efaardvark
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Status Updates posted by efaardvark
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Found out I "get" to work 2 extra days this week. Joy.
At least that means my weekends are back in sync with the rest of the world's.
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Lol...at least it's only 2 days and not practically the whole month. Been crazy here, like some kid kicked over our anthill and we're scrambling all over the place trying to put it back up again. I'm so tired.
Enjoy the weekends
are you having to meet a deadline or did something else come up at work?
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Kind of a combination of factors here. Higher than average workload this year with chandryaan-2 launch and testing/training for them plus a bunch of cubes going up on the one hand. On the other, in the last several months we've also lost 2 workers. 3 actually, one retired, one got fired, and then one of the replacements didn't work out & we had to start over. We're a 2-position, 24/7 operation so losing two out of 8 people .. we're feeling it. 2019 has not been a good year so far.
I talked to my boss today & he says he's hired a replacement for the replacement so there's light at the end of the tunnel. However, even best case it'll take a couple weeks for badging, background check, and other bureaucrazy before he can even start training for the actual job, and another couple/few months after that before he's pulling his weight.
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From my cheesehead brother…
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@Animedragon.. to tell the truth I’m not sure either.
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Fully stacked!
Not since Apollo has anything this big sat on a launch pad.
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Something like that, though that would be more a New Shepard thing than a Starship thing.
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Get some sun! Or at least take vitamin D supplements....
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Getting a second wave of oranges on our tree out back...
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Getting close now to the first Starship orbital test. April 17th is the latest guesstimate. Waiting for government clearance and official maritime & aviation notices to go out, maybe as early as tomorrow/Monday, for the date to solidify but from what SpaceX has been saying they're as ready as they'll ever be for this launch. FAA bureaucrazy is all that they're waiting on now.
Elon Musk said, "Success is one possible outcome." Not sure what SpaceX considers success on this one however. Elon said that if it doesn't blow up and take the launch ring with it he'll consider that a success. You never know for sure but engineering-wise enough real-world testing of engines and systems has been done so far to pretty much assure it'll meet Elon's definition.
There's still a couple other key points of concern however in my mind. I'd like to see it at least survive past "max-q", or that portion of the ascent where the vehicle has gone supersonic and aerodynamic forces on the vehicle are the most intense. That's pretty straightforward to model, especially given modern computing methods. SpaceX has a lot of data from their Falcon 9 on that as well so I'd be kind of surprised if that turns out to be the point of failure.
On the other hand the reentry scenario is one of those areas that is dynamic, extreme, and very hard to model on a computer. If something is going to break I'd expect that would be where/when. But even in that case I'm sure they'll get some good data for the next try.
Recovering the booster with the "chopsticks" is another area of concern, though NOT for this first flight. That's another big question mark in my head that'll need to be proven out at some later date but it won't be part of this first orbital test. Sounds like they'll instead try to "land" the booster upright in the ocean off the coast. I'd like to see that happen as well. I'd imagine that chances are good there, again because of SpaceX's Falcon 9 history. Apart from size the physics is very similar and the landing zone is the Gulf of Mexico, not some tiny droneship.
(Not sure if they plan a recovery operation. I suspect not since Starbase is already pretty full of parked space vehicles, including the next booster.)
Regardless how it all turns out I'm sure it'll be interesting. That much at least is guaranteed.
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Getting far too familiar with navigating AT&T's phone hell.
Still no fiber. I think the gods are having fun with me again.
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Getting ready for the midnight toast. Didn't have any champaign so I'm having to make do with what I have. GTF out 2020!
And of course, Happy New Year to all...
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Going through old stuff to make space for new stuff. Exhibit 1.. a well-used “Aeronautical Vest-Pocket Handbook”
1959 complements of Pratt & Whitney Aircraft Co .. trig tables, elemental properties, conversion tables, tables of physical constants, graphs showing relationships between various aeronautic/engineering variables. Clearly a pre-Google, pre Wikipedia artifact.
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Got a c19 booster shot today. Heard mixed reviews from my coworkers as to what to expect in terms of side effects. I got off pretty clean with the original vaccination. Just some localized muscle soreness around the injection site and maybe a bit of fatigue (or maybe just working too hard) but nothing else. Hope this goes as well but I took tomorrow off as a comp-day so I get 3-day weekend, just in case. I figure if I need it, great. If I don't.. well, there's plenty around the house that needs to be done too.
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Got a new refrigerator. Strangely, that had higher priority this weekend than getting my car fixed or doing my taxes.
At least the deed is done. I can only hope that I get enough of a tax return to pay for it.
When I finally get around to filing of course.
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Got a short weekend this week, courtesy of OSIRIS-REx delivering pieces of Bennu to Earth. 24 hours on-call the day before then 10 or so hours on-site Saturday leading up to the reentry of the capsule containing the sample.
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Got some (probably) bad news today at work. According to Laurie Leshin, JPL's director, next year's budget for NASA - and therefor the lab's - will be around 10% less than expected. One of NASA's flagship missions, the Mars Sample Return has had its budget for next year slashed to around $300M from $800M to $900M. Ouch. Other missions are in a similar predicament. "It is also becoming more likely that there will be JPL workforce impacts in the form of layoffs, and the way such JPL workforce actions are implemented means that the impact would not be limited to MSR", according to an email Leshin sent to the Lab's employees this afternoon.
I say "probably" because all this is due to the Fiscal Responsibility Act passed a few months ago by the US Congress and the management is still recalculating and rearranging the budgets for FY 2024 and 2025 based on the mandates contained therein. We don't know the details yet, but the broad outline is pretty clear. Some layoffs have already happened. Others are likely as the details are worked out.
Happy New Year!
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I found out today that the day after that email came out the lab did actually let about 100 contractors go. Very abruptly from the sound of things.
Meanwhile the "leaders" in Congress are complaining that NASA should have waited for... something. Waiting for Congress to deliver a final budget is a non-starter because they'll no doubt argue until the last minute. (Or later! And if they can't agree then across-the-board cuts automatically kick in that would be even deeper than what's been proposed.) When you're told next year's budget will be between 30 and 90% of what you had planned for then you need to get started NOW. The FRA passed in July. Since then all Congress has done is go on break for the holidays. What's NASA management supposed to do?
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Got to go on my yearly trip to Ft. Irwin next week. 5 hr round trip drive to the middle of nowhere halfway to Vegas to spend 5 minutes getting my work badge renewed. Was this trip really necessary?
Hope at least the weather clears by Monday.
and 🌧 and maybe even 
and 
in the desert would make the trip “perfect”.
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Got to sleep in late today, but also working until midnight on a Friday.
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Yeah, too bad about the lander but they still have the orbiter, which has most of the science instruments on it. It would have been great to have the lander (and rover) to ground-truth things, but it isn't the end of the mission by any stretch. ESAs MEX lost Beagle, but years later were still tracking them every day.
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Got up, got dressed/showered/ready for work, drove in, parked, walked the few blocks to the SFOF, grabbed a cuppa, then sat down in my assigned seat at the console, only to have the director call a launch scrub. Hadn’t even finished my coffee.
Well, it isn’t like I don’t have other things I need to do as well. I just hope we don’t have another power failure at home like we’ve had for the last 2 days.
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Grant Imahara dead?? Oh no!
https://www.hollywoodreporter.com/news/grant-imahara-dead-mythbusters-host-was-49-1303101
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Great, now they're saying we're going to get more snow & ice. Even in the desert! Not natural I say.
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Had to explain the term "CRT" today. Am I really that old? Didn't everyone at one time stare into a particle accelerator for their motion picture enjoyment?
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@Wodahs Kinetograph?? Even I'm not that old!
I just tried googling "CRT". I got "Cross Timbers Royalty Trust", Critical Race Theory", "Cardiac Resuscitation Therapy", and "Community Renewal Team" but no "Cathode Ray Tube" until about 3 pages in. You know you're too old when even the internet has forgotten what you did when you were young.
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CRT here is also a rural farming supplies store and yes i had heard of most of them but with your comment "time stare into a particle accelerator for their motion picture enjoyment" i had assumed you were going with the Cathode Ray Tube , a part also used in early TV's
hence going with your statement "Am I really that old" i thought id go for the father of the TV the moving picture unit Kinetograph
or in short "im explaining im old too"
actually i thought i put the old in oLDtaku
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Had to go out to Studio City a while back & on the way back I saw the Warner Bros. tower. Which of course made me think of the Animaniacs.
I had to look it up but that was early 90s! 30 years ago! Now I feel old. 
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Half the people I play Minecraft with are "creative" and the other half are "survival". I need to find a mod or something that makes the area around the spawn point "creative", but only out to a radius of about 20 or so chunks. After that it is all "survival". Ideally the survival zone would start "easy" and eventually shade to "hard", again as a function of distance from spawn. Of course the nether and the end would be survival. (Gotta have some reason to venture out, right?)
If I had a mod like that I might be able to get everyone together to play on the same server.
I'm still not sure if it is or not 
