Another 14-hour day. I'm not really complaining, seeing as I thank God each day for the great job I have, but it sure is a grind.
Our customer "broke" their own equipment today when we were 99% finished with the test we were running.
This slips our schedule at least 24 hours, depending on how fast they can get their gear working again. If they have to fly in parts from France, it might be a couple of days.
Maybe I'll get to make HAMCON after all!
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Merry Christmas - <i>He Is Born</i> -
I'd like to wish my friends here a very Merry Christmas, and a very Happy New Year. We'll be having our Christmas Dinner with family...
Ah yes... BTDT, hopefully they don't want you to re-do the test for 'free'...
ReplyDeleteWe had two tests to do as part of our procedure. The first was a "Pre-encapsulation" test, with the spacecraft outside of the payload fairing, and the second was the "Post-encapsulation" test, after the fairing has been slide over the spacecraft and buttoned-up.
ReplyDeleteThe first test actually went perfectly, and then they wanted to try something else. It turns out they mis-configured some of their own equipment, causing the problem. They had it fixed by 1am, and the encapsulation, and final test, went flawlessly.
They apologized this morning for keeping us so late, and said they'd make it up to us, which usually means "Free drinks on the customer" at least one night onboard after we leave.
Thursday it gets rolled over to the ship I work on to get integrated with the launch vehicle, and then we'll do some data flows from the entire stack. After that it transferred to the Launch Platform, and the next day we go erect (no jokes, please!) and do our final testing. If all goes well, the LP will leave next Wednesday, and we'll follow on Saturday.
Still have a LOT of work to do, as I'm the only one there who knows how to do the RF part of the data flow through the TDRSS network.
And the final test when the ILV is standing is grueling, as it's a complete dry-run of the entire 8 hour countdown, and it usually starts around noon.
No wonder we sleep so much the first few days we're out!
LOL, I didn't realize y'all were still using 'TURDS' :-)
ReplyDelete"TURDS" = "TDRSS"??
ReplyDeleteIt's actually been very good, although VERY expensive.
They can pick up the rocket sitting on the pad, which is pretty good for having a 10 Watt TTY onboard to a low-gain antenna.
But at $900 per minute, I guess they have to be good!