, but a chocolate bar is all I’ve got.
It takes me four hours to be sure of what NASA’s asking me to do. Why so long? Because I really, really, really, really, want to be wrong about my first impression of that message. I’m just not.
Question: What’s wrong with the ship? Answer: The ARC-5 sensor is faulty. It must be feeding data into the computer that’s unexpected and causing a freeze. Let’s ignore how frustrating it is that NASA’s software is doing that.
Solution: Disconnect the ARC-5 sensor. Sounds simple enough. What is the ARC-5 sensor and should one want to disconnect it, where would one go?
Among the hundreds of index pages in the emergency manual I found two entries for the ARC-5 sensor. Both entries are for checklists relating to Orion’s lunar altimeters. Ok, so it’s some kind of sensor that measures how far Orion is from the moon. Which would explain why this issue popped up in lunar orbit.
So how to disconnect it? Thus begins the real fun of NASA’s message.
You ever wonder whether it’s actually you who’s wrong and everyone else that’s right? Maybe aluminum really should be pronounced alu-min-ium. Maybe vehicle really should be pronounced Vee-hickle. Because, as much as I try, I literally can’t pronounce the phrase extra-vehicular-activity without saying it as extra-Vee-hick-u-lar-activity.
EVA. NASA wants me, the untrained button masher, to go out into space, alone, and tinker with their multi-billion dollar spaceship. I want to put that in context for you, because it kind of sounds semi-reasonable when you just say it. I mean here I am, in space, and when you’re in space, at some point, you’re going to put on a space suit and do something outside the ship, it’s almost expected, like going to Nevada and visiting the grand canyon.
But NASA literally spends years training astronauts for this. Just putting on a space suit is a two man - three hour - job that is practiced again and again and again, because it is so easy to get wrong.
I also do not have a space suit. I have a flight suit (not its official name, but the space suit is the white one, and the flight suit is the orange one). One might think they are similar, except for the color, but they are not.
Let’s say you want to spend the next five hours floating around in space in a space suit. Here’s what that suit needs to do. First of all, it has to hold pressure. It isn’t enough to just have extra air because if it leaks, those leaks are going to push the astronaut around, so it can’t do that.
Second it needs to deliver “air” to the astronaut. You’re probably thinking oxygen. But oxygen isn’t air. Air is a mixture of mostly nitrogen, a dash of oxygen, and a very, very, small percentage of CO2. Too much oxygen and not enough nitrogen? That’s actually toxic over the long haul, and explosive. Not enough oxygen? Ironically that hold your breath feeling comes from the body detecting too much CO2, not a lack of oxygen. You won’t notice it if you’re running low on oxygen, you’ll just start to get giddy, euphoric, and then… sleepy. Dead sleepy.
But that’s an easy problem, really just making sure two valves get twisted in the right ways, compared to the much bigger problem of CO2. Too much CO2 and, well it’s the plastic bag over your head experience. Anyways, in a space suit there are filters that absorb the CO2. The only other alternative is to flush out perfectly good oxygen and nitrogen just because they’re mixed in with the CO2.
A space suit has a complex nitrogen, oxygen, and CO2 filter life support system.
Space is also super hot and super cold without there being a lot of good ways to cool stuff down. Space suits have internal water systems to keep the astronaut at a comfortable temperature, and even then it’s not easy.
There’s also the whole “suit” part of things. People imagine clothing that an astronaut can put on and take off. Really though, you should be thinking mini-space ship. The ISS uses Russian space suits that are popular because they are the only ones in existence that can be put on, or taken off, by one person. They accomplish this by literally having a metal hatch on the back of the suit that you climb in and out of. From crotch to top of the head, the entire back is just metal hatch. Other space suits rely on segments with pressure seals and you kind of assemble the suit around a person.
A flight suit does absolutely none of that stuff. You’re only supposed to wear it in the Orion, and then while you’re strapped into your chair, and instead of all those systems I just talked about the flight suit plugs into Orion and it’s Orion’s systems that handle all that stuff.
It’s also not airtight. The hell you say. No, seriously.
If, and only if, you’re wearing a flight suit that was specifically fitted for you (and you haven’t been on a crash diet and losing weight like crazy), and you’re in a seated position taking advantage of the pressure from being strapped into your seat, then a layer inside the suit made up of overlapping rubber segments will hold a very low pressure seal (and leak moderately while doing so). But you’re plugged into Orion and have all the air in the world so why worry? The pressure the flight suit holds is equivalent to 30,000 feet on earth, or less than half of what you’d get on a beach.
Next problem… I kind of threw away some of those rubber segments back on Earth. Moonikin’s feet were smaller than mine, and my thighs were a lot bigger than its. So the custom made segments just didn’t fit and I tossed them.
Next. I literally don’t even know how to work the airlock. I went and looked. It doesn’t have any buttons that say either “close” or “open”. So thanks for that NASA.
So, EVA, to panel 17. The emergency operations manual, which I’m really starting to think of as a bible at this point, does have a sketch of Orion’s external panels, and there is a panel 17. It’s on the other side of the ship from the airlock, but it exists.
Now once I open that panel - and by the way I have no idea if it’s riveted, screwed, or just latched, shut - I have to find a cable bundle 3.
Question: Do you think that when I open the panel and see a bunch of bundles of cables, there will be some kind of label to tell me which is number 3? Do you think NASA intends me to find a diagram of panel 17 hidden somewhere inside this, literally, 7,482 page emergency manual before I go out there to try this? Or do you think I’m supposed to go out there and it’s the third bundle from the left, or the top which I’m supposed to work on? Because I’ve got no idea.
I can imagine the engineering classes of the future, “so there Alex was, wondering what he should do next, all the while not realizing that the answer was right there in the emergency manual if he’d just thought to look up…” Look up what?
I’m too angry to even read a book.
***
I’m Nathan H. Green, a science-fiction writer with a degree in aerospace engineering, and I’m going to be doing daily semi-fictional stories tracking the Artemis I mission. You can follow along through my reddit (u/authornathanhgreen).
Artemis I Has A Stowaway is a work of semi-fiction. All incidents, events, dialogue and sentiments (which are not part of the mission’s official history), are entirely fictional. Where real historical figures appear, the situations, incidents, sentiments, and dialogues concerning those persons are entirely fictional and are not intended to depict actual events, personality, disposition, or attitudes of the real person, nor to change the entirely fictional nature of the work. Save the above, any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, events, or locales is entirely coincidental.
© 2022 Nathan H. Green
November 24, 2022
Artemis I Has A Stowaway - Day 9
November 24th, 2022
So, Jess was right. I’m fucked. Fuckety, fuck, fuck, fucked.
You’d think I’d be more pissed off about having killed myself than the 4.2 billion dollar Orion capsule that I’ve broken. But I’m feeling way worse about the capsule right now. Isn’t that weird? Like who cares about an already semi-broken ship compared to their own life? Well, actually Captain Picard would. What would he do in this situation?
“Computer, lights!”
Nope. Still pitch black.
So, what happened is this: I woke up feeling pretty good - considering. I’d basically talked myself into the idea that if Artemis had a button to blow itself up, that button would be pretty clearly labeled as such.
If there’s one thing I’ve learned about my time at NASA, it’s that NASA loves to argue with itself about safety issues. I certainly don’t want to say they try to make things idiot proof, but aerospace engineer proof? Actually, that’s worse, idiots don’t break out screwdrivers, soldering irons, and raspberry pi setups when they want to jerry rig something.
Anyways, as long as I’m being kind of semi-reasonable with what I do, I’ll be ok. Right? Wrong. But at the time I thought I was on the right path.
I tried one last call to NASA telling them what I’m about to do, on the off chance they can listen but not be heard, or on the off, off, off chance that they’ve been messing with me and this is when the joking stops.
Nothing. Alright. Frozen Computer Emergency Procedure “Step 1: P. Mod. S. > On.”
I’m saying it aloud, like it’s somehow more official that way. There is a P. Mod. S. button, I’m just not sure whether a little red LED in its center means it’s on or off. I push it. The little red LED in the button’s center starts to blink.
I say some things that are unfit for publication, then push the button again and it goes back to a solid red LED. Whatever jackass though blinking was a good option for an indicator light should be shot. Flashing if 50% more off than a solid light, but it’s 100% more attention grabbing. Which wins? I’m calling solid light “on”, but at this point if I break this thing then NASA has no one but itself to blame.
By the fifth step my back is just plastered with sweat, and by the seventh my fingers are shaking so badly I’m having to use extra effort to making sure I don’t hit anything around the buttons I’m aiming for.
You know what it feels like? Imagine you were dying and there were a thousand shot glasses in front of you, each filled with a slightly different colored liquid. Twenty of the glasses have a cure if you drink them in the right order, the rest have poison. And you have to pick the magenta shot… Now the lilac… Now the falu one…” What’s falu? Exactly.
“RTZ Mn > I” I say. Push. The Orion shuts down. Total black. No more blinking console lights, no more LCD screens, no more cabin lights. Blackness. I can’t even see my hands. It just so happened the Orion’s windows don’t have a view of the sun for this step, so the only lights are from pin prick stars shining in through Orion’s small windows.
The emergency manual hadn’t warned me this was going to happen. We were right in the middle of a procedure. I couldn’t even see well enough to try and find the button to push it back to where it was.
By the way: space problems. I was “sitting” in the commander’s chair, but that’s a euphemism. Really, I was floating against a twisted, zig zagging, chair that different parts of my back and legs and butt would bump into every few seconds at random. If it wasn’t for the seat belt… i guess it’s actually a harness… anyways if I wasn’t strapped in, I would have just slowly drifted away. In space, chairs suck.
You want to know something else that sucks? Drifting through a totally dark Orion capsule on your way to a bulkhead that you can’t see but you’re going to bump into at any second, all without any feeling of motion. If it hadn’t been for Orion’s windows, and the points of starlight out of them, I would have completely lost my orientation and thrown up.
What should have taken about 20 seconds with light ended up turning into a half hour ordeal. But I eventually did find a flashlight.
If NASA ever wants to pull a really good prank on astronauts, turn off the lights, and have the cabin speakers play what sounds like something scurrying over metal. Even absent the sound, the capsule is spooky as hell.
When I unpress “RTZ Mn” nothing happens, guess it can’t just be “unpressed”.
So, question time. Do I keep going through the computer freeze checklist, or am I now into the total power loss checklist?
I eat a Skor bar, in the dark. I don’t want to waste those flashlight batteries. It’s been a long day so I also might as well get some sleep and come at this fresh tomorrow.
***
I’m Nathan H. Green, a science-fiction writer with a degree in aerospace engineering, and
I’m going to be doing daily semi-fictional stories tracking the Artemis I mission. You can follow along through my reddit (u/authornathanhgreen).
Artemis I Has A Stowaway is a work of semi-fiction. All incidents, events, dialogue and sentiments (which are not part of the mission’s official history), are entirely fictional. Where real historical figures appear, the situations, incidents, sentiments, and dialogues concerning those persons are entirely fictional and are not intended to depict actual events, personality, disposition, or attitudes of the real person, nor to change the entirely fictional nature of the work. Save the above, any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, events, or locales is entirely coincidental.
© 2022 Nathan H. Green
So, Jess was right. I’m fucked. Fuckety, fuck, fuck, fucked.
You’d think I’d be more pissed off about having killed myself than the 4.2 billion dollar Orion capsule that I’ve broken. But I’m feeling way worse about the capsule right now. Isn’t that weird? Like who cares about an already semi-broken ship compared to their own life? Well, actually Captain Picard would. What would he do in this situation?
“Computer, lights!”
Nope. Still pitch black.
So, what happened is this: I woke up feeling pretty good - considering. I’d basically talked myself into the idea that if Artemis had a button to blow itself up, that button would be pretty clearly labeled as such.
If there’s one thing I’ve learned about my time at NASA, it’s that NASA loves to argue with itself about safety issues. I certainly don’t want to say they try to make things idiot proof, but aerospace engineer proof? Actually, that’s worse, idiots don’t break out screwdrivers, soldering irons, and raspberry pi setups when they want to jerry rig something.
Anyways, as long as I’m being kind of semi-reasonable with what I do, I’ll be ok. Right? Wrong. But at the time I thought I was on the right path.
I tried one last call to NASA telling them what I’m about to do, on the off chance they can listen but not be heard, or on the off, off, off chance that they’ve been messing with me and this is when the joking stops.
Nothing. Alright. Frozen Computer Emergency Procedure “Step 1: P. Mod. S. > On.”
I’m saying it aloud, like it’s somehow more official that way. There is a P. Mod. S. button, I’m just not sure whether a little red LED in its center means it’s on or off. I push it. The little red LED in the button’s center starts to blink.
I say some things that are unfit for publication, then push the button again and it goes back to a solid red LED. Whatever jackass though blinking was a good option for an indicator light should be shot. Flashing if 50% more off than a solid light, but it’s 100% more attention grabbing. Which wins? I’m calling solid light “on”, but at this point if I break this thing then NASA has no one but itself to blame.
By the fifth step my back is just plastered with sweat, and by the seventh my fingers are shaking so badly I’m having to use extra effort to making sure I don’t hit anything around the buttons I’m aiming for.
You know what it feels like? Imagine you were dying and there were a thousand shot glasses in front of you, each filled with a slightly different colored liquid. Twenty of the glasses have a cure if you drink them in the right order, the rest have poison. And you have to pick the magenta shot… Now the lilac… Now the falu one…” What’s falu? Exactly.
“RTZ Mn > I” I say. Push. The Orion shuts down. Total black. No more blinking console lights, no more LCD screens, no more cabin lights. Blackness. I can’t even see my hands. It just so happened the Orion’s windows don’t have a view of the sun for this step, so the only lights are from pin prick stars shining in through Orion’s small windows.
The emergency manual hadn’t warned me this was going to happen. We were right in the middle of a procedure. I couldn’t even see well enough to try and find the button to push it back to where it was.
By the way: space problems. I was “sitting” in the commander’s chair, but that’s a euphemism. Really, I was floating against a twisted, zig zagging, chair that different parts of my back and legs and butt would bump into every few seconds at random. If it wasn’t for the seat belt… i guess it’s actually a harness… anyways if I wasn’t strapped in, I would have just slowly drifted away. In space, chairs suck.
You want to know something else that sucks? Drifting through a totally dark Orion capsule on your way to a bulkhead that you can’t see but you’re going to bump into at any second, all without any feeling of motion. If it hadn’t been for Orion’s windows, and the points of starlight out of them, I would have completely lost my orientation and thrown up.
What should have taken about 20 seconds with light ended up turning into a half hour ordeal. But I eventually did find a flashlight.
If NASA ever wants to pull a really good prank on astronauts, turn off the lights, and have the cabin speakers play what sounds like something scurrying over metal. Even absent the sound, the capsule is spooky as hell.
When I unpress “RTZ Mn” nothing happens, guess it can’t just be “unpressed”.
So, question time. Do I keep going through the computer freeze checklist, or am I now into the total power loss checklist?
I eat a Skor bar, in the dark. I don’t want to waste those flashlight batteries. It’s been a long day so I also might as well get some sleep and come at this fresh tomorrow.
***
I’m Nathan H. Green, a science-fiction writer with a degree in aerospace engineering, and
I’m going to be doing daily semi-fictional stories tracking the Artemis I mission. You can follow along through my reddit (u/authornathanhgreen).
Artemis I Has A Stowaway is a work of semi-fiction. All incidents, events, dialogue and sentiments (which are not part of the mission’s official history), are entirely fictional. Where real historical figures appear, the situations, incidents, sentiments, and dialogues concerning those persons are entirely fictional and are not intended to depict actual events, personality, disposition, or attitudes of the real person, nor to change the entirely fictional nature of the work. Save the above, any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, events, or locales is entirely coincidental.
© 2022 Nathan H. Green
November 23, 2022
Artemis I Has A Stowaway - Day 8
November 23rd, 2022
Yeah, the computer is definitely frozen.
That’s really bad because it’s the computer that’s going to fire the engines to get me home and ensure I don’t die a slow, agonizing, death in the cold of space orbiting the moon.
‘That’s impossible! Those computers are triple redundant and can’t just freeze!’ NASA would probably be saying that right now, if the computer wasn’t frozen and they could. But if it’s totally impossible, then why does that double phonebook thick emergency procedures manual have a section for it?
The other thing is, NASA must be trying to fix this. They must have a way to reboot Orion from the ground and have their own fifty page checklist they’re working through. If I start pushing buttons - which they explicitly told me not to do - I might mess up their reboot procedures. Right? I mean that makes sense to me. Maybe they need Sec. Bus. C to not be 0 (or, more accurately B. Sec. C.) and I screw everything up for them.
I eat another Skor bar, and I really think I’m starting to form a negative association here.
Anyways. Reality check. This is the second day the computer is frozen. If NASA have a fifty page checklist that’s about a page per hour. Eventually they’re going to run out of things to try.
I take a hard look at the emergency checklist. The computer failure section is fifty pages long and on first reading I understood about 15% of it.
Take step 47(r) for example. “Set Sec. Bus. C. > 0” I spent three hours looking for a button labeled “Sec. Bus. C.”, “S. Bus. C”, “S.B. C”, “Sec. B. C”, or “Sc Bs C”. Closest I found was “B. Se. C.” I’m pretty sure the reason I’m not seeing the options and buttons it’s telling me to mess with is because they are in sub-menus of the LCD display. Which may, or may not, be working.
A real astronaut would look at this checklist and go “well we can’t do that, that’s in the broken display, so skip it and move on. Me, I go hunting around Orion for anything that looks remotely like it would fit the bill. Because I don’t know what I don’t know. Wonderful.
If I close my eyes and imagine what Mark would be saying to me right now, it’s pretty easy: “Look Alex, just sit tight, we’ve got every computer engineer at NASA working this. I’ll let you know if there’s anything you can do to help.”
It’s pretty hard to imagine Mark saying, “Alright Alex, I’ve got some bad news, we can’t get this fixed from our end and we’re going to need you to take your best shot at that emergency manual. Boy, I wish I could give you some help figuring it out, but you’re just going to have to do your best. Now just start poking at stuff blindly and fingers crossed!”
Fuck.
And I know for sure what Jess would say. “No! Alex, no, seriously. You break half the stuff you try to fix. You’ve got to stop taking things apart!”
My apartment back on Earth was a two bedroom place. One for me to sleep in, the other for ‘projects’. Jess hated the project room. I really just don’t think she ever trusted me. To Jess, whether something worked or not wasn’t as important as the integrity of the manufacturer’s seal. I think she always thought that when I fixed my tv it meant it could randomly burst into flames, or a hacked soda stream machine could somehow poison us.
In fairness there were a lot of things that broke that I failed to repair. But I almost never took something that was working and broke it through an improvement attempt.
You want to know the biggest problem with relationships? In engineering when Part-A fits into Part-B that’s the same thing as saying that Part-B fits into Part-A. In a relationship Person-A can really love Person-B, but Person-B doesn’t have to love Person-A back. Or, as Jess said, Person-B doesn’t have to be “compatible” with Person-A, even though Person-A thinks he is compatible with her.
You know, I’ve set another record - longest without communications with Earth. I can imagine it now, a classroom of engineers a hundred years into the future, “now remember, no matter what you tell people, they can generally wait patiently for no more than 48 hours before they start pushing buttons and trying to save themselves. Just look at Alex Whelm, who made it 51 hours and 28 minutes before he doomed himself by trying to fix things.
I try distracting myself with some science fiction. I get about half-way through Dune, and I rage quit. He can see the future?! Boy wouldn’t that be a useful skill for me to have in my current situation! I’m a damn aerospace engineer and I can’t figure out what to do when the computer on a damn spaceship freezes? That’s the big problem with fiction. You can ask yourself, “what would Insert Heroic and Brilliant Protagonist Here do in this situation?” But you’re not gambling with their life, you’re gambling with your own.
Near as I can figure there does have to be a tipping point that’s based on time. After some time X NASA will have exhausted all it’s good options for repairs and me, incompetently pushing buttons, will become the statistical best bet. 48 hours. It doesn’t sound like that long. But I’m also supposed to be doing correction burns and every day without the computer is a day I get further and further off course.
I’m going to get some sleep, and in the morning, I start pushing buttons.
***
I’m Nathan H. Green, a science-fiction writer with a degree in aerospace engineering, and
I’m going to be doing daily semi-fictional stories tracking the Artemis I mission. You can follow along through my reddit (u/authornathanhgreen).
Artemis I Has A Stowaway is a work of semi-fiction. All incidents, events, dialogue and sentiments (which are not part of the mission’s official history), are entirely fictional. Where real historical figures appear, the situations, incidents, sentiments, and dialogues concerning those persons are entirely fictional and are not intended to depict actual events, personality, disposition, or attitudes of the real person, nor to change the entirely fictional nature of the work. Save the above, any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, events, or locales is entirely coincidental.
© 2022 Nathan H. Green
Yeah, the computer is definitely frozen.
That’s really bad because it’s the computer that’s going to fire the engines to get me home and ensure I don’t die a slow, agonizing, death in the cold of space orbiting the moon.
‘That’s impossible! Those computers are triple redundant and can’t just freeze!’ NASA would probably be saying that right now, if the computer wasn’t frozen and they could. But if it’s totally impossible, then why does that double phonebook thick emergency procedures manual have a section for it?
The other thing is, NASA must be trying to fix this. They must have a way to reboot Orion from the ground and have their own fifty page checklist they’re working through. If I start pushing buttons - which they explicitly told me not to do - I might mess up their reboot procedures. Right? I mean that makes sense to me. Maybe they need Sec. Bus. C to not be 0 (or, more accurately B. Sec. C.) and I screw everything up for them.
I eat another Skor bar, and I really think I’m starting to form a negative association here.
Anyways. Reality check. This is the second day the computer is frozen. If NASA have a fifty page checklist that’s about a page per hour. Eventually they’re going to run out of things to try.
I take a hard look at the emergency checklist. The computer failure section is fifty pages long and on first reading I understood about 15% of it.
Take step 47(r) for example. “Set Sec. Bus. C. > 0” I spent three hours looking for a button labeled “Sec. Bus. C.”, “S. Bus. C”, “S.B. C”, “Sec. B. C”, or “Sc Bs C”. Closest I found was “B. Se. C.” I’m pretty sure the reason I’m not seeing the options and buttons it’s telling me to mess with is because they are in sub-menus of the LCD display. Which may, or may not, be working.
A real astronaut would look at this checklist and go “well we can’t do that, that’s in the broken display, so skip it and move on. Me, I go hunting around Orion for anything that looks remotely like it would fit the bill. Because I don’t know what I don’t know. Wonderful.
If I close my eyes and imagine what Mark would be saying to me right now, it’s pretty easy: “Look Alex, just sit tight, we’ve got every computer engineer at NASA working this. I’ll let you know if there’s anything you can do to help.”
It’s pretty hard to imagine Mark saying, “Alright Alex, I’ve got some bad news, we can’t get this fixed from our end and we’re going to need you to take your best shot at that emergency manual. Boy, I wish I could give you some help figuring it out, but you’re just going to have to do your best. Now just start poking at stuff blindly and fingers crossed!”
Fuck.
And I know for sure what Jess would say. “No! Alex, no, seriously. You break half the stuff you try to fix. You’ve got to stop taking things apart!”
My apartment back on Earth was a two bedroom place. One for me to sleep in, the other for ‘projects’. Jess hated the project room. I really just don’t think she ever trusted me. To Jess, whether something worked or not wasn’t as important as the integrity of the manufacturer’s seal. I think she always thought that when I fixed my tv it meant it could randomly burst into flames, or a hacked soda stream machine could somehow poison us.
In fairness there were a lot of things that broke that I failed to repair. But I almost never took something that was working and broke it through an improvement attempt.
You want to know the biggest problem with relationships? In engineering when Part-A fits into Part-B that’s the same thing as saying that Part-B fits into Part-A. In a relationship Person-A can really love Person-B, but Person-B doesn’t have to love Person-A back. Or, as Jess said, Person-B doesn’t have to be “compatible” with Person-A, even though Person-A thinks he is compatible with her.
You know, I’ve set another record - longest without communications with Earth. I can imagine it now, a classroom of engineers a hundred years into the future, “now remember, no matter what you tell people, they can generally wait patiently for no more than 48 hours before they start pushing buttons and trying to save themselves. Just look at Alex Whelm, who made it 51 hours and 28 minutes before he doomed himself by trying to fix things.
I try distracting myself with some science fiction. I get about half-way through Dune, and I rage quit. He can see the future?! Boy wouldn’t that be a useful skill for me to have in my current situation! I’m a damn aerospace engineer and I can’t figure out what to do when the computer on a damn spaceship freezes? That’s the big problem with fiction. You can ask yourself, “what would Insert Heroic and Brilliant Protagonist Here do in this situation?” But you’re not gambling with their life, you’re gambling with your own.
Near as I can figure there does have to be a tipping point that’s based on time. After some time X NASA will have exhausted all it’s good options for repairs and me, incompetently pushing buttons, will become the statistical best bet. 48 hours. It doesn’t sound like that long. But I’m also supposed to be doing correction burns and every day without the computer is a day I get further and further off course.
I’m going to get some sleep, and in the morning, I start pushing buttons.
***
I’m Nathan H. Green, a science-fiction writer with a degree in aerospace engineering, and
I’m going to be doing daily semi-fictional stories tracking the Artemis I mission. You can follow along through my reddit (u/authornathanhgreen).
Artemis I Has A Stowaway is a work of semi-fiction. All incidents, events, dialogue and sentiments (which are not part of the mission’s official history), are entirely fictional. Where real historical figures appear, the situations, incidents, sentiments, and dialogues concerning those persons are entirely fictional and are not intended to depict actual events, personality, disposition, or attitudes of the real person, nor to change the entirely fictional nature of the work. Save the above, any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, events, or locales is entirely coincidental.
© 2022 Nathan H. Green
