We are back on track!!! Going full speed ahead on the timeline now, the timeline doc stretches out in detail to ~1975, with main events out to ~1990, it's gonna be fun!!
Comments and feedback would be really appreciated! It'd love to hear how y'all are liking these chapters, and it's more than happy to answer any questions! ^.^
Chapter 9 - Cauterize
April 12, 1965
It was a bad time for spaceflight. Nobody knew the true damage caused by the detonation, not even the Soviets who initiated it, and there remained only one way to find out if it was safe. The US launched their Surveyor II probe to try and reach the moon, choosing the safest option of Mare Tranquillitatis, thought to be one of the smoothest sites on the moon. The probe, through a few hiccups, makes it all the way out to the moon, where its engines ignite to slow it down. The signal begins to go rough, signal drowned out by noise as it nears the surface, until it goes indecipherable. Mission control waits for a few minutes, biting their tongues in fear, until the signal clears up. The doppler shift reads a safe landing, and the first image was taken and slowly sent back. It wasn’t pretty though, radiation had messed with the camera onboard, leading to a fuzzy speckled image. But it was the best image taken from the moon’s surface so far. The lander only survived for three days, having barely made it in the first place due to all the toll from the radiation.
June 10, 1965
It hadn’t been so long between satellite launches in several years, but the nuclear detonation forced a temporary stop. Measurements from small Explorer satellites showed that it had died down enough to be relatively safe, the radiation shielding of a crewed spacecraft, or quick passage for a moon mission, providing enough safety. And to prove this, Surveyor III launched through the sparse radiation, showing only a slight error caused from it, much less harmful than the previous mission. The lander quickly made it to the moon, performing the same landing protocol, and pulling it off perfectly. It showed the clearest images of the moon yet, from Sinus Medii. Boulders and craters and far off mountains, the dark abyss of space right above. Showing the incredible engineering used, Surveyor survived the harsh lunar night, twice.
June 29, 1965 - Vandenberg AFB
Taylor “Alright, Cooper, I know this is a bit late for some training, but this is important.”
Cooper “James, we’re launching in five minutes, can this-”
Taylor “If you look out the window there, you can see something our team has engineered, and It’s quite a marvel. We call it a wing.”
Cooper “James-”
Taylor “Might be a bit scary to you, but don’t worry, I’m trained to deal with it”
CAPCOM “Taylor, please-”
Taylor “Make sure to water it when we’re in orbit, otherwise it tends to get real mad, might bite the ship in half.”
CAPCOM “Taylor, stop talking.”
Taylor “Am I scaring the new guy?”
CAPCOM “I’d hope not. We’re all ready to launch now, good luck.”
Cooper “Thank you, Neubeck. Could use people like you over at Gemini”
Taylor “No, no, you’re not poaching our guys, Francis, get us out of here before Gordon steals you”
CAPCOM [laughs] “Alright, countdown is back on, 2 minutes to launch.”
The engines begin to spool up, and the solid motors ready for ignition, finally flaring to life. The two astronauts are pushed back in their seats, this acceleration new to Gordon Cooper, the g-force peaking at 6Gs just before separation. Independence makes it to orbit, and she spreads her wings wide across the Earth. This week spent in space would be used to test radiation levels, as well as perform a rendezvous with a satellite. Gordon was getting the best training there could be, before the rest of the Gemini crew. Taylor did most of the work getting to the target satellite, a modified KH-5 Argon designed to function as a space telescope. Cooper brings it in to dock using the RCS thrusters. Because Independence was designed with a passive docking port, a special adaptor had to be fitted onto the satellite before it was launched. He successfully docked the two spacecraft, and the work could now begin. The adapter had a small airlock mounted to the side, with Taylor going out that exit, and Cooper remaining within the airlock, tinkering with a panel on the satellite to try and connect the two with data. After almost an hour of EVA, the craft were connected, and it was time to stop for the day. For the next few days, observations were made of numerous objects - every outer planet, nearby galaxies, and a few large asteroids. After another EVA to disconnect the two spacecraft, the deorbit burn was done, reentry passed through perfectly, and the craft landed without a scratch.
July 3, 1965
During the spearhead flight, Gemini IV had also launched, carrying Gus Grissom and Charles Conrad into orbit. They would perform several experiments also to do with the radiation, as well as an EVA to test NASA’s own “jet belt”, similar to the ones used for Spearhead. And only 2 days into this mission, another Spearhead would launch.
July 5, 1965
This would be another mission to Fletcher, having gone radio dark since the nuclear blast, AMSA wanted to know if it was still in a habitable state. Robert White and Francis Neubeck slowly manoeuvred towards Fletcher, already looking to be in a sorry state from this far. She was surrounded by a cloud of debris, little tiny flecks of fabric and crystalline ice, requiring a very slow approach. Inside the station, the level 2 light slowly flickers, though it's hard to tell, as the window is covered in soot. They bring Constitution to a 100ft separation, with Francis Neubeck continuing via an EVA. He dons the jet belt and secures a tether to one of the rungs that surround the top hatch, and floats towards Fletcher’s airlock. The first thing he notices is that the door is open, with scorch marks on the base of it, and as he moves to within just a few feet, he sees that the interior is scorched as well.
Neubeck “Shit...”
White “Not good?”
Neubeck “Rob, One of the windows is gone. Everything in here is burnt or torn or both.”
White “Not good.”
Neubeck “There’s nothing to salvage here, I’m returning to the- Shit!”
White “Francis? What happened? Are you ok?”
Neubeck “Tether got wound around the airlock handle and tore. Tying the Spearhead end to one of Fletcher’s rungs to get back. Not trusting the jet belt without a lifeline.”
White “Fletcher has to be haunted, swear to god.”
Neubeck cautiously makes his way across the tether, clinging on for dear life for the 15 minutes it takes to traverse it, climbing back into the hatch of Spearhead and untying the tether, letting it float loose off Fletcher. They depart the station and fly free for a day, conducting their landing perfectly at Vandenberg AFB. No detours to Shemya today!
July 6, 1965
Voskhod was slowly drawing near its end, with only a few more missions planned before the next program, Soyuz, takes over. Voskhod 5 is launched into orbit with Irina Solovyova and Valentina Tereshkova onboard, who on the second day of the mission, conduct the first female spacewalk. A few days later, on the 10th of July, they return to Earth. The reentry burn fails at first, but succeeds with the backup motor, and reentry is largely uninteresting, proceeding perfectly and returning the second and third female cosmonauts back to the Soviet Union unharmed.
July 14, 1965
Falling inwards towards Mars, the Soviet Mars 3 probe began to take photos of the Mars system, especially its moon Deimos. As it drifts closer to mars, the space probe was placed on a path to perform an incredibly close flyby of deimos, bringing it to within 20 km of its surface. The moon appears in higher and higher detail, the intricacies of its surface making themselves known. Sparse craters on its strange somewhat convex shape, a boulder strewn landscape that still seems somehow inviting. Deimos is passed and the craft falls closer to Mars than any probe before, skimming the atmosphere and beginning to induce drag. It didn’t end up succeeding with aerocapture, but it had altered its orbit around the Sun decently so.
August 3, 1965
The next phase of Gemini missions was now underway, Frank Borman and Jim Lovell firmly in orbit, sitting within the capsule of Gemini V. They had not much to do just yet, for their mission needed a second part, Gemini VI.
August 5, 1965
Gemini VI launched two days after V, sending Eugene Cernan and John Young into orbit, and with this, the true missions could begin. Their task was to try and rendezvous - not dock, as Gemini was not capable of this, it would just sit next to it. The two craft, over successive orbits, brought themselves closer together, the faint pinpricks of the other growing into a faint triangle shape in the distance. This grew yet more to the full spacecraft, sitting just a few feet beyond the window. The day came to a close and the two vehicles parted ever so slightly, sitting just under half a mile from each other to make sure no collisions occurred. And in the morning, they brought themselves close together again, preparing for a swap. The pilots of each craft conducted an EVA, swapping to the other vehicle, before closing the hatch and going separate ways. Gemini V would remain in orbit until the 9th, and Gemini VI remained until the 12th.
August 14, 1965
Keeping up the launch cadence, Surveyor IV launches towards the moon, briefly losing contact mid-transit, but successfully landing in Oceanus Procellarum. Its images were much the same as the previous ones, but it still remained prudent to verify this. Boulders and mountains and dust covering everything. So mission control decided to take a risk - there was a bit of fuel left in the lander, so they fired the engine again. It bounced up several hundred feet and then came back in for a landing a second time. This one didn’t go as well. The lander came down slightly off-tilt, crumpling one of its landing legs and leaving it stuck in the soil. It did provide an opportunity to use the sampling arm a second time, thankfully mostly untouched.
August 15, 1965
For every push, a pull. The USSR, hours before the Americans launched Surveyor IV, launched yet another of their own landers, Mechta-12, and placed it on path to the moon. Exactly the same as the previous landers, but with slightly better cameras, and improved temperature control. Its target was Terra Nivium - an area slightly north of the visible centre of the Moon. Surrounded by the seas of serenity, vapours, and tears, it was rather rugged, and would prove to be an interesting site to have images from, if it survived the landing. The retrorockets ignited and quickly slowed the spacecraft down. Back on the ground, mission control was hearing the telemetry come back slowly, verifying that the spacecraft did in fact still exist. The engines cut out and the lander bulb separated from the main carrier craft that slams into the surface a few seconds later. The bulb bounces along the surface, rolling into the centre of a small crater and coming to a stop.
October 16, 1965
After Gemini VI, VII was ready for launch. This would be the first actual “docking” of the Gemini program, though there was no actual mechanism of docking performed, just a cone guiding it in. with some rudimentary latches. Within the capsule, approaching the Agena Target Vehicle, are Neil Armstrong and Michael Collins. They bring it in to rendezvous, and then slowly manoeuvre Gemini towards the docking cone, light puffs of RCS keeping them inline and in motion. The craft clunks against the ATV, having successfully docked, and the crew rests for the day. They remain docked for a day, completing a short boost burn using the ATV’s minimal fuel reserves, and then return to Earth, splashing down in the ocean.
November 14, 1965
Venus swings silently around the sun, her masked appearance an enticing visage to those on earth, wishing to take a close look at what lies beneath. Every crater, every plain, every hill and contour of her surface. She may look like a toxic and forsaken world from above, and that does remain true, hosting a literally hellish environment, but there is increasingly, nothing that humanity cannot engineer something to survive in. Beginning this new Venus window as these two similar yet strikingly different worlds align, the Soviet Union launches their Venera 4 spacecraft, sending it on its way towards mars, carrying a large flyby craft, and a smaller atmospheric entry craft. It plans to break through its atmosphere, parachuting down to its surface, and take measurements all the way down.
November 15, 1965
NASA itself had no equally stunning mission planned, keeping firmly out of the atmosphere, but it would once again scan its robotic eyes across the planet with Mariner 5. As well as this, it would take a rudimentary radar scan of its surface. By far it would not be a good map, but would give a rough idea of the surface under the optically impenetrable cloudy veil.
November 17, 1965
AMSA continued to expand upon its strange interplanetary niche, crafting the Seafarer 3 probe in an attempt to beat the Soviets at landing first. A thick heat shield with a single camera and spectra analyzer, able to operate for about 10 minutes on the surface, just long enough to take and send back meaningful data.
November 28, 1965
Voskhod 6 was a relatively short mission, and the last to feature the modifications to allow for orbital reconnaissance. Crewed with Anatoli Voronov and Aleksandr Matinchenko, they mostly observed Vandenberg, and KSC, trying to get a better sense for their launch operation, as well as other sparse military sites.
December 1, 1965
Fletcher was a lost cause, being completely unfit for human habitation, and all the electronics fried and fired, it was officially declared concluded. But they couldn’t just leave it up there, it would likely reenter within 2 years, and who knows where it could land. Or it could be visited by a Soviet craft, an undoubtedly bad thing, as despite the charred interior, useful insights could still be gained. So on the 1st of December, AMSA launched a deorbiting vehicle. This turned out to be the first ever fully uncrewed docking of two spacecraft, though it was assisted from the ground. It was a Centaur upper stage with a small RCS module and docking port attached to it. The stage and station docked, and its engines fired to deorbit the station into the Pacific ocean, where it would sink and be lost forever.
December 10, 1965 - NPO Lavochkin
The room was quiet, the slow ticking of a clock piercing the otherwise eerie silence. The engineers at NPO Lavochkin had been handed a notice from the higher ups, a request for a new space probe. A rough outline on what would be required; experiments, cameras, a highly efficient engine? A radioactive power source? This all seemed very arbitrary as the engineers and management flicked through the documents. Who would need all of this for a Venus or Mars bound mission? They got their answer.
Spacecraft “Beacon” is destined to encounter Jupiter in two years after launch, and is required to survive the journey. Hard deadline as launch is immovable, October 4, 1967. Beacon should be capable of continuation, remaining active long enough to visit Neptune.
Solar panels would never work that far from the Sun. The slightest change of course from the engine would send the spacecraft careening hundreds of thousands of kilometres off target. This would be a nightmare to build - razor thin mass margins, radiation hardening, size limits for it to fit within the Proton fairing. Lavochkin’s greatest challenge yet.
chapter soon hopefully!!!
