BJ's Houston Trip

Howdy Space Friends and Family

Well, the Houston weather was agreeable, but the airlines lost one of my bags. I had to invest in purchasing some personal items so I could go in the next day looking appropriate for my scheduled activities.

I located the flight cold experiment equipment that had been shipped from Ames Research Center (ARC) and worked with our astronaut crew trainers to kit and place it on the Spacelab refrigerator racks for the crew to review on Monday, 3/16. I was preparing the hardware for the review, which our lead engineer would be attending with the crew trainers. I returned home on Saturday.

The most important reason I was at Johnson Space Center (JSC) was to participate in the Middeck Stowage Bench Review that I mentioned in my last journal. I went over to the Boeing building on Thursday with our lead crew trainer to view the ARC flight experiment hardware and make sure everything was ready for the Friday the 13th late afternoon review. We together discovered a couple of problems, and I had to call back to ARC for assistance and to have some additional items sent the next morning.

I also did not see an important hardware item which was coming from Kennedy Space Center (KSC) and had to make some contact with another Ames engineer to assist me in locating the hardware item and getting it to Houston by the 1:00 p.m. review. He did some detective work and found that the item had not been sent from the shipping area at KSC, somehow the need date of 3/6 had been changed to 3/16. Fortunately, for me the shipping person at KSC got the item on a plane to Houston and the shipping person at JSC coordinated the pickup and delivery. It was an item that needed a van to pick it up. So, with a lot of team work (help from my friends) the hardware was at the review for the astronaut crew to look at. It's a good thing too, because they decided to put a couple of extra labels on it to make it easier for them to use when they get up in space. Some memory joggers for them!

All in all, the review went well. There were a couple other pieces of experiment hardware that the astronaut crew wanted to add and so I took the action to get these resolved back at ARC. As of this posting all items have been gathered and shipped to support these added items. Also, there were actions assigned from the flight cold stowage review on the following Monday. To complete all of this I am in the process of writing a letter to our Mission Manager at JSC to explain what ARC did to accomplish the action requests by the astronaut crew. ARC is really me and the engineers I work with. I always have to explain things in writing.

The next couple weeks will be very hectic; closing out documentation, reviewing final integration documents and making sure the experiment equipment that was at JSC gets to where it is suppose to go and then finally shipping, from ARC, the remainder of the flight stowage hardware. It'll be a lot of work, but I'm up for it!!!! I have a great team here at ARC supporting this final effort!!!

Neurolab is on a roll at ARC!

bj

P.S. The airlines brought my bag to my hotel the next day so I looked absolutely marvelous for my Friday the 13th review and I really didn't have any bad luck that day!