Countdown
#3 of Signals
This is the day you've been waiting for. Your name is David Young, the tiger who will lead America against the Soviets in this all-important Cold War space race. And you couldn't sleep at all the night before. Though you had untill 4:30 to sleep, you were so nervous you sat up the night for this great day, April 12, 1981- the day you leave the homey confines of your planet and go out into the cold, unwelcoming, yet also strangely-enthralling space outside of Earth.
You are lit up with anticipation, nervous and sweaty as a college student before a major exam. NASA has prepared sixty sets of shirts, pants, and underwear all seamless for your extended stay aboard the Columbia Space Shuttle but you're going to have to use one of those sets of clothes right now, if you can't calm down. Finally, after an eternity of waiting you arrive at the launching site- the sky is mostly black, filled with the stars which as a cub, you grew up wishing to visit, with a tinge of purple hinting at the sunrise which will mark your final days on this planet for quite some time.
You knew this would be calling in your life- your father a nuclear physicist, your mother a science teacher and they steered you toward science, which turned out to be the right choice. You zipped through high school, through college with good grades and then flight school, followed by the Academy in Houston where you received astronaut training. Today, the culmination of all your life's dreams will become realized as you hop aboard the Space Shuttle Columbia for a journey of epic proportions.
You've got plenty of clothes for the trip (space does not run a Laundromat), you've got the calcium powder and you know you must work out an hour every single day lest your bones give out due to the weaker gravity- the formal preparations took a year and a half but you'd be the first to admit that you've been waiting your whole life for this day. Right now, you're nervous but you know in four months, you will come back with a great understanding of your place in the universe and people within the scientific community will make you a hero. Like a landlubber who has just made his first voyage on the high seas, you will be a sailor of the solar system and you will live marooned aboard the shuttle for months.
"Coming up on 40 minutes, t-minus 40 minutes and counting. This is Shuttle Control in Houston."
You will be leaving from a launching site near Cape Canaveral, where the Kennedy Space Center is located. Already, you can see the rocket, a spire of NASA achievement rising up from the ground, surrounded at a safe distance by cars all people wishing to be in your moon boots right now. You can hear the blades of choppers, their roving searchlight beams pointed at the metal tube which will be your home for the next few months, slashing the night. This is the magical day when the super-advanced science you had studied at the headquarters in Houston is finally married to the bright dreams you once had a cub of visiting other worlds.
"We are ready for launch. We know of no major problems and we intend to do just fine."
You see in the distance, the very reason for your journey, floodlit in the distance, still hazy for the pre-dawn light. It's the star of this unearthly spectacle, venting vapors the same way a sleeping white dragon would. It is the result of many years of experiments and decades of trial-and error experiences and it is the pride of NASA. It truly is a rocket and an impressive one at that. Minus the boosters, which will fall back to the earth after it has given your vessel a chance to escape the gravitational pull of the atmosphere, this spire of aluminum and metal will house you for months. You hear crackling speakers filled with nervous voices as they start the final countdown.
"All systems check. T-minus nine minutes and counting" as you see the sun and the drama surrounding your ascension to the heavens, start to mount.
There is a charge in the air on this perfect day for space travel as you climb up the spiraling metal tower, now staring out 200 feet above the ground and enter the door into the rocket fearlessly and confidently, the way a NASA astronaut should after spending time at the Academy. You know that mistakes might happen, you could very well die but you have a warrior's resolve and are willing to let that happen. After all, not many of us can say that they have seen the infinity and beauty of space firsthand. You say one last good-bye to your wife, a tigress who has endured so much for your incredible chance at working on the space program to come true, into a camera, as you embark on an odyssey for the sake of science.
The crowds have readied their camcorders and the cars roll by with eyes all staring at you and the rocket you and your friend, Michael Crippen, your wolf classmate at the Academy inhabit. You think of all those people lining up to see their nation's space program- this is a class field trip, morning entertainment for them and it's nothing major to them but to you it means so much more. The excitement and anticipation is so great, you could cut it with a knife, to use the cliche.This great and magnificent technology is so cutting-edge, it could make you bleed just thinking about it- the rest of the world doesn't know or see it but in twenty years, they won't be able to live without it.
You stare over at your fellow astronaut- Michael Crippen- his body smells of wet dog from all the sweating and then you hear it.
"T-minus 20 seconds...
T-minus 15 seconds...
T-minus 10, 9,8,7,6,5,4,3,2,1. We now have main engine start. We have liftoff."
You feel the explosions beneath your feet and pray the rocket doesn't explode but you know that years of training mean that the builders of this rocket had this in mind when they created. Everything has been thought of from the heat-resistant shielding used upon re-entry into the atmosphere to the modifications to the suit used to keep your tail warm during spacewalks, A roar of thunder, similar to the sound that would be made if the entire world exploded, is heard beneath your feet and you can just imagine how it must look outside ot the onlookers. The scorching blast of golden fire is the mark of something brilliant and beautiful rebelling against the laws of gravity, slowly leaving the ground. The rocket, no your rocket is tearing away from the world, with a mighty force, shattering the air with its awesome sound.
You look at the species on the field getting smaller and smaller as you get further away and remember your first plane ride only this time, you will go much higher than 30,000 feet. And they're looking up at this pillar of cloud which leaves smoke lingering behind in the sky. Washington, Toronto, Buenos Aires, London, Moscow, Tokyo, they're all looking at this tiger and this wolf, who will boldly discover the unknown. They are enraptured by you and the adventure you and your friend will undertake. In fascination, with the eyes of the world they stare...