Strike Force

Once above three hundred thousand feet at the edge of space, the spikes in the inlets of the four LDPRS engines closed even more. Instead of using the atmosphere to burn jet fuel, the “leopards” engines used borohydrogen tetroxide, or BOHM — nicknamed “boom”—as the oxidizer. The thick soupy substance was a hundred times more efficient as liquid oxygen, and increased the specific thrust of each engine by several thousand percent.

As the numbers climbed, so did the G-forces — the number of times the forces of gravity was being exceeded on the human body. Patrick had pulled as much as twelve Gs before, but only for a few seconds at a time. The G-forces now were not excessive, only about 2.75 Gs (times the force of gravity), but it had been going on for a relatively long time, something that Patrick was definitely not accustomed to. Patrick practiced moving his arms to activate switches on the instrument panel in case voice commands didn’t work, which was a real possibility since his chest felt like someone was sitting on it, and it took effort and control to breathe, let alone speak.

Patrick began to feel as if he had been tackled by the entire Penn State linebacker squad. His vision blurred, then tunneled, and the air was forced out of his lungs — fortunately the life support system immediately sensed this and started shooting pure oxygen into his lungs under pressure to keep him from asphyxiating. Although he was quite uncomfortable, the pressure was not painful, just disconcerting. Could a crewmember stand this kind of pressure flight after flight? he wondered. How long could someone serve with the Black Stallion before something bad happened?

After what seemed like an eternity — but he knew from flying the simulator that it was less than eight minutes — the engines shut down. Suddenly the cockpit was deathly quiet and the G-forces, which had built up to about four times the normal force of gravity, stopped suddenly as well. The sudden quiet and relief from the pressure on his chest made Patrick pause in fear. What caused that sudden stoppage? Was everything OK? Was this the end…?

“General?” Patrick found he had his eyes closed and his breathing had all but stopped. “General sir?” Still no response. Then, louder: “Yo, Muck!”

Patrick took a deep breath, like a free-diver coming up from three minutes underwater, then blurted out, “What?”

“Welcome to space, General,” Boomer said.

Patrick opened his eyes — and he saw the Earth from space for the first time. The view was simply unbelievable. He had to look on his supercockpit display to see what he was looking at: it was northern California and Nevada, all the way from Lake Tahoe to the Pacific Ocean — at least five hundred miles in all directions. The edge of the Earth was rimmed in bluish-white; the sky was absolutely stark black. He still had a sense of altitude and velocity: he could discern differences in altitude of peaks of the Sierra Nevada Mountain range, and he could see enough ground details to get a feeling of how fast they were traveling over the ground. As he watched in absolute awe, the Bitterroot Mountains hove into view, and on the horizon he could start to see the snowcapped Rocky Mountains. The speed was amazing.

“We made it,” Patrick breathed, quickly regaining his composure. “Station check.”

“In the green up here, General,” Boomer said. “You okay up there, sir?”

“I’m in the green.” He moved his arms and shoulders experimentally, then took a couple deep breaths. “Everything seems OK. How did the Stud do?”

“Another typical suborbital insertion,” Boomer said casually. “Altitude seventy-four point two-one miles, velocity Mach twelve point one-two-eight. Fuel flows looked a little high on number four — I’ll give that a check when we get back. Good job, General. You just earned your astronaut wings — any flight above sixty miles is considered a space shot.”

“Thanks, Boomer.” He tore his eyes away from the beauty and grandeur around him and checked all of his instruments, flipping quickly through all of the different display pages on the supercockpit screen. “On course, on speed,” he reported. “Fuel levels in the green.”

“Always the navigator, eh, General?” Boomer chided him. “Sit back and enjoy the ride, sir — you’re in space. Only a handful of humans have ever done this.”