Entry I – 01:30 UTC, 16 July 2014
The gala finished up a little while ago, and my brain feels really scattered. So I’m gonna write down everything on my mind, and maybe it’ll help. I feel like I should start from the beginning (on the off-chance that someone sees this someday, they might as well have the full story, right?). ICAS approached me about two years ago about piloting some new experimental delta-wing aircraft. Test piloting is my career, and the opporutunity seemed damn good, so I took it. The craft I was to test was called the Altea Aerospace DeltaGlider-XR1, a project based off the public domain DeltaGlider design that won the Visions for a Freer Space competition in 2010. I was the first XR1 pilot that ICAS hired, and I remained the only one until rather recently. So when ICAS concocted the Commercial Space Applications (CSA) program, I was the natural choice. CSA-1 was a low-altitude atmospheric test flight over the Atlantic, the first powered flight of the XR1. CSA-2 went up to about 70km and tested the SCRAM engines. If all had went as planned, CSA-3 would have touched the edge of space, and CSA-4 would have been a suborbital flight with an apogee of 200km. Depending on the outcomes of these flights, one to three would have been suborbital tests, culminating in our first orbital flight. However, something came up in the past few months. A competitor (whom I will not name here) is supposedly gearing up for an orbital flight using their DeltaGlider-IV (Spacetech’s take on the DeltaGlider design), and ICAS’ venture capitalists don’t want the honor of “first non-governmental spaceflight” to go to someone else. ICAS decided to change CSA-3 to our first orbital test flight, and scheduled the launch to coincide with the 45th anniversary of Apollo 11’s launch to maximize on the publicity. As the pilot of CSA-3, I was very surprised when I was notified about a month ago. After an ungodly amount of time in the simultaors, I’m still pretty damn nervous. Of course, Mark Chambers, our lovely CEO, is putting a load of pressure on all of us. He found it necessary to hold a gala the night before my flight. I could have declined, but Chambers (being the spiteful bastard he is) might have just replaced me with my backup, one of the rookies, and that could be dangerous. So I had to suck it up and go, and that really didn’t go very well.
The mingling went fairly normally. The industry is kind of in awe of us right now, so we had an easy time of it. Then it was time for dinner. Chambers sat all four of the pilots up at the front of the room on a raised platform. He sat in the middle, and he wanted me next to him. I didn’t really think anything of it. He stood up for a toast and a speech. Okay, fine, I expected him to make a speech. I didn’t, however, expect him to then pull me up and ask me to say a few words. I’m not a bad public speaker, but I hadn’t prepared a speech or even thought about anything to say. I stood up, visibly stunned, and started to bull**** my way through the speech. My words were awkward and it didn’t sound very convincing. I finished to little applause and sat back down, feeling bathed in cold sweat. Chambers patted me on the shoulder and went on with one of his awe-inpiring, pre-prepared speeches that of course resulted in a huge standing ovation. I finished my food quickly and tried my best to be cheerful. After unmeasurably long hours of standing around, everybody was sent off to the dorms to sleep. I came back to my room immediately and decided to write this. It does help to get this all out of my head, though even without Chambers’ pressuring I’m still pretty damn nervous about my first spaceflight tomorrow. Time in the simulators may have prepared me for the technical aspect, but they didn’t come close to getting me ready for the emotional part of it.
All of this is making me a bit shaky, so I think I’ll put this down for tonight. It sorta worked, though. As nervous as I am, I feel at least a bit less muddled. Maybe I should get into a habit of doing this?
-Christoph Knolts
