Lift-off. April 1st 2035 and once again a Hercules Super Booster and an ML Test Article payload clear the launch tower on their joint journey toward space. To say the atmosphere in Mission Control was tense was an understatement as every eye in the room was either riveted to a control console monitoring the flight or using a pair of binoculars to look as the giant booster and its huge payload ascended toward space. Within seconds of clearing the tower history once again repeated itself as the booster control people reported POGO within the booster’s airframe and the start of a deviation from the flight pattern. Sitting next to the Flight Director Robert Carter tuned toward Matt Johnson in the seat next to his “it’s all yours” said Carter “good luck”. This was the moment Johnson and his team had worked so hard to arrive at, the moment when theory was put into practice and the fate of NASA and a multi-billion dollar space vehicle rested quite squarely in their hands. “Lucy you have a go for PAM ignition and variable throttle-up” said Johnson into his throat microphone. The Lucy in question was Lucy Cumming the engineer who had first come to Johnson with her crazy idea for solving the POGO problem so many months before. Since that fateful day she and an ever growing team from the PAM Division had worked tirelessly to turn her crazy idea into a working engineering fact. Sitting at their own console, one of the newest additions to the Mission Control Room, Lucy Cumming swiftly reached forward and flipped upward into the off position the four red safety override switches which kept the huge PAM boosters that were securely strapped to the underside of the ML-2 Test Article from being activated prematurely. Once this was done she reached forward yet again and slowly started to move forward the variable thrust control leaver for the four PAM boosters. “I have booster ignition and throttle-up to five percent, let me know how she stands and when you need more” announced Cumming to the people at the Hercules booster control station. From the people at Booster Control came the announcement that POGO appeared to have now ceased and that everything was holding fine at the moment. “My god it worked” announced Matt Johnson to no one in particular but his words had clearly been heard by Carter sitting next to him. “You had doubts” said Carter. “Not doubts so much as this is the first time that four PAM boosters have ever been used together and in such away”. “Theory is one thing, but to see the theory put into practice and the practice to work is quite another” replied Johnson. “The flights not over yet, we still have to reach orbit” replied Carter. As if his words had activated Murphy’s Law and the old saying if something can go wrong it will, the booster control people once again made the announcement that POGO was again affecting the booster. At her control station Lucy Cumming once again moved forward the PAM booster control leaver till it reached the ten percent mark. “Will that do the job” she announced? “No we need more” came the reply. Ten percent thrust swiftly became fifteen percent at which point POGO once again ceased. From this point onward an odd cat and mouse game developed as firstly POGO occurred only to be countered seconds later by Lucy Cumming moving the PAM booster control leaver forward a few percent more. After just over six minutes into the flight a combination of five things came together to form a critical point in time, (1) fuel in the Hercules tank reached the ten percent remaining mark, (2) the booster automatically throttled-up to one hundred and ten percent, (3) the series of explosive bolts which held the ML-2 Test Article to the top of the booster fired, (4) Lucy Cumming pushed her booster control leaver to its highest setting and (5) sixty seconds later the nine engines of the Hercules Supper Booster and the engines on the four PAM units died from lack of fuel. To be continued.