Flights for company meeting were the worst. The company always insisted on reserving and paying for the flights themselves, which was fine except for one problem. The guys in charge of scheduling the damn things were all at least 60, and most of them grew up in the age of international airlines. For them, an 11:45 flight sounded reasonably late in the morning. These days? Not so much.
Starting from my house, it was a 2-hour drive to the Sea-Tac airport. The Sea-Tac Elevator was an older model, one of the first built, so the ascent normally took a little less than two days, meaning I’d arrive on station around the same time I got on the elevator. Once on station, you usually could expect an hour in security, and I always left another hour for something to go wrong. Just good sense. So, all told, for me to leave on time for my flight I had to get up by 5:00 A.M. Pacific Time. Which sucked camel wang.
Once I’d made it to the gate, I took about fifteen minutes before boarding to slip into my pressure suit and do a quick check on the seals and emergency oxygen tank. Cabin depressurizations might have been extremally rare these days, but I couldn’t shake the habit of doing a quick preflight check. After all, I’d been making these flights long before they became commercially available, back when you could expect a hull breach every seventh flight or so.
Boarding went quickly and efficiently. With modern shuttles being designed vertically, there was no longer the hassle of dozens of people shuffling along a narrow aisle. Instead, flights loaded by floor from the top, first class being the highest level next to the bridge, where the shuttle was docked to the habitation ring. I normally snagged a seat near the engines; they were cheaper and I didn’t mind the stairs.
Despite all the advertisements for space flight looking like luxury cruises, the reality is a bit disappointing. Unless you’re on a trip for Mars, the outer planets, or Alpha Centauri, commercial space flights look a lot like commercial air flights. Rows of uncomfortable seating and crappy little snacks and drinks to keep you occupied. Biggest difference is no in-flight Wifi. Outside of atmosphere or away from a station data links are too much of a hassle to keep up for any commercial flight to provide. Hell, most private yachts don’t even have them.
Having been old enough to remember taking old airlines as a kid, it always amused me to listen to the new version of the pre-launch safety briefing. Today’s went like this:
“Welcome. This is flight 834, 11:45 to Tycho City. Your captain today is Joseph Swanson, and we will be cruising at a comfortable 1g in our Boeing 969 Long Range Shuttle for the duration of the trip. Travel time is estimated to be about eight hours, so you will be provided a complimentary meal at a time of your choosing, except for the first and last hours of the flight. Please look to your flight attendants stationed throughout the level for the pre-launch safety briefing.
“In the case of an emergency, airlocks can be found on the bottom, middle, and bridge decks. In case of loss of lighting, light strips will activate on all surfaces directing you to the nearest airlock. If the cabin suddenly loses pressure, your suit’s hood and mask will seal automatically and an air hose will deploy from the ceiling. Please calmly attach your air hose to the nozzle mounted on your right shoulder, and lock it in place with a quarter-turn counter clockwise. If you are traveling with a child, please secure your own air supply, then assist the child. Your suits will have a standard emergency air supply for fifteen minutes, so do not feel rushed.
“There will be three periods of zero-g during our flight: Immediately after launch, halfway along when we reposition for deceleration, and during docking. Remain seated and strapped in at all times during these periods until the seatbelt sign is turned off. All loose items must be stored in the provided compartments during these periods. If you begin to feel dizzy or nauseous while in zero-g, please signal an attendant, they will be with you for assistance shortly.
“Lavatories can be found on every level, two near each stairwell. Smoking and tampering with smoke detectors in the lavatories is prohibited by law. For safety reasons, lines will not be allowed to form at the bridge lavatories. We here at Alaska Areo-Space hope you enjoy your flight,”
A bit different from the old ones, but it’s amazing how much is basically the same.
Despite all the warnings you can find on both the shuttle and the station, there’s always some rookie flyers who puke during zero-g. At this point, the commercial flights just expect it, so all the seats have these little automatic vacuums that snag the “vomit-comet” as I heard a long-term spacer call it, before acceleration starts and the bubble splashes everywhere. At least you never see loose items anymore; after a few nasty incidents, all the stations started playing some of the more gruesome footage along the security lines and in the boarding areas. Incidents stopped quickly after that. Amazing what a pencil can do in a low-g environment. Like I said, nasty.
After the initial zero-g following launch, the flight went smoothly. The in-flight meal wasn’t amazing, but it did the job, and it was far from the worst I’d had. A far cry from the protein blocks and vitamin pills we used to get. Looking at space travel now, it’s hard to believe just ten years ago a passenger could expect to be press-ganged into the crew at any moment for an emergency. Those weren’t exactly commercial flights, but the point is still valid. Hell, I’m only thirty-five and I already think of it as the “bad old days” of space travel. If I’m honest, the real reason I sit down near the engines is because the crew down there understand why I twitch at every odd noise the shuttle makes. The other passengers tend to just stare and lean away uncomfortably.
This book was originally published on Royal Road. Check it out there for the real experience.
Those people never had to operate a plasma torch in zero-g with nothing but the rushed explanation one of the shuttle’s crew gave you and some half-remembered company training to go off of. They never saw the stars through the glass of their pressure masks with nothing but the sound of their breath and the hiss of the comms to keep them company. God willing, none of them will ever understand why any veteran space jockey hates unexpected loud noises, or worse, sudden silences. And I’m glad for all that; regular people shouldn’t be forced to do that kind of stuff, to see those things.
It makes you wonder at how the astronauts back from the days of NASA must feel. Back then, you needed three different degrees and years of training to get to space, and making it back was a matter of whether or not you were prepared for all the things that were going to go wrong. I doubt they could have even imagined a world where someone like me could get into space, let alone the people you see on flights these days.
But look at me, getting all introspective. Anyway, my flight arrived at Tycho station a little earlier than scheduled, and an hour later I was in Tycho city, Luna’s best developed commercial spaceport. Eagle’s Landing had more prestige, what with all the vacation resorts and historical monuments, but all traffic routed through Tycho at some point. It had been the first city on Luna to host an elevator and station, and by the time the other settlements had caught up Tycho was already the center of a growing trade network.
My flight had arrived at 13:30 Lunar time (all none-Earth time systems use military), and my meeting wasn’t until around 18:00, so I checked in at the hotel and promptly passed out. A lot of people say that gravity shifts make it hard for them to sleep, but I’ve never had a problem. Who cares if I bounce off the bed three meters when I throw myself on it, I’m tired damnit! Remember, it might have been 14:00 on Luna, but it was about 21:00 back home, and I already had to wake up at 6:00 that morning on the elevator.
Speaking of hotels, I know that most Earthers find it strange that the penthouse suites and other luxury hotel rooms on the moon are usually on the lowest levels, dozens of meters below the Lunar surface. As a man who was around to see a good deal of them built, the reasoning is pretty logical, if a bit morbid. Back at the beginning of Tycho city, before the elevator was built and the “city” wasn’t much more than a few surface facilities over a warren of tunnels, incoming shuttles had to land on the surface. And while it was rare, crashes did happen. So, if you had the money, and the brains, you payed for a room that had a few meters of rock and some air-tight doors between you and any “incidents” that might happen. Ten or so years later, the trend continues, even if the danger has largely passed.
Anyway, the meeting went as I expected. It was just a normal quarterly check-in with the Lunar branch, and they wanted a guy who had enough experience in the lower tiers to understand all the jargon the Loonies spouted. Quick report on production numbers and predictions on meeting quotas and such. Reports on He3 refining and abundance were the most urgent thing we talked about, and even that isn’t as vital since they started skimming Saturn for the stuff. Nothing of importance really. Those kinds of decisions happen elsewhere, usually on Earth. Luna is still a bit too frontier-y for that kind of power.
The rest of the day went without hassle. I got dinner and spent the night in the hotel, and by the next morning I was on another flight bound for Sea-Tac, at a much more reasonable time, thank God.
What do I think of modern commercial space travel? Well, like I said earlier, we’ve come a long way in the past couple of decades. Safety is obviously paramount, and the various agencies have done a great job with that. That isn’t because of the new engines, or shuttle designs, or even the new hull plating. Sure, it’s a lot better than the stuff we used ten years ago, but all that means is that now a micrometeorite has to be the size of a baseball to pierce it, instead of a golf ball. And let me tell you, there are a lot of baseballs whizzing around the Earth. No, the what they did is they made much, much better sensors and computers for the satellite grid. Used to be we couldn’t track or project an object smaller than a softball. Debris that size is still out there, but we know where it is now. Not all of it, but we make up the difference with better sensors on the shuttles too. You ever feel some “in-flight turbulence”? That’s the polite way of saying, “We just dodged a chunk of sputnik going 10km/s, but it’s okay!”
That was the key to safe space travel, not some new plating or warp drive. And look at the results! Not a single lost ship in over five years! Five! That’s still amazing to me. And the future only looks brighter.
Is that it? Okay, great. Have a good one, good luck with the other interviews. The older space jockeys can be an acquired taste.
Recording form an interview with VP Thomas Wan of the Earth-Lunar Mining Corporation, for the Discovery Channel Documentary How Far We’ve Come, covering the development of commercial space flight and inter-planetary mining and travel in the last 50 years. Mr. Wan has been with the corporation since it’s start in 2047, signing on as an engineer at age 23 out of college.
The incident he alludes to in the interview happened during his second year on the job, on his first space flight to Tycho city on an unnamed company shuttle. The incident, simply referred to as the “Tycho Shuttle Accident,” was caused by an undetected piece of debris the size of a grapefruit tearing through the hull, breaching containment, killing the crew’s engineer, and forcing the engines into shut-down scant hours before the scheduled deceleration for Lunar intercept trajectory. As the only passenger with engineering skills and a pressure suit rated for EVA, Mr. Wan went on spacewalk alone to replace several key systems and restart the main engines in time to make their deceleration, saving the entire shuttle. His report following the incident led to changes in pressure suit regulations and the end of several shuttle manufactures, as he raged at the placement of vital components where only accessible from outside the hull, and the lack of pressure suits onboard that would allow a person to be exposed to interstellar radiation without “giving their cancer cancer.”