Then the ship started tilting as the wind currents and jet streams in the upper atmosphere buffeted the falling vessel. The attitude dials were going crazy; the ship’s nose was wobbling back and forth too fast for them to keep up with it. In desperation, Birk turned the autostabilizers back on, even though everything he’d read about landing procedures advised against using them.
The mistake was obvious immediately. The stabilizers activated the correcting jets around the ship’s hull the instant any tilt went beyond a given point. But the ship was tilting and bucking so rapidly that the jets could not keep up. Their compensations were out of synch with the ship’s movements, adding to the chaos. The ship’s wobble became even worse, and the computers were going crazy trying to correct the im
