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Lightning and rain...
Aug. 29th, 2005 11:30 pmYep, it's combined ops day 3.
For the second time in about as many weeks, it's raining. It's not the gully-washer we had last time, but a couple of lightning flashes have lit up a section of sky outside my window just now. Hopefully, the threat of lightning affecting the spacecraft is minimized, while the space head unit is inside of hall 101 (you don't want to generate any strong fields in the vicinity of the spacecraft or the fairing, which are equipped with so-called "pyro bolts" that have explosive charges built in to cause them to break apart at the required time during ascent; the explosive charges in these bolts are detonated by electric currents, which can be induced by strong enough fields, including those generated by hand-held radios).
It's been a long day, despite the fact I've been on call. I was called to support a walkdown of a building that is to be used in case debris recovery operations have to be undertaken after the launch (big and cavernous), and then again after dinner to go in and support some additional work on the space head unit.
During the day, I tried to download a Linux-based rescue kit to help the ops manager, whose laptop will not boot from its hard drive, but the comm quality around here today makes me wish for those days of yore when all you had to do the job was a paper tape punch, two cans, and a string. I was achieving download speeds as high as 0.7 kilobytes per second at times, while the file I'm trying to get is almost 18 MB.
I work tomorrow afternoon and am scheduled to support the transfer of the umbilical rack from the processing facility to the "vault" under the launch pad.
Cheers...
For the second time in about as many weeks, it's raining. It's not the gully-washer we had last time, but a couple of lightning flashes have lit up a section of sky outside my window just now. Hopefully, the threat of lightning affecting the spacecraft is minimized, while the space head unit is inside of hall 101 (you don't want to generate any strong fields in the vicinity of the spacecraft or the fairing, which are equipped with so-called "pyro bolts" that have explosive charges built in to cause them to break apart at the required time during ascent; the explosive charges in these bolts are detonated by electric currents, which can be induced by strong enough fields, including those generated by hand-held radios).
It's been a long day, despite the fact I've been on call. I was called to support a walkdown of a building that is to be used in case debris recovery operations have to be undertaken after the launch (big and cavernous), and then again after dinner to go in and support some additional work on the space head unit.
During the day, I tried to download a Linux-based rescue kit to help the ops manager, whose laptop will not boot from its hard drive, but the comm quality around here today makes me wish for those days of yore when all you had to do the job was a paper tape punch, two cans, and a string. I was achieving download speeds as high as 0.7 kilobytes per second at times, while the file I'm trying to get is almost 18 MB.
I work tomorrow afternoon and am scheduled to support the transfer of the umbilical rack from the processing facility to the "vault" under the launch pad.
Cheers...
