Sunday, 18th May 2008: The crew was strapped in the command module of the spaceship and the ship was in launch sequence sharp at 0900 hours. The commander and mission control collaborated by a final systems check. The systems were a go and the final countdown began. 10 9 8 7 6 5 4 3 2 1 We have lift off…
The largest possible rocket thrusters filled with aviation fuel spurred to life and with a dense cloud of exhaust gases, the spaceship was launched towards outer space. When they reached the outermost layer of earth’s atmosphere, the rocket’s parts were slowly detached from the ship and finally after the detaching sequence, the ship was functional on its own power source.
The ship had been launched into the correct path towards the Alpha station which was the first quarter of the mission. Everyone unfastened their seat belts and could finally move to their stations. The ship specialists ran their routine checks. The mission specialists were debriefed by David and Linda on the final mission plan. On the night of 19th May, all the crew members except David and Linda (who were talking home via the secure communications channel that now came standard with every space travel machine) were sitting together in the command module and talking to each other about previous missions.
All of them knew about the tragic death of Major Daniel but only some of them knew that David, Linda and Sarah were on that mission with Daniel. Deborah was one of them so she asked Sarah about Daniel’s death. Sarah told everyone about the tragic incident.
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