Voyage

Prologue

This is Ares Launch Control, Jacqueline B. Kennedy Space Center.

We have passed the six-minute mark in our countdown. Now at T minus five minutes fifty-one seconds and counting.

Ares waits ready for launch on Launch Complex 39A.

We are on schedule at the present time for the planned liftoff at thirty-seven minutes past the hour.

Spacecraft test conductor has now completed the status check of his personnel in the control room. All report that they are go for the mission, and this has been reported to the test supervisor.

The test supervisor is now going through additional status checks.

Launch operations manager reports go for launch.

Mission Control at Houston reports that all systems on the Ares orbital booster cluster are also nominal and ready to support the mission. The need to be in plane with the cluster, to enable the docking, is imposing a tight window on today’s launch.

Launch director now gives the go. We are at T minus four minutes fifty seconds and counting.

At launch time, you may wish to look out for flights of pelicans, egrets, and herons, from the marshy land here on Merritt Island. Forty years ago Merritt pretty much belonged to the birds, and they’re still here, although nowadays they’re disturbed every few months by a new launching.

It has taken nine Saturn VB launches so far to put the Ares complex into orbit. Today’s will be the tenth. So nesting isn’t so good anymore.

T minus four minutes and counting. As a preparation for main engine ignition, the fuel valve heaters have been turned on. T minus three minutes fifty-four seconds and counting. The final fuel purge on the main engines has been started. That’s the vapor you can see there, billowing across the launchpad, away from the Saturn booster.

The liquid oxygen replenish system has been turned off, so we can pressurize the tanks for the launch.

The wind is below ten knots, and we have a thin cloud layer. That’s pretty nearly perfect launch weather, well within mission parameters.

It is typically hot, humid Florida weather here, on this historic day, Thursday, March 21, 1985.

T minus three minutes forty seconds and counting.

I am told that there are an estimated one million here with us today, the largest turnout for a launch since Apollo 11. Welcome to all of you. You might like to know that among the celebrities watching the launch today in the VIP enclosure are Apollo 11 astronauts Neil Armstrong, Joe Muldoon, and Michael Collins, cosmonaut Vladimir Viktorenko, along with Liza Minnelli, Clint Eastwood, Steven Spielberg, George Lucas, William Shatner, sci-fi authors Arthur C. Clarke, Ray Bradbury, and Isaac Asimov, and singer John Denver. We’re sure you aren’t going to be disappointed.

T minus three minutes twenty seconds and counting. Ares is now on internal power.

Coming up on T minus three minutes.

T minus three minutes and counting.

The engine gimbal check is under way, to ensure that the engines are moving freely, ready for flight control.

T minus two minutes fifty-two seconds. The liquid oxygen valves on both stages have been closed and pressurization of fuel and oxidizer tanks has begun.

T minus two minutes twenty-five seconds and counting. The liquid oxygen tanks are now at fight pressure.

Coming up on two minutes away from launch.

T minus two minutes mark, and counting. Two minutes from launch.

The liquid hydrogen vent valves have been closed and the hydrogen tanks’ flight pressurization is under way.

T minus one minute fifty seconds and counting. No holds so far.

Capcom John Young has just said, “Smooth ride, baby,” to astronauts Phil Stone, Ralph Gershon, and Natalie York Mission Commander Stone has replied, “Thank you very much, we know it will be a good fight.”

T minus one minute thirty-five seconds and counting.

T minus one minute ten seconds and counting. All liquid hydrogen tanks are at fight pressure.

T minus one minute, mark, and counting.

The firing system for the sound-suppression water system will be armed just a couple of seconds from now.

The firing system has now been armed.

T minus forty-five seconds and counting.

T minus forty seconds and counting. The development fight instrumentation recorders are on. We are still go with Ares.

Astronaut Stone reports “It feels good.”

T minus thirty seconds.

We are just a few seconds away from switching on the redundant sequence. This is the automatic system for engine cutoff.

T minus twenty-seven seconds and counting.

We have go for redundant sequence start.

T minus twenty seconds and counting. Sound-suppression system fired. Solid Rocket Boosters armed.

T minus fifteen, fourteen, thirteen.

T minus ten, nine, eight.

Main engine start.