Sweet Home Californie

Back to the log cabin in California. Florida is already a mirage. Total days in Cocoa Beach this year totaled 146. Oi. As far as I know the hangar queen is progressing nominally. Sha-weet. I got numerous calls and txts while stuck in FL. Mostly from the wif, but also from my most wonderful nieces.

However, I did receive a special note, with pictures, addressed specifically to me and hand delivered by Mrs. LK from my numba one nephew. Maraming salamat sa pamagkin ko. I love you Justin.


For anyone that gives a poop the following pictures describe what I have spent the last 6 years of my life making sure worked and were ready to be catapulted into space. The satellite on the left is a depiction of the three satellites I had a hand in launching in the past two years. The satellite on the right, though similar, is what I hopefully will be working on for the next 5 to 6 years. Go Wideband!

Calm Yourself

Another action packed day at the Hilton in Cocoa Beach for me. Had to be at work at 10AM for a couple hours of work. It went well and I headed back to Cocoa Beach around 12:30. Grabbed one of the many remaining Presidentes left in my room fridge and sat back down with this.


I bought this jacket back in Oct. of 2006 and really wasn't all that impressed with the Cobra patch on it. The jacket itself is definitely vintage, but the patches on it were definitely not. Kinda disappointing, but par for the course with eBay stuff. So I wore it a few times, but for the most part it's been in the closet.

With this current launch campaign I'll have participated in all three birds of the Block I group and now have a complete collection of all the patches. The patches are cool all by themselves, but I kinda wanted to figure something out to do with them. I decided to put them on the jacket after removing the Cobra patch. I didn't have time to do this or have it done before I left for Florida so I brought the jacket and patches with me. A week or so ago I went down to a Jo-Ann Fabric & Craft in West Melbourne to pick up some supplies to do the job myself.


Here are some close up pictures of my work. The American flag patch was on there already and I'm going to take it off and re-sew it since the hack that put it on there did it wrong. All of mine look way better and aren't sewn through both the outer layer and lining like the flag patch is and the Cobra patch was. My work isn't perfect, but I learned alot and next time it will be perfect.




And yes. Those are platypi on each of the patches. It was chosen because it's a critter that combines many different types of "technology" kinda like the WGS communication satellites. Go Wideband!

D. Lay.

No earlier than December 2. Oi. That'll get me up to 60 days or so. Still two weeks short of last time, but still. Shuttle is still scheduled to go off on Monday as planned so that's good. Intellsat didn't go last night and depending on when they fix what they need to fix they could impact us as well. Again, oi. Gotta love launching really expensive things into space. Heh.

K to the S to the C

These are just a tad overdue, but oh well. I didn't take these since we weren't that close. One of the guys I work with here in Florida took them. He was that close. Lucky bastard.









Here is where the two solid rocket boosters separate from the external fuel tank after their job is done. These will actually be retrieved after they land in the ocean.



I've got video too that I'll post up, but I don't want to spend all day uploading it over my Verizon pc card. When I get in to work next week I'll upload it then over their fast connection.

Lift Off!

Not the best quality. It's times like these I wish I had a real camera and/or video camera. Oh well. You all get the idea.

This Delta II rocket, built by Boeing, launched the Phoenix and helped it on its way to Mars. It took off this morning at 5:26AM. That would be 2:26AM for you folks out on the west coast. I proceeded to go back to bed and fall asleep once the sound of the surf had drowned out the sound of the rocket.

Measat Launch

I'm a little late on posting this, but today at around 3PM PST the Boeing built Measat satellite will be launched from Baikonur Cosmodrome. The satellite will provide communications to a large swath of the asian continent. The launch will be televised via the entarwebs today. Check the countdown clock at the bottom of the page for the link to the webcast. They've got video links for both 56k and broadband. Check it out if you're feeling like it. I didn't work this project, but I have been within touching distance of this sucker and it's gonna be in space soon. Too cool!

Update: Well it's about 15 minutes after launch and all is well at this point. Here's to continued success on this launch. Go Proton! Go Breeze-M! Go Measat-3! Go Boeing!

Ground Control To Major Tom

Launch Update

Spaceway F2, a Boeing 702 satellite built by the Boeing Satellite Development Center for DIRECTV Inc., was successfully launched Wednesday from Guiana Space Center in Kourou, French Guiana. Spaceway F2 and another SDC-built satellite launched in April will support a capacity expansion for DIRECTV, allowing it to deliver more than 1,500 local and 150 national high-definition channels to dozens of the largest U.S. markets by 2007.

What Goes Up, Better Damn Well Stay Up

NEW UDATE: 15-NOV-2005, 4:54 PM -

The launch of Spaceway F2, a Boeing 702 satellite built for DIRECTV, Inc., from Kourou, French Guiana, has been rescheduled. It will be broadcast live Wednesday, Nov. 16. The launch window extends from 3:45 p.m. to 4:30 p.m. Pacific time.

The launch will be broadcast live on IPTV . Subscribers to DIRECTV can watch on channel 399.

UPDATE: 3:43PM PST - The launch has been postponed due to a "problem encountered during final preparations".

So at 3:45PM PST today the Boeing built Spaceway satellite is scheduled to launch. It will be the latest of the Boeing 702 family to take up residence in earth's orbit. The image below is a what the sucker looks like. The reason I bring it up is that they will be broadcasting the launch on DirecTV channel 399 as well as on the Ariane Space website and watching a rocket launch is cool.