Meeting with Alex

Heard at the early morning meeting: "Everything's in place. Things couldn't be better!" The general mood is one of confidence and satisfaction that all the planning and grueling preparation was paying off!

This morning BJ will be involved with stowage turnover, and then this afternoon the selection of animals that would fly is taking place. It has been brought to my attention that there are some concerned about the term "turnover," when it comes to animals in cages, so let me explain: This simply means that those who are caring for and monitoring the progress of the animals will give them (or turn them over) to the folks who will integrate their cages into Neurolab onboard the shuttle. The timing for each group of experiment animals is important. For instance, the last to be loaded will be the crickets so that Dr. Horn can be aware of the time of birth of each.

At about 6:00 there will be a weather check to confirm that all is okay for launch. Under any other circumstances, the process can be stalled at this point. A meeting was set to detail the process in the event of a scrub or delay in launch. Another contingency timeline was to be detailed also for Dryden (in the event that the shuttle will need to land in California (see Marilyn Vasques' bio) It seems all bases are covered!

You may remember from yesterday that I had planned to meet with Alternate Payloads Specialist Alex Dunlap this morning. Quite by accident, he was detained and was not going to arrive until very close to the time of our live QuestCast with you, so I invited him to join us. Graciously he agreed, and you don't want to miss that one! Take a look at the archive of that live session either in audio or video. If you need to download the free player here.

I hope to have a text version of my interview with him up soon as well. I think I was most impressed by his unwillingness to be considered something special for having been selected as a part of this mission. I'm afraid I wasn't convinced though! He is truly an extraordinary guy, and shares with us the purpose and drive that sets these crew members apart!