Launch minus one, the sequel!

I awoke this morning with the exciting thought! This is the day we've all been waiting for. All the hard work (for some for as much as three years) is coming to a major milestone as Columbia will be rocketed into orbit and the real science will begin. The team in the outback was tired but encouraged that all was going well.

By the time I got to my first cup of coffee, it was official: the flight was pushed back for one hour as they attempted to solve some problems with the communications system (the means by which Earth can communicate with man and machine on the shuttle). That seemed to pose no major problem except the frustration of dropping off my daughter a little earlier (with relation to her bus departure time to the viewing site at Banana Creek). On our way to the visitor center complex, we passed the sign that read: Launch minus 0 days! Wow!

There was a breakfast reception planned for Alex Dunlap by the University of Tennessee-Memphis, Department of Family Medicine where he was a medical resident prior to taking a leave to work on Neurolab, and I was invited on your behalf. I felt honored and enjoyed listening as some of his colleagues and professors expressed their admiration, pride by association, and a little humor to round it out. But then, before they finished, I had to slip out. The mission had been scrubbed for the day, and the operations group (my adopted team for this contingency) was meeting in the O&C to touch base on procedures and people necessary for this particular set of circumstances.

It seems that the problem is a machine that is located in the middeck, and as you may recall, the AEMs, crickets and toadfish would need to be removed. Besides, of course, the items that needed to removed to access the ailing machine, certain experiments can be affected by even a 24 hour delay. For example, the "age" of the launched cricket is critical to the information Dr. Horn needs for his study. In cricket life, 24 hours can be a long time!

I arrived at the O&C - not the last, but certainly not the first one to get there! It turns out, the procedures that needed to be performed were not my "expertise" (smile here) so I was released and decided to let you know what's happening and then spend a little time with my visiting daughter. As I left the KSC base, I noticed that the sign again read: Launch minus 1.

My circumstance was not too different from the other team members: some were thrown into a flurry of activity affectionately termed "scrub mode" and others breathed a sigh of relief for a day or at least a few hours off.

But not forgetting to cross their fingers for tomorrow! What if it gets scrubbed tomorrow? All of the animals must be removed with all of their now used cages which will all need cleaning. Some animals will need to be re-selected, that is dams with younger neonates (that's moms and kids, rat style) will replace them. The soonest the flight could be rescheduled if tomorrow's a wash is 96 hours later. So let's do it tomorrow, okay?