Fuel load...

Quoting the perennial mantra of the safety engineer here, "Welcome to another glorious day in paradise!"

I've been on the job for just over 3-1/2 hours, and all remains quiet (as it should). Valery has been downstairs since 8:45 am, when the actual propellant loading started, and I'll be spelling him in about 10 minutes. The task for the day is to load the fuel component of the propellant aboard the spacecraft.

It turns out the rain we had two nights ago almost delayed today's ops by a day, and I'll let you draw the line from point A to point B and guess why that may be so. In the end, a solution involving plastic sheeting was devised, resulting in a few watches through the night to make sure nothing unexpected was going on. More important, the prop load team was able to get its preliminary work done yesterday, so the work remains on schedule.

I spoke with Natalie via Skype this morning, and I'm thinking I had a better connection a few days ago when I was dialing into the network from my room at the Fili than here at the полтинник, where the connection to the shared 128-kbps network is direct. Still, despite the distorted sound, I managed to understand almost all of what Natalie was telling me.

Last night, I finished the second translation I took on a few days ago. It reminds me mightily of a type of document I see from time to time in this business, written by someone who is sure they have found a set of marvelous, kingdom-opening keys. The first document of that type I saw came via NASA and concerned the use of water enriched with silver ions, if memory serves, which a Russian physician wanted the Mir crew to drink because, it was claimed, such consumption would reverse and/or prevent all of the adverse effects of long-duration space travel.

While I never heard back about my translation of that job, I have been a party to enough other essays to know that the authors of such works are tough customers, in that invariably they know how best to formulate their thoughts in the target (and to them, foreign) language. (In this, they differ from most originators only in the consistency of that invariability, since it is not all that unusual to find some percentage of originators engaging in such post-translation second-guesswork.)

In the end, however, one cannot allow previous bad experiences to color one's present work. I've done a workmanlike job, and that's that.

(Well, why don't you key in what you're really feeling, guy!)

Gotta go get ready to replace Valery.

Cheers...

Vapor check...

The fuel loading has been over for some time, but as is the case with many endeavors in life, it's not the doing that takes the time, it's the preparation and cleanup.

There's a marvelous phrase for cleanup work in the space business: closeout operations. (It sounds so much more impressive than "wiping up after yourself," no?) In fact, we're so far along, Valery has just walked in the door, an hour early. (Or 45 minutes early, depending on if we count time from when he actually relieved me or should have relieved me, respectively, the last time we swapped places.)

The safety engineers are in the hall with the spacecraft with some vapor testing gear to make sure there are no pockets of fuel vapor literally hanging around. I cannot imagine there being too many more things to accomplish before going back to the hotel area, but I have been known to be wrong before. The original estimate this morning for knock-off time was somewhere approaching 9 pm, or almost 3 hours from now.

I think I will go check to see if I can make myself useful and accelerate the process of finishing the job.

Cheers...