Project Enterprise

“Emergency in Space” Houston, TX The day shift at mission control had just come on duty and the mission control commander, former astronaut Pete Crown, was finishing his briefing before the controllers manned their stations. Suddenly over the loud speakers in main control the space shuttle Enterprise Mission Commander broke the relative silence with the words, “Houston this is Enterprise. We have a problem. Over.” All hands froze in their tracks as if stunned by a laser gun. It was not something anyone ever wanted to hear. They were prepared for almost any emergency but still the words were chilling to hear. The controllers reacted by immediately checking their consoles to see if anyone could determine the problem. Pete keyed his mike and responded to Enterprise. “Enterprise, this is mission control. What is your problem? Over.” Paul Anderson, Enterprise Commander, in a clear and concise voice reported, “We have lost all the fuel to our maneuvering thrusters and our main engine. We have the vehicle under control and have stabilized it in a neutral position.” “Roger,” Pete responded. “Give us a minute to check our calculations and confer on the problem.” Pete’s heart rate was well up over 150 beats per minute and he immediately knew this was going to be a serious situation. He switched over to intercom and started an inquiry with all the controllers. Shuttle systems monitor was the first controller to report. “We observe that all indications from our telemetry concur with Paul’s initial observation. All fuel on the shuttle has been lost for some unknown reason.” Human resources next reported that all astronauts appeared to be okay except of course their heart rates were outside the normal range due to the nature of the emergency. The controller reported that oxygen supply was measured at 96 hours remaining based on normal usage. There were 7 astronauts on board Enterprise and all were experienced space travelers. They would remain calm in the face of danger and hopefully NASA’s Houston team would solve their problem. Reentry or lack of capability for reentry would be their main problem. Washington, D.C. Communications officer for the Office of Polar Programs at the National Science Foundation, Ken Nichols, burst into Director Jack Forester’s office shouting for Jack to turn on his television and tune to Fox News. As he did the newsman was just reporting that there was a problem with the space shuttle and describing the nature of the problem. It had been a busy week for Jack Forester at the National Science Foundation. His main assignment was managing the Office of Polar Programs but additionally, his real responsibility was for the operation of the Antigravity Flight Vehicle Program (AFV), a top-secret program whose vehicles were often identified as UFOs. Jack had been the chief architect and manager of the program since his retirement from the U.S. Navy. While on active duty with the Navy he had been an Antigravity Flight Vehicle (AFV) pilot with Antarctic Development Squadron Six (VXE-6). The AFVs had been shadowing the space flight and Jack asked Ken if he had any reports from operations in Utah concerning anything the AFVs might have observed on their flights. He directed Ken to contact Jack Shepard, operations director in Utah for the AFV program, and obtain any information they had and report back to him. Ken left Jack’s office for the communications center to deal with Jack’s request. As Jack watched the television his mind drifted back to the early days of the AFV program. One of the responsibilities of the program was to shadow the United States space flights in case trouble developed. The AFVs were passive but could become active if needed for rescue or just for observing and making suggestions on solving problems. He recalled John Glenn’s first orbital flight in the Mercury program. On his first orbit while moving onward above the Pacific over Canton Island, Glenn experienced a short 45-minute night and prepared his periscope for viewing his first sunrise in orbit. As the day dawned over the island, he saw literally thousands of "little specks, brilliant specks, floating around outside the capsule." Glenn's first impression was that the spacecraft was tumbling or that he was looking into a star field, but a quick hard look out of the capsule window corrected this momentary illusion. He definitely thought the luminescent "fireflies," as he dubbed the specks, were streaming past his spacecraft from ahead. They seemed to flow leisurely but not to be originating from any part of the capsule. As Friendship 7 sped over the Pacific expanse into brighter sunlight, the "fireflies" disappeared. They were in fact particles from one of the AFVs, which unbeknownst to Glenn, was escorting him just in case of a problem. The AFV pilot called it “Search and rescue of the third kind.” The AFV had stayed out of visual sight of the periscope, which was mounted in the Friendship 7 spacecraft, and continued to monitor the flight from a longer distance. Subsequently, on the very next orbital flight, Scott Carpenter flying Aurora 7 experienced trouble with his automatic flight control system. At the retrofire event, the pitch horizon scanner malfunctioned, forcing Carpenter to manually control his reentry, which caused him to overshoot the planned splashdown point by 250 mi. Harvey Elkington was shadowing the flight that day and followed the spacecraft all the way to splash down. He fixed his position to be 19deg 29min North 64deg 05min West. The spacecraft was intact and Carpenter appeared to be okay except for the 45º list of the capsule. The recovery task force was some 250 miles from this point so Harvey climbed for altitude and broke radio silence transmitting the capsule’s geographic position to AFV flight operations. John Kats was on duty and after receiving the message retransmitted it to his contact at CIA via radio teletype. It can only be assumed that this information was somehow transmitted to NASA Mission Control and then passed on to an Air Rescue Service SA-16 amphibian aircraft from the Puerto Rican Air National Guard. Visual contact was established with the spacecraft 39 minutes after landing and the USS Farragut, located it about 90 minutes later.