FASTA bulletin
Selene 1A - Launch Control records
It was a warm day of July 12th, and a jubilous one indeed. The first FASTA launch - the first baby step on the way to Selene - was scheduled to take place that day.
The crew at Korolev Spaceport had experience at doing launches. The R7-Soyuz rocket was a proven, stable and reliable design. All systems were checked out throughout several days, and showed green.
Chief Launch Controller Golovko entered the launch control room with a cup of coffee in one hand, and a long checklist in another. His team of technicians greeted him from their consoles...he also noted several hi-ranked foreign guests watching the cavernous room from the supervisor's office.
The technicians have been busy running final pre-launch checks at their consoles. The R-7 rocket was visible on several screens, hanging over her launch pad. It was actually visible through the windows of the room, and several people were watching it with binoculars.
CLC sat down at his spot and put on the headphones. It was time to go to work.
"Selene 1A launch controllers", he patched himself through to the PA system,"Give me a go no go for launch."
"Boosters, go", reporter the booster technician, who would monitor the rocket's performance in the initial stage of flight
"Complex, go", another light lit up on Golovko's console from the Launch Complex Controller
"Telemetry, go"
"Guidance, go"
"Systems, go"
"Meteo, go"
"Relay, go"
All stations were ready. Golovko looked up at the mission clock. Twenty minutes to launch.
The launch pad's PA system came alive just then, as technicians disconnected the fuel lines.
"Attention! We are at 20 minutes to launch! All personell clear the launch site!"
The technicians proceeded to their bunkers at a leisurely pace. It was routine, after all, except for Ivan The Chimp, securely strapped into the Soyuz capsule's center seat.
Time passed slowly. Comona Flight Control confirmed they were ready for launch at five minutes. Final booster checks were done at three. Then, everybody just stared at the clock.
"Fifteen seconds! Fourteen! Thirteen!", the range officer started counting down aloud. The mighty rocket seemed oblivious, completely inert.
At "ten", the range officer turned his key and lifted a protective cover on the abort button. The rocket's engines initiated with a brilliant flash and started building up thrust, with powerful pumps shoving thousands of liters of fuel down to the engine nozzles.
"First stage ignition! Booster ignition!", the boosters tech reported, his voice tense. This was the most dangerous part of any mission.
"Four...three...two...", the range officer held his hand over the abort button. The rocket was almost invisible now, covered in smoke rising up from the pad.
And then something started to go wrong.
"Launch, I've got ignition of the second stage!"
Golovko ran his eyes over the readouts.
"Confirm that it's not a false reading!"
"Negative, ignition on the second stage!"
It was obvious now. The rocket lifted off slowly, as support trussed retracted themselves, but brilliant flame shot out from where the connecting joint between the first and second stages. A moment later, both stages separated.
"Abort, abort, abort!", Golovko screamed to the range officer, who jammed the button.
At the pad, a magnificient spectacle was playing itself out. The first stage was still burning, as was the second. However, separated by explosive bolts, both stages jammed into each other and spinned out of control, their engines still working with enough power to overcome the Earth's gravity well. The first stage, propelled by four powerful strap-on boosters, crashed right into the support structures and exploded, throwing the second stage into a careening, ballistic arc and causing an incredibly huge fire to engulf the launch site.
It was then when the Launch Escape Tower fired, lifting the Soyuz capsule and it's simian passenger away from the self-destructing rocket. But the second stage was already spinning wildly, and so the tower fired at the wrong angle, and slammed straight into the ground along with the capsule it was supposed to save.
Moments later, the second stage smashed straight into a technician's bunker five kilometers away.
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The pad was burning. There was an awful lot of fuel inside the rocket, and it was an extremely volatile mix. Thick smoke billowed into the sky, as rescue teams raced to the site of the catastrophic failure.
While several teams were trying to pull people out of the bunker, one started cutting open the smashed capsule, after clearing parts of the second stage. Deep down, they knew the passenger was just an animal, but most of Korolev's staff has grown attached to the silly little monkey they have been training for so long. It certainly didn't deserve to be left to die inside a metal coffin.
As they finally pulled the thick metal walls of the capsule apart, they saw Ivan. The animal was in obvious pain, its legs crushed by force of the impact and bleeding from the lower abdomen. It looked up, its eyes glassy with pain, not understanding what had just happened, and raised its arms towards the rescuers with a pained expression on its face, as if asking for help.
Only a kilometer away, people were being pulled out of a burning bunker, and they were in obvious pain, too. But somehow, Ivan seemed worse. Everybody at the site knew, deep down, that he didn't even know what happened and why he had to die. He didn't
make a sacrifice for progress - he
was sacrificed to save lives of humans.
Sobbing, the paramedic - the same one who gave Ivan his final medical check-ups - injected the chimp with an overdose of morphine.
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It took eight hours before the fires were finally put out. A dozen people suffered varying degrees of burns, but poor Ivan was the only fatality of the day.
