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!

Height Saftey Class

I had to get certified to working at heights because starting next week i'll be out at the pad. The class consisted of trying on harnesses, tying knots and ladder safety. Here's a picture of how cool i look with everything on:

The teacher guy was really into his work so he had all kinds of pictures and practical information such as "Don't anchor your harness to a motor that could possibly turn on" and had a picture of a guy who was wrapped around an axle.

One of the best parts was the knot tying section. We learned the Bowline knot (shown below) which is the best. You could use it to pull a truck out of mud and still be able to untie it.

Teacher guy says you need fall prevention equipment when you are working at a height of 4 feet or more. Here's a fellow employee following all height safety rules on his way to lunch:

The funny section was on ladder safety. He just showed a series of pictures of dopes around KSC using ladders improperly. Our teacher would see people doing stupid things, take a picture THEN tell the simpletons to get down and use the correct ladder. Examples below (not from KSC):






Bottom line: Don't do stupid things. Got it?

Commander Colin

Today was totally sweet: I got to sit in the commander's chair in space shuttle Discovery! Here's my pic:

Commander Colin

Our mission requires two shuttles to be prepared and ready to launch (one is backup). The Discovery is not being used for the mission and is in preliminary checkout phases which means nerds like me can go crawl around inside it. I also took a quick video of the inside:




Next week we will load our payload in the 'can' which drives out to the pad. I'm going to take some pics inside our clean room to give a better idea of what's going into space.

Cool VAB pics

I was browsing the pictures taken by the photo staff and i came across these cool pictures of when Atlantis was being lifted in the VAB, enjoy!

Atlantis rolling into the VAB

Starting to lift the shuttle

Cool hovering shot before Atlantis goes vertical

Vertical

Roll Out!!!

Today was roll out day for Atlantis! I scouted out a nice spot in the LCC (launch control center) parking lot. Here are some starting off pics:










Nice spot, huh? Well after a couple minutes of squeezing my camera lens through the fence, i realized 'Hey, I can get on the other side of the fence!'



So I did, and snapped these pics!

You can see the Pad A just to the right of the MLP.

After watching that all morning...it was time for lunch! After lunch, i saw that the stack made it to the pad so Greg and I drove out there to take more pics. It only took about 4 hours to get there, which was quick. I guess the normal 5 hour trip is to Pad B because that one is a bit farther. Greg and I drove around Pad A and took pictures the whole way:

Go Atlantis!

Looking down some old railroad tracks at the pad. Dunno what the tracks were for...

You can see the VAB at the far right of the picture.

So that's roll out! I thought the crawler was moving a lot faster than I imagined it did. Here's a video i took to show how fast it was going. I also have a video that shows how far it went in an hour...not that far.

I took waaaaaaaaay more pics than i put up here. I put them on my facebook for everyone to see.

We'll be loading the can up soon...which means i'll be all over the pad structure! Sweet!

No Roll Out

So Atlantis was supposed to roll out this morning...but it got delayed until Saturday due to Hanna. The TS/Hurricane will be here sometime later this week. When they do eventually roll out, I'll be there to get some pics!