“What?”
“Sky Masters provides various contract services for the armed forces all over the world, and the vast majority of their aircraft, vehicles, and vessels are unmanned or optionally manned,” Boomer explained. “There’s a human pilot and boom operator in a room back at Battle Mountain, watching us via satellite video and audio feeds, but even they don’t do anything unless they have to—computers do all the work, and the humans just monitor. The tanker itself isn’t flown by anybody but a computer—they load a flight plan into the computer, and it flies it from start-taxi to final parking without any human pilots, like a Global Hawk reconnaissance plane. The flight plan can be changed if necessary, and it has lots of fail-safe systems in case of multiple malfunctions, but the computer flies the thing all the way from start-taxi to engine shutdown back at home base.”
“Amazing,” the passenger said. “Afraid your job will be given to a computer someday, Dr. Noble?”
“Hey, I’d help them design the thing, sir,” Boomer said. “Actually, the Russians have been sending Soyuz and unmanned Progress cargo vessels up to the International Space Station for years, and they even had a copy of the space shuttle called Buran that did an entire space mission unmanned. I think I’d rather have a flight crew if I was flying into orbit on a Russian spacecraft, but in a few years the technology will be so refined that passengers would probably never notice.”
As the passenger watched in absolute fascination, the spaceplane glided up under the tanker’s tail, and a long boom steered by small wings lowered from under the tail down toward the spaceplane. Guided by green flashing director lights and a yellow line painted under the tanker’s belly, Boomer moved forward under the tail until the green director lights went out and two red lights illuminated.
“How do you tell when you’re in the right position, Boomer?” the passenger asked.
“There’s a certain ‘picture’ between the tanker’s belly and the windscreen frame that you learn to recognize,” Boomer replied. “Not very scientific, but it works every time. You get a feel for it and recognize if you’re too close or too far away, even at night.”
“You do this at night?”
“Of course,” Boomer said matter-of-factly. “Some missions require night ops, and of course it’s always night where we’re going.” As he was speaking, Boomer pulled off a tiny bit of power, and all forward motion stopped. “Midnight Zero One, stabilized in contact position, ready for contact,” he radioed.
“Roger, Zero One,” the female-voiced computer replied. A nozzle extended from the end of the boom, and moments later they heard and felt a gentle CL-CLUNK! as the tanker’s nozzle slid into the slipway and seated itself in the refueling receptacle. “Showing contact,” the computer voice reported.
“Contact confirmed,” Boomer said. On intercom he said, “All I do now is follow those director lights and stay on the tanker’s center line.”
“If the tanker is fully computerized, shouldn’t the receiver aircraft be able to do a rendezvous by computer as well?” the passenger asked.
“It can—I just prefer to fly the thing in myself,” Boomer said.
“Impressing the VIP on board, right?”
“After what you’ll see today, sir,” Boomer said, “I and my meager flying skills will be the least impressive things you’ll see on this flight.”
“You said ‘bomb,’ not ‘fuel,’?” the passenger said. “We’re not taking on fuel?”
“First we’re taking on a special liquid oxidizer called B-O-H-M, or borohydrogen metaoxide, ‘bomb’—basically, refined hydrogen peroxide,” Boomer said. “Our engines use BOHM instead of liquid oxygen when we switch to pure rocket engines—it’s impossible, at least with today’s technology, to transfer supercooled liquid oxygen from a tanker aircraft. ‘Bomb’ is not as good as cryogenic oxygen, but it’s much easier to handle and far less costly. We don’t take on any ‘bomb’ before takeoff to save weight; we’ll take on jet fuel last so we have the maximum for the mission.”
It took over fifteen minutes to download the thick oxidizer, and another several minutes to purge the transfer system of all traces of BOHM oxidizer before switching over to begin transferring JP-8 jet fuel. Once the jet fuel began transferring to the Midnight spaceplane, Boomer was visibly relieved. “Believe it or not, sir, that was probably the most dangerous part of the flight,” he said.