No time...no time...

Got home yesterday at around 7 pm after a pretty hard sim. The folks simulating the Russian side of the flight were actual Russians, here temporarily to participate in precisely these kinds of exercises. So inquisitive was the Russian PRP (assistant flight director, assigned the duty of speaking to the U.S. Russian Interface Officer, or RIO), that my RIO seemed convinced at times during the day that the incessant comments and questions were designed specifically to distract her from her work and force her to distract others with numerous requests for information.

We'll never know.

In any event, the next sim starts in about 6 minutes, and today, I'm part of the crew that's simulating the Russians. I had about an hour and a half of free time upon coming home last night, and as Lee was monopolizing the phone line with a connection to some MUD, I decided not to press the issue and left my e-mail and LJing for today.

Gotta go review some last-minute material, and then it's off to find some Assembly Ops Handbooks for the two upcoming flights.

There's never enough time, but you can't let that stop you.

Cheers...

Just another day at work...

Yesterday's sim was held in the so-called "Red" FCR, a flight control room located on the third floor of the "old" part of the Mission Control Center. The "Red" FCR is no more red than the "White" FCR is white, or the "Blue" FCR is blue, but the names give the MCC a completely patriotic set of flight control rooms, for sure.

The "old" part of the MCC is, well, old, despite the fact that the facilities now house state-of-the-art equipment, such as this group of SGI machines casually draped on and piled next to a table in a room just down the hall from where I was working. Then again, just on the other side of the wall from the red FCR is Room 331, also known as "FCR-2," which was the room from which the Apollo flights were controlled, including the first moon landing and the Apollo 13 mission.

The photo to the left (taken with the PalmPix camera) shows an overall view of the room. The plaques on the far wall represent the mission patches of the flights that were controlled from this facility. These include not only the Apollo flights, but also a number of Shuttle flights, including some of the early Shuttle-Mir missions. The rectangular plaque in what is almost the center of the graphic is a memento of the Apollo 13 flight: a mirror from the "Aquarius" Lunar Module that served as the crew's lifeboat during that ordeal.

It is said that the production company that filmed the movie Apollo 13 did a detailed study to reproduce this room in every particular (including some cables that were hanging from the ceiling as part of a routine maintenance session while the movie crew was here).

I suppose it's something of a small perquisite of the job I do here to be able to indulge the tourist in me and duck into the Apollo control room during one of the few breaks in the action during a sim and stroll quietly for a few moments where giants have tread before me. Sitting down at the flight director's console, there are a number of hard-wire switches close at hand, a positively ancient CRT, and a rotary dial phone. A cursory inspection reveals pneumatic tube messaging stations spaced at intervals along the consoles.

Today's sim is over. It's lunchtime. Off for a bite and then to the office to submit an invoice and do some more work.

Cheers...