Tuesday, November 13, 2012

Sorry, Been Busy

We're in the final testing, pre-departure mode for another launch.

Spent all day verifying telemetry and command (or as our current French customer likes to say..."Le Telecommand...") links between the ships and making final level settings so the signal doesn't get lost in the noise, so to speak.

The launch vehicle gets transferred tomorrow, and then a full day of testing, and then the platform leaves on Saturday.

We leave next Wednesday, just in time to miss Thanksgiving.

Hopefully we'll be home on December 11th or 12th, if all goes on-schedule, we don't have any weather delays, or, God forbid, and abort.

Depending on where in the count an abort occurs, it can be reset and recycled in as little as 24 hours, or it can take FOUR DAYS just to drain, purge, and reset everything.

My first mission was made real 'exciting' by a ten day weather delay, followed by an abort at T- 7minutes, 45seconds.

Took us six days to get that one ready to light again, but it went off just fine.

ANYWAY....guess I'm tired tonight (12 hour days do that to you) and rambling a bit.

We have one more in February, and then.....nothing.

Nada....

Zip.....

Zilch....

I think next August might be a good time to retire a couple of years "early", if I'm still employed at that time!

Take care!
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2 comments:

  1. I still think y'all are getting screwed on the no OT issue... As for the holidays, BTDT WAY too many times.

    ReplyDelete
  2. I don't mind working over to get something done, or even if we're just waiting for some other operation to finish so we can continue with ours.
    The not getting paid is what sucks about it!
    And yeah, I've worked MANY holidays in other jobs when I was "the single guy" who always volunteered so the family guys would be able to stay home.

    ReplyDelete

Keep it civil, please....

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