In the minutes before launch, Doctor Geoff Lighthill heard the whine of the elevator gantry leaning away from the booster stack, and the clatter of power and propellant umbilicals popping out of their sockets in the Blue Streak’s metal flanks.
The pressure cabin of the Prospero was an aluminium box the size of a small car. There was barely room, in this little cone, for the two of them – Lighthill and his commander, Roly Gough – lying side by side in their contoured couches, cocooned in their bulky white pressure suits.
The walls around Lighthill were coated with switches, circuit breakers and dials. In his months of training at Stevenage, heâd come to learn the meaning and function of every one of those switches. And he knew every step of the mission ahead of him. He felt as if he was a cog in some immense machine, that would work through its predestined sequence of steps, regardless of the spark of consciousness cradled inside his skull…
It was Friday, April 26th, 1974; today, Britain was launching its first astronauts to orbit.
Flight director Josh Morris stood at his workstation, scanning the Operations Room.
Morrisâs controllers were working smoothly through their countdown procedures. There were 20 of them, all in ties and shirtsleeves. Their accents –
