Kevin's Journal: July 3, 2005

I Don't Think We're in Uchinoura Any More, Toto

Just when you've finally learnt the Kanji for Uchinoura, they go and change the name! On July 1 the town officially merged (or actually re-merged) with its neighbor, and is now called Kimotsuki-cho. That's "town with a liver." Okay then. Perhaps it's a reference to the large amounts of Shouchu (sweet potato hooch) consumed in the area. Which is really quite a bit.

I wonder whether they'll bother to replace all the road signs in the area that direct one (in English as well as Japanese) to the place. At least the name of the launch site will remain Uchinoura Space Center (for now).

Makes You Think All the World's a Sunny Day

Approximately 50% of the photons in this area are ending their little photon lives by colliding with a CCD, or so you might guess by the number of cameras in action. The cryogenic ops people (Scott Porter, Mike DiPirro, and John Panek) arrived yesterday, each with various hi-tech imaging devices. And of course Rich, Juli, Gary and I all have our own. In terms of size, Scott wins with his Nikon L Series lens (you've seen those on the sidelines of sporting events) that he bought just to photograph the launch from the official viewing area about 3 km from the pad.

So for those who haven't been following along in your HTML hymnals, do check out the photos of Astro-E2.

There's a Mighty Wind A'Blowin'

Today we are running through a launch rehearsal, which meant we all got up in the middle of the night. It takes a long time to do the final tests that assure us that everything will work. But we sure don't want to launch with anything not working.

The weather has to cooperate too, and it's seriously windy today. Definitely too windy to launch, so it's a good thing we're only rehearsing. They did decide to open the tower door and rotate the rocket into launch position for the rest of the rehearsal. If the weather had been really bad, they would have finished the rehearsal with the rocket in the tower. Which is fine as far as the test goes, but not as much fun.

The forecast for launch day is currently 40% chance of rain. I'm not sure when the decision will be made whether or not to launch, but I think it'll be sometime about 12 hours before launch.

They Have the Plant but We Have the Power

One of the things they test during the launch rehearsal (and the real launch, I might add) is running the control room on internal power. Which means they disconnect from utility power and use their generator. That way there's no reliance on the electric company. But in this mode they don't provide power to the little side rooms where are computers are. So we have to run on batteries, and (even worse!) the ethernet hubs don't work. Internet withdrawal for everyone!

Also, this mode eliminates the hot-noodles options for lunch, since the stove is electric, and is not included in the circuits that are fed from the generator. Fortunately I had ordered a sammich, myself.

This afternoon we'll return to the hotel and take a nap. Then the cryo folks get up and start the process of filling the helium dewar with superfluid helium. The whole procedure takes about a day, and ends just about a day before launch. Then on launch day we all get up at midnight again, only this time for real!

More to come...