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Launch and L+1...
Dec. 11th, 2008 09:15 amBy the time I got to the Polyot hotel, the crud that I caught earlier in the week had turned my voice into a horrid croak. My voice had started to sound husky earlier in the day, and during lunch, our campaign doctor had suggested that, if my voice didn't get better on its own, pouring a few tablespoons of olive oil down my throat would ameliorate the hoarseness (adding that, of course, the oil would have no therapeutic effect on the condition of my vocal cords).
As there was no olive oil available at the Polyot, I ventured the assumption that the key to the "cure" was getting some kind of oily substance into the vicinity of my voicebox, so I put a couple of pats of the butter from the snack tray in the comm room into my mouth and let them melt.
By golly, you know, it worked?
The Proton zoomed off the pad on time, up and seemingly past the full moon, and my voice turned golden just long enough to get through the 580 seconds between liftoff and third stage separation into a suborbital trajectory. For the next 9 hours - until 5 am or so - everything worked the way it was supposed to, and the satellite was delivered to the customer.
I came back to the hotel at around 9 pm and grabbed some sleep, and returned to the Polyot comm center at 4:30 am, close to the time the upper stage was to perform its fifth burn before separating from the satellite. As times like this are pretty slow, I brought along my laptop to work on my Idol essay. After struggling with various pieces that would not come together, I stumbled into a line of thought that triggered a memory that caused me to scrap the nearly 800 words that I had composed and start again. I like essay #2 a lot more, and will post it shortly, then go to sleep. I still don't feel completely well.
Fortunately, I am the on-call interpreter for the day, but then again, that's a duty that may likely be called upon several times today as last-minute stuff needs to get done. One thing of a personal nature that needs to get done is packing and before the start of tonight's traditional post-launch banquet, as our group is scheduled to leave for Moscow at oh-dark-thirty tomorrow morning.
Cheers...
As there was no olive oil available at the Polyot, I ventured the assumption that the key to the "cure" was getting some kind of oily substance into the vicinity of my voicebox, so I put a couple of pats of the butter from the snack tray in the comm room into my mouth and let them melt.
By golly, you know, it worked?
The Proton zoomed off the pad on time, up and seemingly past the full moon, and my voice turned golden just long enough to get through the 580 seconds between liftoff and third stage separation into a suborbital trajectory. For the next 9 hours - until 5 am or so - everything worked the way it was supposed to, and the satellite was delivered to the customer.
I came back to the hotel at around 9 pm and grabbed some sleep, and returned to the Polyot comm center at 4:30 am, close to the time the upper stage was to perform its fifth burn before separating from the satellite. As times like this are pretty slow, I brought along my laptop to work on my Idol essay. After struggling with various pieces that would not come together, I stumbled into a line of thought that triggered a memory that caused me to scrap the nearly 800 words that I had composed and start again. I like essay #2 a lot more, and will post it shortly, then go to sleep. I still don't feel completely well.
Fortunately, I am the on-call interpreter for the day, but then again, that's a duty that may likely be called upon several times today as last-minute stuff needs to get done. One thing of a personal nature that needs to get done is packing and before the start of tonight's traditional post-launch banquet, as our group is scheduled to leave for Moscow at oh-dark-thirty tomorrow morning.
Cheers...
