Getting "got"...

I became the "on call" intepreter this past midnight, and almost immediately was roused for duty. Although I had gone to bed, I was kept awake by a set of cryptic calls on the open radio net (most of our communications are "dialed" station to station, and so are private), so I had some idea that something was going on.

Indeed, before the night was out, I ended up going out to the pad, and then back to the полтинник, eventually returning to my hotel room after 5 am. I was so tired on the road from the pad to 92A-50 that I saw the lunar eclipse - I recall seeing a crescent moon - but didn't realize it until someone called it to my attention this morning, when I recalled that earlier in the evening, the moon was full.

Obviously, I slept in, but with today being L-2 - actually, there are just over 36 hours until launch - there isn't much room for time off, and a pile of details to take care of.

Cheers...

Surreal...

In all the excitement associated with this (early) morning's scurrying, I had forgotten that, upon boarding the bus yesterday morning to go to work, I became aware that Hotel California (by the Gypsy Kings) was playing on the bus's radio.

And I was thinking to myself,
'This could be Heaven or this could be Hell'

Talk about your strange juxtapositions; it was as if the local disk jockey had our number down pat.

I quickly unlimbered my Coolpix and tried to take some video of a view out of the front of the bus while the song was playing, but folks were piling onto the bus, and I was too far away from the radio.

You can check out any time you like,
But you can never leave

Lately, it's begun to feel that way, y'know?

(P.S. Something did come out on the video, kind of. A low-bandwidth excerpt can be viewed here.)

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It's just about 30 hours until launch as I write this, and since there's a push on to get very nearly everyone out of here on the 20th, to make room for the next campaign, that means there's quite a bit of activity being packed into tomorrow and launch day itself, in terms of getting stuff out of places like the vault, attending the post-launch dinner (which, in our case, will be a barbecue), and so on, as well as getting our own stuff packed away for the long, yet welcome trip home.

There's a lot of last-minute stuff for interpreters to do during the last few days, and quite a bit of it seems to pop up out of nowhere, but you get used to it after a while. After dinner this evening, for example, I wandered over to the Polyot to talk to the video production guys and to record a voiceover for the Russian participant in the launch day webcast. Back at the Fili, I and several others were disappointed by the apperance of haze on the far horizon, which blocked what might have been a pretty moonrise behind or close to where the service tower stands, doing a stationary tango just a few kilometers away with the rocket clasped in its many "arms."

Come what may, by 8 pm tomorrow Alex P. and I must be ready to support the Government Commission meeting that is to take place at the launch complex. The Commission will make a go/no-go decision to load propellant into the rocket itself, mere hours before the scheduled launch, set for 4:43 am local time on Tuesday.

Among other tasks, I shall have to have also reviewed and run through the ascent callouts for the launch webcast, and then immediately after ascent, I'll be working with the ILS Program Integrator in the Khrunichev Telecom office at the Polyot until the upper stage separates from the satellite, about 9 hours after liftoff.

By the time I get back to my hotel room from that gig, there will be less than 24 hours to go before departure for Moscow, and some of that time will have to be devoted to sleeping and working the post-launch dinner. So, I better go and bank some sleep, because I think I'm still short a few z's from last night.

Cheers...