“Part of that Starfire solar-power-plant project,” Boomer said. He could see Sondra shake her head slightly when he said the word Starfire. They were referring to two extra sets of solar collectors mounted on towers between the “top” modules on station, pointing at the sun. “Hard to believe, but those new photovoltaic collectors generate more electricity than all of station’s silicon solar cells put together, even though they’re less than a quarter of the size.”
“Oh, I believe it,” Sondra said. “I can almost explain to you how they’re built and draw you the molecular structure of the nanotubes.”
“Brad talked about them more than once to you, I suppose.”
“Until it’s coming out my ears,” Sondra said wearily.
This part of Sondra’s training to fly the spaceplanes was fully computer controlled, so both crewmembers sat back and watched the computers do their thing. Boomer asked questions about possible malfunctions and her actions, pointed out certain indications, and talked about what to expect. Soon they could only see one station module, and before long all they could see was the docking bull’s-eye, and minutes later the Midnight spaceplane was stopped. “Latches secure, docking successful,” Boomer reported. “Kinda boring when the computer does it.”
Sondra finished monitoring the computer as it completed the postdocking checklist. “Postdock checklist complete,” she said when the computer had finished all the steps. “There’s nothing I like better than a boring flight—that means everything went well and everything worked. Good enough for me.”
“I like to dock it by hand,” Boomer said. “If we have extra fuel on Armstrong or on Midnight, I will. Otherwise the computer is much more fuel-efficient, I hate to admit.”
“You’re just a show-off,” Sondra said. “Cocksure as ever.”
“That’s me.” He paused for a moment, then asked, “How did the ascent feel? I sense you’re still having a little difficulty with the positive Gs.”
“I can stay ahead of them just fine, Boomer,” Sondra said.
“It just looked like you were concentrating really hard on staying on top of them.”
“Whatever gets the job done, right?”
“I’m a little worried about the descent,” Boomer said. “The G-forces are heavier and longer. You only get about two or three Gs in the ascent, but four or five during the descent.”
“I know, Boomer,” Sondra said. “I’ll be fine. I passed all the MiG-25 flights, and I did okay on the S-9 and other S-19 flights.”
“Those were all suborbital—we can avoid the Gs easier because we don’t have to decelerate as much,” Boomer said. “But now we’ll be slowing down from Mach twenty-five. To reduce the Gs I can shallow out the deorbit angle a bit, but then you’ll have to go against the Gs for a longer period of time.”
“I’ve heard the lecture before, Boomer,” Sondra said a bit testily. “I’ll be fine no matter what descent angle you pick. I’ve been practicing my M-maneuvers.” M-maneuvers were the method for tightening the stomach muscles, inflating the lungs, and then grunting against the pressure in the chest to force blood to stay in the chest and brain. “Besides, the EEAS helps a lot.”
“All right,” Boomer said. “Is that like practicing your Kegel exercises?”
“Something you’d like to feel personally?”
Boomer ignored the intimate comment and pointed to the displays on the instrument panel. “This shows that the computer is ready to begin the ‘Before Transfer Tunnel Mating’ checklist,” he said. “I’ll go ahead and initiate it. Since the transfer tunnel will be mated by machine—that’s why we wear space suits—in case the tunnel isn’t secure when we want to exit, we can safely do a spacewalk to reattach it or reach station.”
“Why don’t we just do a spacewalk to get to the station, like President Phoenix did last spring?” Sondra asked. “That sounded like fun.”
“We will do that in a later evolution,” Boomer said. “Your job in this evolution is to learn how to monitor the ship and the station from the cockpit, be able to recognize anomalies, and take action.”
“How long does the cargo transfer take?”
“Depends. There aren’t that many cargo modules on this trip. Probably not long.”
As the transfer tunnel was being mounted into place atop the transfer chamber between the cockpit and cargo bay, Boomer watched mechanical arms from Armstrong Space Station removing pressurized modules from the open cargo bay and carrying them to their proper destinations. The smaller modules were personal items for the crewmembers—water, food, spare parts, and other essential items—but the largest module was last. This was one of the last components of Project Starfire to come up to Armstrong Space Station: the microwave generator, which was to be fitted inside the free-electron laser already on the station to produce maser energy from collected solar-produced electrical energy.
A tone sounded in the astronauts’ helmets, and Boomer touched a microphone button. “Battle Mountain, this is Stallion Three, go ahead,” he said.