Green Origen

First Flight

Bob Kerman sat in the passenger seat of the jeep. Next to him was Gus Kerman, operations manager. The final briefing had been just minutes before, where they had revised all the different things that he needed to do and what to do in which case. He just hoped that he wouldn't need to leave the capsule prematurely. They drove towards the VAB, then turned left and drove around it. Then he saw it: The SR_01 'Flea'.

It was a small rocket, just a black pod sitting on top of a solid fuel booster. Attached to the booster were four fins to help with stability and four cylindric containers containing the experiments. On the very top of the rocket the packed parachute could be made out. It had a height of about three metres.

He himself had been involved in designing it, especially the experiment containers. They contained a substance which had shown a very interesting behaviour under different conditions in lab, now they wanted to know what would happen to it during and after high velocity flight. It could be triggered from the cockpit, but due to the specific construction of the exposure mechanism it could only be used once and would then have to be reset manually. This still kept him awake at night, thinking about whether he could somehow make it easily resettable via automation. Bill had been helping him as best as he could, but he was also working on the following models, the SR_02 and SR_03. They would also be equipped with a thermometer, something way simpler to operate.

Now however, he couldn't be thinking about that. They were already stopping in front of the launchpad, where some of the assembly crew were testing a small ladder they had put next to the rocket. Its end was right at the hatch where he would climb through in just a few minutes. Down at the ramp the intern was waiting. She was supposed to help him into the space suit- even if it wasn't suited for EVAs, it would provide him with oxygen if he would leave the atmosphere. This wasn't planned for that day, but the pod and the suit were standardised models issued to all rockets, so that the pilots wouldn't encounter different control surfaces and procedures every flight. He got out of the car after Gus had wished him good luck and went over to the intern. From here he could smell the fresh air and hear seagulls, but he took little notice of them. It took roughly five minutes to get him inside, but then everything was zipped up and ready to go. It was surprisingly comfortable, even walking wasn't too bad. The intern got into the car with Gus and they drove back to Mission Control, leaving only Bob and the assembly crew behind. They got him into the capsule and firmly closed the hatch. There he was, sitting with his back facing the ground, looking at flight instruments and the tiny window behind which lay the beautiful blue sky. After fifteen minutes at T-00:00:05:00, the launch pad was cleared. He was all alone now, far out on the launch pad. He made the last system checks and found no irregularities. Then Gene started counting down the seconds over the radio:

'T-15, 14, 13, 12, 11, 10, 9, 8, 7, 6, 5, 4, 3, 2, 1, Ignition!'

Suddenly a loud roaring filled the capsule and Bob felt an enormous acceleration. The burn continued a few seconds, and Bob had never felt so heavy. Sure, he had received training in the centrifuge, but this was different. Then it just stopped and he felt the biggest contrast ever: From weighing several times his own weight he went to being weightless.
It was awesome.
He started triggering the experiment, as he watched his speed steadily decreasing. Then, after about a minute, Gene made the countdown to Apoapsis. Now he felt his rocket turning, starting to face the ground. First the horizon appeared in the tiny window, then the hills and at last the space center and all the cars parked right by it. At 2500 metres the parachute opened, jerking the rocket back around. Suddenly, Bob experienced a g-force spike and almost puked, but narrowly avoided it. From there the descent went smoothly. At 500 metres the chute fully deployed, slowing the capsule down to around 6.5 m/s.

The landing, even though it had been softened by the soil, was very hard. Minutes later the recovery team helped Bob out of the pod. A decon track had been assembled, he remembered how Gus had been talking about getting one from the firefighters. It was a standard procedure and completely unnecessary, but somebody from security department had insisted on doing it, as it was great training for the team. When finally he sat in the car driving him back, he thought about what had just happened.

It was fast, only two minutes and thirty seconds. Still it was the first step towards a huge adventure, an adventure he was a part of. He wondered where this adventure would take him. The Mun? Minmus? Maybe even an entirely different planet? Anyways, this should have been his first launch out of hopefully many to come.

In the debriefing Mortimer Kerman, the finances manager, talked about the great financial success. 'The second you had landed safely, several people started approaching me and asked whether we were still searching for investors. The way it looks like right now we will get huge amounts of funding from some of the best known companies there are! Just imagine how it will be like when we reach space...' 'And the scientific data we gained! I can't wait for the assembly team to deliver these canisters!', Linus Kerman explained excitedly. Gene just sat there, silent but grinning. Everything was going even better than expected. In only two days two more flights would take place, one more daring than the other. Afterwards they would take at least a one month break in terms of launches, to sort out the gathered data and the work behind the scenes. This was a wonderful day, the first out of many.