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There are 10 hours and 7 minutes until the scheduled launch of the Arabsat 5B spacecraft. Most of the day's activities are done, including the blessing of the launch vehicle by the town's Russian Orthodox priest a little while ago.
Besides blessing the rocket, which involves the application of holy water with what appears to be a brush-like device, the persons assembled to witness the blessing are each given an opportunity to be doused with a refreshing wave of holy water as well.
My next gig today starts in 90 minutes, when I will accompany my client and others to another State Commission meeting to perform "whisper simultaneous," which involves my listening to a variety of Russian speakers and interpreting what they say into English in near-real-time. Nicole Kidman made it look easy in The Interpreter; in real life, it's not very easy at all. (Then again, if it were easy, they'd have hired someone else.)
Everyone ought to be back to the hotel by 9 pm, whereupon I shall do my best to get some sleep between then and about 2 am, at which time I will walk over to the Polyot hotel, where the telecom office is, and help with uplink status checks until just before 4 am, when I will assume a position near a microphone and proceed to interpret intermittent status updates during the first roughly ten minutes of rocket flight. Once the ascent unit has separated from the third stage, my work will be done - at least for the time being.
A group of VIPs has arrived, which really won't impact my work, but they'll be at the hotel between now and launch time, so if I want to go iron my pants for the State Commission meeting, I should probably do so circumspectly.
Or not.
Cheers...
For those interested in following the launch, a webcast is scheduled starting at about 5:30 pm Eastern at http://badr5.imgondemand.com/. Liftoff is set for 18:00:08 Eastern.
Besides blessing the rocket, which involves the application of holy water with what appears to be a brush-like device, the persons assembled to witness the blessing are each given an opportunity to be doused with a refreshing wave of holy water as well.
My next gig today starts in 90 minutes, when I will accompany my client and others to another State Commission meeting to perform "whisper simultaneous," which involves my listening to a variety of Russian speakers and interpreting what they say into English in near-real-time. Nicole Kidman made it look easy in The Interpreter; in real life, it's not very easy at all. (Then again, if it were easy, they'd have hired someone else.)
Everyone ought to be back to the hotel by 9 pm, whereupon I shall do my best to get some sleep between then and about 2 am, at which time I will walk over to the Polyot hotel, where the telecom office is, and help with uplink status checks until just before 4 am, when I will assume a position near a microphone and proceed to interpret intermittent status updates during the first roughly ten minutes of rocket flight. Once the ascent unit has separated from the third stage, my work will be done - at least for the time being.
A group of VIPs has arrived, which really won't impact my work, but they'll be at the hotel between now and launch time, so if I want to go iron my pants for the State Commission meeting, I should probably do so circumspectly.
Or not.
Cheers...
For those interested in following the launch, a webcast is scheduled starting at about 5:30 pm Eastern at http://badr5.imgondemand.com/. Liftoff is set for 18:00:08 Eastern.
