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.

Book One
DECISION

Thursday, February 13, 1969

MEMORANDUM for

— The Vice President

— The Secretary of Defense

— The Acting Administrator, National Aeronautics and Space Administration

— The Science Advisor

It is necessary for me to have in the near future a definitive recommendation on the direction which the US space program should take in the post-Apollo period. I, therefore, ask the Secretary of Defense, the Acting Administrator of NASA, and the Science Advisor each to develop proposed plans and to meet together as a Space Task Group, with the Vice President in the chair, to prepare for me a coordinated program and budget proposal. In developing your proposed plans, you may wish to seek advice from the scientific, engineering, and industrial communities, from Congress and the public.

I would like to receive the coordinated proposal by September 1, 1969.

Richard M. Nixon

Handwritten addendum: Spiro, do we have to go to Mars? What options have we got? — RMN

Source: Public Papers of the Presidents of the United States: Richard M. Nixon, 1969 (Washington, DC Government Printing Office, 1969) Mission Elapsed Time [Day/Hr:Min:Sec] Minus 000/00:00:08

In their orange pressure suits, York, Gershon, and Stone were jammed together so close they were rubbing elbows. They were shielded from daylight; small fluorescent floods lit up the Command Module’s cramped cabin.

There was a powerful thump. York, startled, glanced at her crewmates.

“Fuel pumps,” Stone said.

York heard a dull rumbling — like faraway thunder — a shudder that transmitted itself through the padded couch to her body.

Hundreds of feet below York, liquid oxygen and hydrogen were rushing together, mingling in the big first-stage engines’ combustion chambers.

She could feel her heartbeat rising, clattering within her chest. Take it easy, damn it.

A small metal model of a cosmonaut, squat and Asiatic, dangled from a chain fixed above her head. This was Boris, the gift from Vlad Viktorenko. The toy swung back and forth, its grotesque features leering at her out of a sketch of a helmet. Good luck, Bah-reess.

The noise began, cacophonous, a steady roar. It was like being inside the mouth of some huge, bellowing giant.