The first time you ever start an Apache, going through preflight checks takes one hour, if not more. After a few weeks at Bastion, Dave and I had it down to eight minutes. And it still felt like an eternity. We were always heavy. Brimming with fuel, bristling with a full complement of missiles, plus enough 30-mm rounds to turn a concrete apartment building into Swiss cheese – you could feel all that stuff holding you down, tying you to Earth. My first-ever mission, a TIC, I resented the feeling, the contrast between our urgency and Earth’s gravity.
