Dire Planet

Chapter 7: Lair of the Galbran

September 23, 1999

The Mars Climate Orbiter shuddered, rocked by the atmosphere of Mars as it plunged recklessly toward the surface, the bipropellant rockets forcing the craft faster and faster toward inevitable doom. Even as Garvey reached his hand up to cut the rockets he could feel the temperature inside the small craft rise twenty degrees. He flipped the switch and the bipropellant thrusters went silent, but the damage was already done.

Without a doubt the NASA engineers had severely miscalculated the amount of thrust necessary to push the spacecraft into an oblong orbit that would allow him to coast through the edges of the planet’s atmosphere, slowly decelerating the ship for two weeks before he made the final descent to the surface of Mars.

The hydrazine thrusters meant for the descent to the red planet contained just enough fuel to make a safe landing, but only from a carefully decreased orbit and from a much slower speed. Garvey could fire off the hydrazine right now, but he realized that it alone wouldn’t be enough to slow his descent to less than four hundred miles per hour—and that would still guarantee a spectacular crash landing which would leave nothing but little bits of flaming debris.

Garvey could only think of one other possible option. It was unconventional, and Garvey knew that the Orbiter wasn’t built for such a maneuver in atmosphere, but he had to give it a try. His altimeter quickly dropped from one hundred to seventy miles over the planet’s surface as his fingers played over the control panel. The retro rockets at the ship’s side, meant for adjusting the direction of the craft, still contained a bit of fuel. Garvey fired them full on, and the ship lurched sickeningly as it changed direction, twisting around in mid-air.

Now Garvey hit the bipropellant thrusters—a bright flare that burst suddenly from the reversed tail of the ship. The heat tiles of the craft glowed red from the friction of re-entry, and the ship rocked violently the solar wings, that were a vital power source to Garvey, shredding and ripping away as though they were constructed from tissue paper.

The astronaut’s breath came shallowly as he watched his entry speed drop, a small hope flickering in his breast. Just when he thought he might be able to slow his descent enough to make a landing the bipropellant thrusters ran dry, and the ship resumed its unchecked plunge. 

Garvey didn’t know if he had enough fuel in the retro rockets to complete another 360-degree turn, so that he could maneuver his hydrazine thrusters into proper firing position. All he could do was try. His finger depressed the trigger and the retro-rockets briefly flared, dying as soon the ship began to spin. In desperation Garvey hit the button again and again, but it was futile; the fuel tanks for the retro rockets were dry as bone.

Still, the brief burst of the retros had started a spin, and slowly the ship began to rotate—even as it was buffeted by the atmosphere. The heat tiles moaned as they expanded, coloring a molten red. Garvey sat drenched in his own sweat, waiting for the hydrazine thrusters to swing into position.

Slowly the ship rotated, and the moment his only remaining thrusters were pointed toward Mars he lit them up. The hydrazine rockets flamed orange, and the metal of the Mars Climate Orbiter creaked as divergent forces threatened to rip it apart. But miraculously the spacecraft held together, the hydrazine thrusters mightily resisting gravity’s pull.

Mars became an all-encompassing vision that blocked out everything else, its rocky surface flying up to meet the fragile ship. At a thousand feet the hydrazine rockets had slowed Garvey’s descent to less than forty miles per hour. He had to meet a velocity of less than ten miles an hour to land the craft without breaking it to pieces, and by five hundred feet above Mars’ barren surface Garvey brought the ship to thirty miles an hour.