Deorbit: Stem Cell Rescue

For Tom Clancy fans interested in space. S. E. Amos (Tulsa, Oklahoma) "Apollo 13" Meets "The Rocketeer" Kirk Bjornsgaard (Norman, OK) - - An accident teeters on the brink of disaster when the Achilles heel of the space shuttle - a single point of failure - has been damaged. Panic ensued as images of blood spraying the white cabin walls of Space Shuttle Atlantis flashed across television screens worldwide. Scott Brossfield, a RFID software programmer, is reluctantly dragged into single-handedly rescuing the stranded space shuttle with a private spacecraft. He wants to get his mother's blood treated aboard the stranded space shuttle utilizing a newly discovered zero-gravity stem cell cancer cure. NASA Flight Director Glen Mins must deal with a powerful, self-interested politician who is running for President. Senator Graff holds the strings controlling NASA's funding, and the stranded shuttle now threatens his candidacy. To save the crew, Glen works with, and then fights the Senator to authorize increasingly desperate rescue attempts. With only a few hours left for the shuttle crew, Scott, a NASA outsider with an almost impossible idea, suggests a risky plan that has never before been considered and perhaps should not now. In a thrilling race against the clock, and no other options remaining, NASA reluctantly agrees to Scott's rescue plan. The rescue could doom the Senator, and the manned space program, along with Scott and his mother. Is this a deal with a devil, or a hero? In a surprise ending, no one will know until it's too late to turn back.