Odds and ends, again...

[alexpgp]

It's a few minutes until lunch, and I'm fresh from sleeping in, exercising (treadmill, one hour, 3.24 mi, 254 calories), showering, getting dressed, and leaving the room so the hotel staff can do their thing.

Work two nights ago went fairly swimmingly. I was in place at the appointed time (7 pm) and everything was ready for the French techs to start their test of the satellite's RF channel by 9:30. The techs actually arrived a bit later, and eventually, all was set for the test to begin. Most uncharacteristically, the Russian side completely emptied hall 101, where the satellite sat in the horizontal position, already wrapped in its streamlined fairing. (I seem to recall the RF test for the Intelsat campaign last summer occurred before fairing installation, but I digress...)

This emptying surprised me and led the ILS safety engineer to wonder out loud just what Bad Thing™ must have once happened out here at some time during a radio test for the Russians to have such a policy today. Generally speaking, Russian industrial practice does not subscribe to the err-way-over-on-the-side-of-safety approach that, for example, causes the U.S. to clear the полтинник of all but essential personnel during satellite fueling. While a skeleton U.S./French group fueled the satellite, Russian technicians were two rooms over (about 100 yards away), working on the adapter system and the Breeze-M upper stage.

This is not to say that the Russians are not safety conscious. They are, just to a different extent. (Extents vary among non-Russians as well. French safety rules, for example, require their personnel to be out of the hotel area - which is within some critical radius of the launch pad - by 11 hours prior to the launch of our satellite; the comparable U.S. rule requires evacuation by launch minus two hours.)

In the end, the radio test went well, and the satellite's batteries were charged, too. This all was accomplished well in advance of the 3:30 am scheduled end time for those activities. All of us working this task were back at our respective hotels by 1:30 am, which made a relatively short work day for me.

Time for lunch. Mine is the afternoon slot today, starting at 1 pm.

Cheers...

Comments

[skipperja.livejournal.com]

Our group of engineers believed that old canard that the Russians didn't care at all about safety or human life for that matter.

The Russian group that came to help us test their space suit in our Station Airlock simulator brought their safety engineer, an old hand with space suits. He was so strict about safety that they had private fears that we wouldn't try to meet his requirements and thus the test wouldn't be run. They told that after we had reached a level of safety that satisfied all of us.

[alexpgp.livejournal.com]

I don't think he was the safety engineer, but I do recall working with one gentleman from Energia named Tsygankov, who knew everything about space suits and EVA. He could be pretty intimidating, if I recall correctly.

Cheers...