Dreamed about a guy who got trapped inside a Russian communications satellite as it lifted off. Everything possible went wrong to get him stuck in there.

When it reached orbit over 10,000 miles above Earth, he became the farthest human since 1972. The extra weight prevented the satellite from reaching its intended orbit at 22,000 miles.

Ground stations detected strange glitches on the satellite. They realized a human was on it, but had no way to communicate with him. He could send data to the ground by bashing wires & creating glitches in the signals. The mane problem was there was no food or water on the satellite. The human would die in 24 hours.

The race was on to try to bring the human back in 24 hours. 1 step was to lower the satellite as much as possible with its onboard thrusters, but the human would have to be transferred to a vehicle which could re-enter. Russia had a soyuz, but no booster to launch it was available since they all had to be made from scratch. It was time to reach out to US.
Only SpaceX had an inventory of used 1st stages & Dragon 1 capsules standing by, but no 2nd stage.

They would have to mate the capsule to the 1st stage, discard the 1st stage to get the longest parabolic hop they could get. Fortunately, the 2 stages had the same diameter. Once on the pad, the whole thing could be fueled & launched in 35 minutes.

The key was not altitude but time. It would leave under 90 minutes for the human to get in the capsule & re-enter. They had enough fuel to get the satellite in a parabolic orbit with the low point right at the capsule's highest point.

The mane problem was there was no airlock or space suit. The human would have to transfer from the satellite to the capsule in the -200F - 200F vacuum of space, & survive until the capsule repressurized.

The plan was to fit the capsule with a face mask for the human to put on. They would fire the thrusters on the capsule to press the capsule on the hatch of the communication satellite right when the human egressed, so there would be minimal extreme temperatures. The hatch on the capsule would be launched open, so the human could get in & put the mask on as fast as possible before closing the hatch. All this would be communicated with big signs on the capsule.

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