Kevin's Journal: July 6, 2005

Sorry, John, Sorry

Most of you probably know, but the launch has been scrubbed due to miserable weather. Actually, when it was called there was no rain, the wind was not bad, and the sun was almost cutting through the clouds. But now (about an hour before the planned launch time), the rain has returned with a vengeance. Also lightning is on the way.

On the brighter side, we got through the short functional 45 minutes faster than in the rehearsal, so we're shifting the schedule out by 30 minutes. So when we do try again, instead of getting up at 2:30 AM we can get up at 3:00. (Or 1:15 instead of 12:45 for the tower personnel.)

There's only so long the XRS can go before we need to re-topoff the liquid helium, recool the solid neon, and recool the intermediate vapor-cooled shield. Either Friday or Saturday is the last day we can try to launch before we have to do all that servicing. If we do have to service again, that takes 2 days. And we don't want to get as late as July 13, because that's when the shuttle is scheduled to launch, which complicates the already difficult task of collision avoidance. So we're really hoping for good weather on Friday!

That's all for today. At least we get some rest before we try again.