Taking a short break...

I've been preparing for a meeting that's to take place in about an hour on the "anomaly" that caused the launch to be delayed (and which indirectly brought me to Baikonur). I think I've got everything down pat, but this is a new crowd for me, and I'm a little nervous about how I'll perform.

There was a dinner last night over at the Polet hotel, for a select group of people - mostly the end customer, the Khrunichev and Baikonur managers, and the managers on the U.S. and French sides. Of course, we interpreters were there, too. I ended up working with Dr. B (the program lead on the Russian side), who spoke quite a bit with the end customer's lead person.

After the dinner, at around 11 pm, we repeated the trek out to the pad to visit the ground support equipment in "the vault." The vault is an underground structure that is built only the way a Russian facility can be built: hugely solid with some mind-jarring implementation details. I didn't draw a map, but I figure after going down 18 feet or so and then down a long corridor, we must have ended up in a room that was a scant few feet away from the "loud end" of the Progress that sat up on the pad, deep in the embrace of the mobile service tower.

In the press of time to get to the bus to go out to the pad last night, I decided not to take along the camera, which was a mistake, since the Alcatel guy asked for and got permission to take a shot of the Proton nestled in the clutches of the MST. It's a pretty impressive sight, especailly at night, although it's hard to tell that there's a rocket standing there, when so much of it is surrounded by a gray hulk that's seriously marred with spots of rust.

Break's over... back to the face of the salt mine and the small stack of reports that I'm reviewing for the meeting.

Cheers...

It sure seemed like a long day...

The meeting this morning was long and tiring, as any meeting is that involves the "Q" word (quality). Viktor spelled me an hour into the proceedings and I picked the meeting back up about 45 minutes later. We got a copy of the minutes to translate into Russian a little while later, and Viktor split it up among the four of us (him, me, Olga, and Galina). Personally, I would not be surprised to see a substantial rewrite on the Russian side when they review it, for reasons I can't readily identify... it's just a gut feeling.

In any event, I put in a 9 hour day today and - if memory serves - I'm the on-call person starting in just a few minutes, although I expect to spend working hours at building 92A-50.

The launch is just about 28 hours away, and there's a meeting of the State Launch Commission in just under 20 hours. That meeting is held to officially hear the Russian version of "go for launch" from everyone involved in this lashup, at which point the Commission okays fueling and launch of the rocket.

I don't expect to get a heck of a lot of sleep tomorrow evening, as I'm working that meeting, and am expected to report to the "comm room" at 2 am on Saturday (at L-2 hours or so), where I will be during launch (scheduled for 4:15 am local time) and an hour afterward. I've been told I'll be providing a fairly low-key color commentary on the progress of the flight for broadcast, which is just fine by me. Then I expect to spend another few hours handling message traffic associated with the launch, up to about L+6.

I felt a touch of unease this evening, for the first time since arriving here. I don't know if it's some kind of "cabin fever" or what; in any event, a couple of people noticed it and asked me how I felt. It's hard to describe... I get the feeling that just about everyone around here is busy with something, while I'm sitting around hoping to find something interesting on the tube (we get satellite channels from Europe), or an interesting book in the makeshift library, or some people playing ping-pong, or something. Maybe I'm just tired.

In any event, I'm sure I'll feel better in the morning.

Cheers...