Human Ecology - Project TEME
STS-6 "Gaia" EGCPRU1 April 1985
Wolf Thandoy, Earth Guild Correspondent
For many, this mission is a step, a giant step, taken with all the innocence of a child's first. With such a step comes responsibility, experience, and the promise of future strides.
Now, fourteen hours after lift-off, poised in orbit, the reality of our departure seems nearly as distant as the thought of return. The umbilical of our communications down-link sustains us, our interdependence with ground support systems personnel assured by complimentary roles; a marriage made in the heavens. We are an extended family, a colony in transition, reaching for the stars of inner space, an organism on the verge of discovery.
Our works are many. Following an intense countdown and thrilling launch sequence enhanced by visual feedback from tracking cameras we have proceeded through low earth orbit, there smoothly deploying the Omega Probe that we hope will greatly expand our knowledge of our smallest neighbours in the solar system, the asteroids.
Hourly flight systems checks punctuated our pilot's long solo watch, representing the major feature of the on-orbit coast that placed us in a position to transfer, only a few hours ago, into a new orbit five hundred and seventy-five miles above the surface of the earth. This orbit is very near the shuttle's service ceiling of six hundred miles, and it is here that we have just now worked through the technical difficulties that recently stood between us and the successful pursuit of the pallet experiment on power generation.
With all obstacles presently resolved, excepting some concern over our temporary water supply depletion, we tread our invisible path through space.