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Mach 2.5, hair smoking...
Nov. 29th, 2006 10:12 pmIt's been one of those days.
NASA insists that the interpreters who support the flight control team be physically robust enough to pass the physical for the flight controllers, and today way my day to take the first half of the exam. I've dropped some weight since last year, my eyesight has degraded a bit (my reading-distance depth perception is terrible, and I forgot to bring my reading glasses, though I've never been able to figure out why up-close depth perception is valuable, per se), my hearing is about the same, my BP is about the same (or better), and the lung capacity test seemed to go better. I'm scheduled for the second half of the physical, with a flight surgeon, a couple of days after returning from vacation.
(That's what I'm going to call it, but it's been so long, I'm not sure what it might really turn out to be...)
My weight was a pleasant surprise. You see, the bathroom scale in Pagosa always seemed to read too low a figure, at least as compared with the scale in the doctor's office in Durango. I estimated the difference to be about 10 pounds (discussed previously this year). Then, I found a cheap electronic scale that displays weight in big, red numbers after a few seconds of standing on it, and that number was consistently lower than the old bathroom scale in Pagosa. I thought I had all of this figured out.
Today, I weighed 234 in the morning, undressed. During the physical, I checked in at 229!
Then again, I also lost an inch of height. According to the clinic, I'm 5'11" tall.
Yikes!
Anyway, the only souvenirs of my visit to the clinic are a nasty subcutaneous bruise from the blood draw, and light bruising at where the TB test was administered. (Note to self: stop by the clinic on Friday to show 'em your arm!)
The rest of the day was taken up with a simulation, something that I haven't participated in for... wow, has it been three years? I was supporting the Russian capcom, who is the main link to the crew on the Russian side, and who is called, in English, by his Russian name - glavny (pronounced glahv'-knee) - to distinguish him from the US capcom (a term from the dawn of the US space program, denoting the "capsule communicator," who is generally the only person authorized to speak to a crew aboard an orbiting space vehicle).
Given my long absence from the champ de bataille, the day went pretty smoothly. There was one interesting glitch, of a technical nature, that occurred during one exchange, which prompted a quick reconfiguration of comm loops (and a delay of a few minutes in the "play" of the sim script, while the problem was being worked). Fortunately, I had nothing to do with it; the extent of my goofs had to do with configuring my intercom, mostly.
Once I got home, I sat down and started on the big translation due by the time Galina and I depart. I was not able to get a start yesterday, which put me partially behind the eight-ball, but I managed to recover about half of my deficit this evening. The work is a bit on the mind-numbing side (descriptions of modifications to software... zzz), but it goes relatively quickly.
Tomorrow is another simulation day, one during which I'll be working the simultaneous space-to-ground position. It should be interesting.
Cheers...
NASA insists that the interpreters who support the flight control team be physically robust enough to pass the physical for the flight controllers, and today way my day to take the first half of the exam. I've dropped some weight since last year, my eyesight has degraded a bit (my reading-distance depth perception is terrible, and I forgot to bring my reading glasses, though I've never been able to figure out why up-close depth perception is valuable, per se), my hearing is about the same, my BP is about the same (or better), and the lung capacity test seemed to go better. I'm scheduled for the second half of the physical, with a flight surgeon, a couple of days after returning from vacation.
(That's what I'm going to call it, but it's been so long, I'm not sure what it might really turn out to be...)
My weight was a pleasant surprise. You see, the bathroom scale in Pagosa always seemed to read too low a figure, at least as compared with the scale in the doctor's office in Durango. I estimated the difference to be about 10 pounds (discussed previously this year). Then, I found a cheap electronic scale that displays weight in big, red numbers after a few seconds of standing on it, and that number was consistently lower than the old bathroom scale in Pagosa. I thought I had all of this figured out.
Today, I weighed 234 in the morning, undressed. During the physical, I checked in at 229!
Then again, I also lost an inch of height. According to the clinic, I'm 5'11" tall.
Yikes!
Anyway, the only souvenirs of my visit to the clinic are a nasty subcutaneous bruise from the blood draw, and light bruising at where the TB test was administered. (Note to self: stop by the clinic on Friday to show 'em your arm!)
The rest of the day was taken up with a simulation, something that I haven't participated in for... wow, has it been three years? I was supporting the Russian capcom, who is the main link to the crew on the Russian side, and who is called, in English, by his Russian name - glavny (pronounced glahv'-knee) - to distinguish him from the US capcom (a term from the dawn of the US space program, denoting the "capsule communicator," who is generally the only person authorized to speak to a crew aboard an orbiting space vehicle).
Given my long absence from the champ de bataille, the day went pretty smoothly. There was one interesting glitch, of a technical nature, that occurred during one exchange, which prompted a quick reconfiguration of comm loops (and a delay of a few minutes in the "play" of the sim script, while the problem was being worked). Fortunately, I had nothing to do with it; the extent of my goofs had to do with configuring my intercom, mostly.
Once I got home, I sat down and started on the big translation due by the time Galina and I depart. I was not able to get a start yesterday, which put me partially behind the eight-ball, but I managed to recover about half of my deficit this evening. The work is a bit on the mind-numbing side (descriptions of modifications to software... zzz), but it goes relatively quickly.
Tomorrow is another simulation day, one during which I'll be working the simultaneous space-to-ground position. It should be interesting.
Cheers...
