In 1996, we need scientists on Mars, they could have been there a decade ago. My novel may be the closest thing to a history of that lost, alternate universe ever to be written, and I have striven to make it as “true” as possible.
It really would have been like this.
Stephen Baxter
Great Missenden
October 1996
Prologue
This is Ares Launch Control, Jacqueline B. Kennedy Space Center.
We have passed the six-minute mark in our countdown. Now at T minus five minutes fifty-one seconds and counting.
Ares waits ready for launch on Launch Complex 39A.
We are on schedule at the present time for the planned liftoff at thirty-seven minutes past the hour.
Spacecraft test conductor has now completed the status check of his personnel in the control room. All report that they are go for the mission, and this has been reported to the test supervisor.
The test supervisor is now going through additional status checks.
Launch operations manager reports go for launch.
Mission Control at Houston reports that all systems on the Ares orbital booster cluster are also nominal and ready to support the mission. The need to be in plane with the cluster, to enable the docking, is imposing a tight window on today’s launch.
Launch director now gives the go. We are at T minus four minutes fifty seconds and counting.
At launch time, you may wish to look out for flights of pelicans, egrets, and herons, from the marshy land here on Merritt Island. Forty years ago Merritt pretty much belonged to the birds, and they’re still here, although nowadays they’re disturbed every few months by a new launching.