unstable expedition 4

Start: https://pastebin.com/j81r9nCF
Pt. 3: https://pastebin.com/4dvbNYuC

"Come on, come oooooooooon," Scott said, staring at the display. The icon representing the Low Orbit Dock was just about to follow its orbit line into the field of reception for the new antenna. "This is our last chance."

"We'll have 4 minutes on this pass to upload commands to the rocket. Carol, are you ready to 'fly' this thing?" Bob said.

"I have the re-entry sequence ready now," Carol said.

"Now!" Bob said, and Scott pointed the antenna dish towards the rising white dot in the night sky. "Well?"

"Signal acquisition failed, dammit," Scott said, reading the error code.

"Can you fix it?" Carol said.

"Dammit!" Scott said, and he took a box out of the antenna housing and took of the cap. He reached his finger in for the dip switches but couldn't get at them. "Someone, screwdriver, now!" Carol handed him one, he flipped some of the switches, and plugged the little box back in. He pointed the antenna at the little white dot, now climbing almost up to the zenith, and cursing under his breath, he tried to connect again. "Signal acquired!" Scott shouted, and everyone cheered. "Carol, now!"

Carol typed on her laptop. "What!?" She shouted. The laptop showed her another error message. "Aaarrgh! The rocket computer was put into safe mode! It'll take too long for the system to boot up."

"There's got to be some way to--" Bob said.

"I'm already on it!" Carol was typing commands into her laptop furiously. Bob stared at the screen over her shoulder.

"You're writing code NOW?" He exclaimed.

"I need to load the rocket sequence into the space station and tell it to start the rocket. I don't have any time to test the code," Carol said, "but it's not a complex command set."

Carol continued typing furiously. She copied the rocket command set and pasted it into the new code. "Hurry up! Now's a bad time for this!" Scott said.

"Now!" Carol said, pressing the enter key on her keyboard dramatically. The computers of the dock talked to the laptop to acknowledge the data transfer. Just as the station disappeared below the horizon, and not a second too soon, an 'upload complete' message displayed on the laptop. "YES!" Carol shouted. Everyone else, who had been quite tensed up, relaxed.

"Where will the rocket land?" Janet asked.

"It's hard to tell. I programmed the rocket to send out pings to the weather satellites, so they'll know where the rocket is. If I did my job right, the rocket will land as close to the base as is possible. But since it will take a while for the rocket to boot up... we can't tell when that'll be. If the rocket was in safe mode, it probably drained its fuel into the dock. It may be cutting it really close," Carol said.

"Why did the rocket go into safe mode?" Janet said.

"When the rocket wasn't in contact with the base for a prolonged time, it probably went into safe mode to reduce corrosion on the rocket's RCS tanks and reduce wear on the ship's electrical systems," Carol said, "since it no longer knew if it would be up there for months, years, or centuries."

"It'll be up there no more than another twelve hours," Bob said, "if that!"

Some hours later, Marty was typing on a computer in his quarters, when Carol came in.

"I've managed to program the weather satellites to locate the orbital dock on their own," Marty said.

"Really? That's fantastic!" Carol said.

"It's really not. Look at this periapsis," Marty said, and rotated the display around to face Carol. "I'm not an aerodynamicist, but--"

"Oh my god," Carol said, "we've got to get to the rover now. There's no way that thing has more than another orbit left."

Carol stood up and ran out the door to find the rest of the crew. Janet was eating alone in the kitchen. "Janet, it's coming down." Janet put down her fork. Marty limped into the kitchen. "Now," said Carol.

"Now?" Janet said? "Where's it landing?"

"We don't know yet. Marty managed to get the weather satellites to track the dock."

"Can you establish communications with the rocket?" Janet said.

"I'll try," Marty said, and he pulled a laptop out of a drawer in the kitchen table.

"No, not here, we should all go to the conference room. I'm calling a meeting now," Janet said.

With everyone in the conference room, laptops open, they watched the trajectory of the rocket and the dock. Marty and Carol were reading the documentation and typing commands into the satellite network to try to get a relay.

"Got it," Marty said, and the output log of the rocket became visible on everyone's screens.

"Looks like the rocket is booted up, and the program is running... but the propellant tanks are still being fueled!" Carol said

"How much longer do they have?" Janet asked.

"10 minutes. Periapsis is in..." Carol started.

"10 minutes," Marty said.

"Dammit," Carol said, "it'll be re-entering by then."

"What's the periapsis?" Sara said.

"It's the lowest point in the or--" Emily started.

"I know what a periapsis is!" Sara said, "But what's the altitude of it?"

"70 kilometers," Marty said, "that's about in the stratosphere."

"Oh damn," Sara said.

"Uh! Sara!" Carol scolded.

They all continued watching the data come through. The spacecraft got lower and lower into the atmosphere.

"I've got a video feed from the BoosterCams," Marty said, and pulled up the live video. It had a slideshow-like framrate, and the resolution of a postage stamp. Though the image wasn't clear, what was happening was: the solar panels and radiators of the dock were flexing backwards under the aerodynamic stress. The faint pink glow of ionized atmosphere was trailing behind the station. And the whole structure was tumbling around as the large fins of the rocket found their way downwind of the rest of the structure.

The output log of the rocket read "Fully fueled. Undocking," and as it did so, it tumbled backwards, hitting the solar panels of the space station, which tore off their flimsy mount and scattered. As it found a new equilibrium, pointing forward, it soared forward of the 'parachute' of the station's solar panels, falling forward like a dart. It hit one of its fins on the robotic arm of the station, though no one could tell if it had damaged anything.

Now the rear video feed was showing the pink glow of atmosphere getting brighter and brighter. The hull of the rocket began to glow red. The video feed began to get noisy before cutting out, along with the telemetry. "What?" Marty shouted.

"It's the plasma from the entry heating," Scott said, "we can't track it unless a satellite is pointed right through the hole in the ionized plasma behind the rocket."

"It could take 10 minutes if the rocket does a gliding re-entry," Carol says, "but I programmed it to choose powered, ballistic, or gliding by its own wits."

"We can still track it, but we can't get any data from it," Marty said.

For 5 minutes the conference room was silent, until the static faded away.

"Signal acquisition!" Marty said, and the video resumed. The airbrakes on the rocket had deployed, and the icy glaciers in the arctic were coming closer and closer.

"It's going for flat land, at least!" Carol said.

"Atmospheric pressure up in the glaciers there is very low. Not much drag..." Bob said.

"The engines are on!" Marty said, and they were. Clear plumes of hydrogen forced out of the tail of the rocket made the glaciers slow down in their approach, and then stop... and then recede.

"No!" Carol said, "Baby, come on, you can do it."

The rocket cut its engines and began falling yet again. Everyone watched as the glaciers got closer and closer. They watched as the engines didn't ignite again. And they watched as a puff of snow consumed the tail of the spacecraft and the video feed cut out.

The room was silent for a full minute.

pt. 5: https://pastebin.com/EM0fs07M