Beach House

There's a little beach house on KSC that astronauts get to take their wife or husband to before going on their flight. They've also had parties there for muckity-mucks.

Here's some pics:

How the payload gets in the shuttle

Here's a bunch of pictures to show how our payload gets installed in the shuttle.

Our carriers that carry the payloads: MULE, FSS, ORUC and SLIC from left to right

Here's the pad. On the left is the RSS which is where the payload goes (light gray area).
Our stuff gets out to the pad via the ''can''.

Our payload is installed in the can then rotated to this standing position.
Here's the can leaving for the pad

Can enroute to Pad A

Later that day, the can arrives at the pad. Techs will lift it into the RSS and
prepare the payload for removal.

Here's a pic of the RSS with the can installed (white rectangle in middle of gray structure).

That's the can in the middle of the RSS. The RSS stays open until our
stuff is removed from the can.

One last picture of the RSS with the can.

There is a room in the RSS called the Payload Changeout Room (PCR). We spent A LOT of time there. Above is a picture of the can with its doors open.

A big machine called the PGHM (pronounced piggum) pulls the payload out of the can and then sticks it in the shuttle. The PGHM is the white thing on the right that rolls and grabs our stuff.

When the payload is inside the PCR, the can is lowered and the RSS rotates
onto the shuttle as seen above.

The shuttle's payload bay doors open and the payload is unbagged. The PGHM can now roll forward and install our carriers.

That's all there is to it! We spent a whole week in that PCR watching techs only to get our mission delayed and everything taken out! Yay!

Our carriers are back in the processing facility and this coming week we will do our last tests before returning to Maryland. Then, in a few months, we can come back and do it all again!

DJing at the Chili Pepper

This past thursday I DJed at the Chili Pepper again...this time without a hardcore band! Here's some pics:

Double Shuttles

Here's some pretty pics when the shuttles were on their pads together (Pad A is closer with Atlantis, B is further away with Endeavour).

Purple Suit Colin

I've had an exciting weekend! It all started when Breda and I had dinner at a restaurant called the Chili Pepper. This random guy recognized the band on my shirt so he came over and started talking. He reminded us of the guy in Superbad who hits Seth with his car (So you guys on myspace...or...). Anyway, he was all excited about djing at the chili pepper and we decided to come back the next day to set it up.

Well, i came back the next day, and the guy never showed up. Not to let the night go to waste I talked to the owner about it and i was able to get a try-out set before this hardcore band Everyth. I told everyone at work that i was djing and they all showed up to watch me. I did about an hour and a half and then Everyth came on. They were cool, but most of my work friends couldn't handle the noise.

After I finished djing, i talked to the owner and he said he had a party in a couple days and would call me about it. The party he wanted me to play was a pool party at this swanky cosmetic dentist's house. Of course i said i'd do it.

The guys house was amaaaaaaazing, here's a pic of his view:


There were about 20 people at the party and I played with this other guy Nick, who likes the same dance music I do. I got to eat some pulled pork and chill by a pool for like 4 hours. Most of the people there thought i was from Europe or something because of my outfit, which isn't the first time i've been mistaken as a foreigner. Here's a couple pics of me:

Crap

There was a major failure on the Hubble this past weekend and so our launch date is in jeopardy. Here's a story about it.

Not sure right now how long I'll be staying down here...

Breda's blog

A note about Breda's Entry: 'Wow.' Our resident QA impersonator did an incredible dance at Fishlips that resembled david brent from the british office. I found this to give a better idea of what he did:

Here's breda's blog: http://breda-blog.blogspot.com/

Lunch Trip 08 - CCAFS Museum trip

I have some old lunch trips that I took, but didn't have time to write about. One was a trip to the Cape Canaveral Air Force Station Museum. Normal people can't get to the museum unless you go to the KSC visitor center, but I can just show up whenever.

Greg and I started out in the firing room for pads 5 and 6 which were used in the Mercury Project. It was the site of America's first manned launch by Alan Shepard. Here's a pic of the firing room:


On the other side of the wall they have a computer used during launches. At the time, it was state-of-the-art. One of the things it did was take over commanding in the last few seconds before launch (i.e. demate umbilical, ignite engine, etc.) Here it is:

Operator Console

Main Computer

One of more than 50 modules. These things had different labels like Arithmetic and Memory

I took a picture of the Rocket yard (where pads 5 and 6 were, originally):



The astrochimps Ham and Enos were launched from these pads.

Ham, pre-flight

I'll end with a couple pics from the rocket yard:

Pershing II rocket (foreground)

Titan 2 Rocket

Exploring Pad A

Our equipment is heading out to Pad A this weekend so we went out to take "engineering photos" before got there. Really, we're bumbling around taking stupid photos like this:


First, the coolest thing was walking under the Mobile Launch Platform (MLP). I have a couple pics looking into the flame trench and also up through the MLP at the shuttle. The whole thing stands on 8 little dinky looking pillars, but i guess that's all it needs. The MLPs used for shuttle launches are the same ones used for the Apollo missions. Here's some pics:

Flame Trench/Deflector

Looking up the flame hole

Straight on view of flame trench and MLP (2 storey structure on bottom)

I bet some people are confused as to what that giant wall of gray metal is. well the Pad is made of 2 parts, the Fixed Support structure (FSS) and the Rotating Support Structure (RSS). The RSS is usually opened, and when the shuttle stack rolls in the RSS closes on the shuttle to protect it.

You can see how on the left the RSS is open, on the right it's closed.






After gawking at the size of the structure, we got in the elevator and poked around. One of the most unnerving things was a walkway around the front of the RSS: the floor was grated so you could see straight down 150 floors. Here's a pic i took looking at the crawler and another looking down at some people working:



Oh yeah, there was the shuttle too:

Looking down the walkway for the crew

On the way out, we had a photo-op with the crawler, so here are some of those pics

Side view from the street

Front view

Greasy gear closeup

Two other cool things I saw, first is a picture one of the emergency escape baskets (I'm totally volunteering to test these out).

And the last thing is this craaaaaaaaazy weld joint:


The second shuttle stack (Endeavour) is going to roll out to Pad B soon. When its out there, it'll be photo op city because there haven't been shuttles on both pads with the RSS open in a loooong time. I dunno if i'm going to get up early, but i'll definitely find pics to post!