A Comedy of Errors

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"What lies behind us and what lies before us are tiny matters compared to what lies within us." -Morrow
"Take care of the minutes, and the hours and years will take care of themselves." -Anonymous
"Love doesn't make the world go round. Love is what makes the ride worthwhile." -F.P. Jones

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2008-02-07
go atlantis!

18:04

Well, STS-122/1E, the 121st shuttle mission and the 21st to the ISS, launched today at 1:45pm CST. Hooray, that's cool, I got to stick my head in the Columbus module which is now on it's way to the ISS, and all that. As exciting as it was, I'm more concerned because that means, oh that means STS-123/ISS 1J/A is NEXT. As in, VERY, VERY SOON. Which makes me VERY, VERY STRESSED because that's my flight, one that I have a significant amount of responsibility for and there is SO MUCH that I must do before the FAST-APPROACHING launch. Which is why I'm still at work at 6pm and if I were to leave now, it'd be the earliest in several weeks. And I'm staring down the barrel of working full days this weekend, as well as long nights until the launch. If there were three of me, then this might a little more manageable. But as that's not the case (thank goodness, eh? ;) here I be. Did I mention that STS-123 is coming up quickly?

And Becca is complaining that she's bored. It's enough to make me want to leave dishes on the left side of the sink. ON PURPOSE.

Incidentally, today is the seven-year anniversary of the launch of STS-98/5A, which brought the US Laboratory, Destiny to the ISS, also carried by Atlantis.

Launches are always very exciting, but this one had a bit more excitement than usual for people in my building. We have periodic fire drills scheduled, and while nobody consults my schedule, they should at least, say, consult the launch schedule. As in, DON'T SCHEDULE A FIRE DRILL FIFTEEN MINUTES BEFORE A SHUTTLE LAUNCH. The bell started ringing and my officemate and I looked at each other in disbelief, "You MUST be kidding me." Nope. We all had to leave. I grabbed my laptop in hopes that I could get wireless outside. Most NASA employees, regardless of how long they've been here, watch launches, either on their computers, in conference rooms, wherever. So, as we all trooped downstairs, the most common remark was unsurprisingly a sarcastic "What's the big deal? It's not as if we wanted to watch the launch or anything."

Outside, a group of us started heading to the cafeteria to catch the final minutes of the countdown when we were all waved back in. I ran up the stairs, into my office, plugged my laptop into the network and made it back to the live launch video with two minutes to spare (does mean I did miss the aerosurfaces testing, my favorite part of the countdown). So, I did make the launch, but it was close.

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