Combined ops, day 2...
Aug. 28th, 2005 05:39 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
alexpgpDespite a completely ordinary evening last night, I could not get to sleep until after midnight. (I know it wasn't because I read most of Mirror Image, which is one of Tom Clancy's "Op Center" books... I mean... I finished the thing...) So I was in a fairly grumpy mood when the cell went off at 5:15 am this morning.
I warped through my daily ablutions and made the van with about 2 minutes to spare, after which we stopped by the Kometa to pick up more people. As we turned the corner to the Kometa, we could see the folks being picked up in the van's headlights. Our driver, who is both a sort of impatient fellow and somewhat infatuated with a whoop-whoop-waaaw-waaaw device installed on his van, turned the the thing on to scatter the crowd from his path as we pulled up to the front door. (I'm so sure the campaigners who did not have to be picked up at 5:45 am were appreciative!)
Anyway, we got to the полтинник, whereupon I got into some clean room gear and went out to hall 101. By this time, the satellite was sitting atop the upper stage, on a conical pedestal that is the adapter system. The French team was removing the last of the protective devices from the satellite. My relief arrived at 8:30 am, just at about the time the whole shebang was to be rotated down, or "horizontilated" in the words of one of the engineers here.
When I got back to the floor, the stack was horizontal and preparations were under way to roll the bottom half of the fairing into position under the horizontal stack. My follow-on relief came just as that operation was about to start. I went upstairs to put in the rest of my workday and then came back to the hotel area and caught up on sleep after a light lunch.
I'm the on-call guy tomorrow, which is good news, considering I never did get to do my laundry the other day.
Cheers...
I warped through my daily ablutions and made the van with about 2 minutes to spare, after which we stopped by the Kometa to pick up more people. As we turned the corner to the Kometa, we could see the folks being picked up in the van's headlights. Our driver, who is both a sort of impatient fellow and somewhat infatuated with a whoop-whoop-waaaw-waaaw device installed on his van, turned the the thing on to scatter the crowd from his path as we pulled up to the front door. (I'm so sure the campaigners who did not have to be picked up at 5:45 am were appreciative!)
Anyway, we got to the полтинник, whereupon I got into some clean room gear and went out to hall 101. By this time, the satellite was sitting atop the upper stage, on a conical pedestal that is the adapter system. The French team was removing the last of the protective devices from the satellite. My relief arrived at 8:30 am, just at about the time the whole shebang was to be rotated down, or "horizontilated" in the words of one of the engineers here.
When I got back to the floor, the stack was horizontal and preparations were under way to roll the bottom half of the fairing into position under the horizontal stack. My follow-on relief came just as that operation was about to start. I went upstairs to put in the rest of my workday and then came back to the hotel area and caught up on sleep after a light lunch.
I'm the on-call guy tomorrow, which is good news, considering I never did get to do my laundry the other day.
Cheers...
