I figured I'd finally share.
So I built a satellite some time back and was sent to scenic Kazahkstan to launch it.
They offered me some extra money to escort it on the cargo plane, so I took it. We were riding on an Antonov, which is beyond huge. Check out the truck for a sense of scale.
(http://paularickert.net/albums/userpics/02-antonov.JPG)
Notice the lack of windows? The view was less than ideal from inside.
Paula demonstrates the scale of the wheels:
(http://paularickert.net/albums/userpics/13-paula-antonov.JPG)
I was heading to the cabin at the top of the orange ladder.
Check out the luxury!
We were not allowed to use or sit at the tables:
(http://paularickert.net/albums/userpics/16-antonov.JPG)
There were at least four seat covers on these seats. This made them lumpy, not cushioned.
(http://paularickert.net/albums/userpics/17-antonov.JPG)
When do you get to the good part? ;D
2009. :P
At least it was a short flight.
Amazing that thing stays in the air.
Quote from: Monsterlover on March 07, 2016, 07:20:59 PM
Amazing that thing stays in the air.
Dave's satellite?
:D
It is amazing it stays in the air. It's a rough ride. The crew was content to ignore us. The cabin smelled of old cabbage and older Russians. They didn't care if we were standing, peeing, whatevering during flight, take off, or landing.
The ride was so rough I could not tell if we had taken off, were flying, or had landed.
The bathroom was interesting. Two toilets, facing each other. So close that when someone else joined you, you would have to interlace your legs. Cozy. Stainless. Cold. There was a back door to the rear fuselage in the bathroom. This is where the Russians went to smoke. I'm used to company in the bathroom but this was more than I cared for.
We went from San Fran to East coast Canada to refuel, and from there to Iceland. Iceland was a 12 hour layover for crew rest and for the passengers to explore.
The customs guy couldn't be found so they just....let us into the country. Remember that-it becomes important later.
We saw the many sights of Kerflavik, which is to say, not much.
(http://paularickert.net/albums/userpics/20-iceland.JPG)
(http://paularickert.net/albums/userpics/21-iceland.JPG)
(http://paularickert.net/albums/userpics/22-iceland.JPG)
Possibly the smallest hotel beds I had ever seen. The lights would not work without your room key put into a slot, I suppose to discourage energy waste. To those of us who didn't know this, figuring out the lights in the dark was interesting.
Back on the plane now.
I'm in for the ride [thumbsup]
[popcorn]
Takeoff, land somewhere in Russia to fuel, take off, land in Kazahkstan.
Again, no customs people around. They just...let me in the country.
Check out the fancy hydraulics on this thing though-nose opens:
(http://paularickert.net/albums/userpics/24-antonov.JPG)
(http://paularickert.net/albums/userpics/26-antonov.JPG)
It kneels:
(http://paularickert.net/albums/userpics/27-antonov.JPG)
(http://paularickert.net/albums/userpics/28-antonov.JPG)
(http://paularickert.net/albums/userpics/29-antonov.JPG)
Ramp deploys:
(http://paularickert.net/albums/userpics/30-antonov.JPG)
(http://paularickert.net/albums/userpics/31-antonov.JPG)
(http://paularickert.net/albums/userpics/32-antonov.JPG)
(http://paularickert.net/albums/userpics/33-antonov.JPG)
Fancy indeed :D
This customs thing has me interested.
Did you eat at McDonald's in Keflavik? Cause you know, it might be better than in San Francisco?
I hope you get to fly back on a commercial flight.
Amazing stuff in so many ways.
I didnt know you were a rocket scientist. A rocket scientist with a Sawsall [thumbsup].
I'm on board.
Those toilets add new meaning to the term "mile high club" [puke].
A slack-arse rocket scientist tease...
MORE STORY.... please Dave... more story.... ;D
[popcorn] [popcorn]
There are no pictures of the next steps, as I directed them and was indisposed.
Here is a video of what it normally looks like though-the nose is opened (as seen above), the ramp is built and secured, the satellite container is on skids and slid down the rails system that gets built on the ramp. Once clear of the plane, we pick it up with a crane and put it on a rail car, which then goes to the Baikonur Cosmodrome. In this video they use a truck, but given the state of the roads in Kazahkstan, we did not do this.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nskp7HIfvAk (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nskp7HIfvAk)
After it and the other materials were packed away we took a terribly bumpy ride to the "hotel".
They called it a hotel. I think this was to make billing so much for it easier to the folks back home. This was a former soviet barracks that had been "renovated".
Pictures are limited, due to camera restrictions. Let me share with you the epic scenery:
The Grande Entrance and sole bit of scenery anywhere in the entire country.
(http://paularickert.net/albums/userpics/49-kazakhstan.JPG)
Hotel room with view!
(http://paularickert.net/albums/userpics/35-kazakhstan.JPG)
(http://paularickert.net/albums/userpics/36-kazakhstan.JPG)
(http://paularickert.net/albums/userpics/38-kazakhstan.JPG)
Rush hour:
(http://paularickert.net/albums/userpics/39-kazakhstan.JPG)
Tour de Kazahkstan frontrunner:
(http://paularickert.net/albums/userpics/40-kazakhstan.JPG)
(http://paularickert.net/albums/userpics/41-kazakhstan.JPG)
All of those buildings were basically derelict, empty except for the roving packs of wild dogs.
Ever been in or hear of those sensory deprivation chambers, kinda lets you be alone with your thoughts? I was in a country modeled on that. These look like the same pictures, but they aren't. This is everything we could see, all the time.
(http://paularickert.net/albums/userpics/46-kazakhstan.JPG)
(http://paularickert.net/albums/userpics/47-kazakhstan.JPG)
(http://paularickert.net/albums/userpics/48-kazakhstan.JPG)
(http://paularickert.net/albums/userpics/50-kazakhstan.JPG)
Just nothing out there. The company knew how boring it was and sent several cases of hard liquor and ten kegs of beer.
We ran out of beer.
Now, there was a nice big presentation of all the "amenities" at the "hotel" prior to leaving.
It was like some make the beast with two backsed up tourist movie.
We have a pool!
Yes. It was a pool. Once. It wouldn't hold water past half full. It might have held 3 people, tops. All of four feet deep. We decided not to try it.
Yes, there too, was a soccer field. Great if a giant dusty field with rebar sticking out randomly was your thing.
They *did* have a pool hall. It was locked up on the second floor of the VIP building. If you were lucky, they'd let you see it through the locked glass doors, but mostly they'd chase you off.
Things quickly devolved into drunkenly losing our money to the Pinkerton guards.
But hey-you're there to work-why so bored all the time?
It has to do with how one actually launches a satellite, which I'll go into next.
[popcorn]
[popcorn] [drink]
Quote from: Satellite smithy on March 09, 2016, 10:09:33 AM
It has to do with how one actually launches a satellite, which I'll go into next.
First you must clear the launch site...
(http://weknowmemes.com/wp-content/uploads/2014/06/meanwhile-in-russia-meme.jpg)
[popcorn]
Quote from: Oldfisti on March 09, 2016, 02:00:54 PM
First you must clear the launch site...
(http://weknowmemes.com/wp-content/uploads/2014/06/meanwhile-in-russia-meme.jpg)
That's not him, he's a little bit younger.
(http://media.gettyimages.com/photos/borat-sagdiyev-played-by-actor-saha-baron-cohen-attends-a-book-for-picture-id77795506)
http://lawsuits.ultratrust.com/borat-lawsuits.html (http://lawsuits.ultratrust.com/borat-lawsuits.html)
Kazakh's Foreign Ministry Lawsuits vs Sasha Cohen
Adding to the list of people looking for justice are the citizens of the real-life Kazakhstan. Until the release of Borat this was a relatively unknown country, but it's portrayal in this controversial film has brought threats of a lawsuit from the Kazakh foreign ministry.
The lawsuit involving villagers from Glod was filed in Manhatten, but was quickly dismissed in late 2006 by US District Judge, Loretta A. Preska. The attorneys for the plaintiffs were warned that unless they could provide specific claims/evidence that the villagers were misled by Sasha Cohen and 20th Century Fox, the case did not have enough legal merit to be heard by the court.
http://abcnews.go.com/GMA/story?id=1315240 (http://abcnews.go.com/GMA/story?id=1315240)
You're next [evil]
Patiently awaiting the launch...
[popcorn] [drink]
Now....details won't be gone into. Not only are they boring, but....they might put me in jail.
Now the average satellite is just a way to bounce a signal from one point to the next, amplifying it and spreading it out using the reflectors. You assemble a big ole box of parts (144,000 in the last one I did) and toss it up into space. It better work the first time-there's no fixing it.
This meant everything was tracked. Say you're installing a unit. You get it, sign for it that you took it. You open it with a witness and document that it was 1) opened and 2) what shape it was in. Then you'd document the hardware. The screws, washers, etc were all under lot control-that way if later they found a lot had issues, you'd know where they were so they could be removed. You'd install your inspected unit with your lot controlled hardware and your witness per some written instructions and someone to witness you torquing it proper. Sound like a pain yet? One unit could easily take all day. Sometimes multiple days. You've got a few thousand of them. Go!
Some time after you installed it it'd be hooked up to power and tested. I'd float in around then and make sure it had been done right.
Other things can and would happen during assembly. You're in this very cramped box full of delicate things you must not touch. Drop a screw? Find it. Period. Going to tighten a screw? Tape the extension to the socket wrench. Tape the socket to the extension. Don't drop it-you'll be famous. Don't leave your tools in the satellite. Most importantly if you make the beast with two backs up, tell someone. We can't fix it later. There was no penalty for making a mistake and admitting it. Messing something up and lying about it was a firing.
Now some 18 months later of this mind numbing paperwork/build, we have it all assembled. Now we need to make sure it'll withstand the rigors of both launch and space.
We put it in a giant thermalvac chamber. This places it under vacuum, and gets it really cold, then hot, then cold (repeat for two months, remove, serve with whipped cream and...). Flunkies would monitor the units inside to make sure nothing got to hot or too cold.
After this test, we'd put it in an acoustic chamber shoot loud noise at it to see if it'd withstand that, too. I don't recall the decibel level, but, if you were in there when it went off, it would kill you. I never did like working in there.
Then the vibration table shakes it along every axis, and again, we see if it works. Here's a video of a satellite being shaken:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GEwc6Poi4dg (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GEwc6Poi4dg)
Next up, we figure out the weight of our deployables (reflectors and solar arrays) and inflate some giant balloons to the right amount to offload them. Then we fire the explosives that cut the rods holding them in place (bang!) and use their tiny zero gravity rated motors to drive them out to make sure it all actually works and that we have the correct range of motion. It's fairly tedious, except for the one time I had an overinflated balloon and the reflector took off for the ceiling. I was famous.
Here is a short video of satellite assembly/test.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CCh3b2al7Dg (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CCh3b2al7Dg)
Give it a look and feel free to ask questions. More later.
Basic question:
What's the purpose of all the tinfoil-y stuff (both the gold and silver)?
Thermal blankets-they're reflective. Don't want anything getting too hot.
They/re also conductive, which means about all 8 million of them get grounded.
So does that mean the emergency thermal space blankets (as sold by REI, EMS, etc.) that I take with me on hiking trips are conductive too? I was under the impression that it's the same material. Now I'll think twice about using one in a lightning storm.
Quote from: 1.21GW on March 11, 2016, 08:19:34 AM
So does that mean the emergency thermal space blankets (as sold by REI, EMS, etc.) that I take with me on hiking trips are conductive too? I was under the impression that it's the same material. Now I'll think twice about using one in a lightning storm.
I'm pretty sure the satellite units have to conduct heat as well, so they tend to use electrically conductive materials, as those are also good for heat conduction.
I heard a story that at one point in time quite a while ago, there was one old guy that did *all* of the blankets.
He wanted to retire, taught an apprentice how to do it, and retired.
Next batch of blankets were shyt, all skill was not teachable.
He un-retired for a while.
But worth checking on the emergency blankets for sure.
I've never bought any, so not checked specs.
Quote from: 1.21GW on March 11, 2016, 08:19:34 AM
So does that mean the emergency thermal space blankets (as sold by REI, EMS, etc.) that I take with me on hiking trips are conductive too? I was under the impression that it's the same material. Now I'll think twice about using one in a lightning storm.
"Space blankets are made by vacuum depositing a very precise amount of pure aluminum vapor onto a very thin, durable film substrate."
So yeah, conductive!
Quote from: 1.21GW on March 11, 2016, 08:19:34 AM
So does that mean the emergency thermal space blankets (as sold by REI, EMS, etc.) that I take with me on hiking trips are conductive too? I was under the impression that it's the same material. Now I'll think twice about using one in a lightning storm.
Totally not conductive. Bust one of those out and your lady friend ain't getting out of her hiking gear.
Run some power through one and use a meter to see. I can't speak for the commercial ones-ours were fabricated in house.
A quick Google said that the commercial blankets are a good thing to have, and no danger in electrical storms.
Quote from: Speeddog on March 11, 2016, 01:39:14 PM
A quick Google said that the commercial blankets are a good thing to have, and no danger in electrical storms.
Not that Wiki is the end-all be-all of info, but check it out:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Space_blanket (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Space_blanket)
Given the amperage in your average lightning bolt, I bet the conductivity (or lack of it) of your space blanket would be the least of your worries if one chooses you to make ground.
Me, I'd prefer my corpse didn't look any more dorky than necessary, so no space blanket in a lightning storm for me.
BTW, thanks for sharing this adventure, Dave! [thumbsup]
Quote from: triangleforge on March 12, 2016, 07:33:41 AM
BTW, thanks for sharing this adventure, Dave! [thumbsup]
+1
[popcorn]
So back to launch base. At this point, we've tested every physical thing it does. The wire monkeys and RF weenies did their thing at the same time as the parts got installed. Following arrival, most of what occurs is a series of electrical checks to make sure the spacecraft is talking to the rocket, and of course fueling it up.
The mechanical group is there to move it, which might take a total of five days spread out over two months. The rest of the time was spent mostly drunk, and fighting with the launch base manager, who had turned into a make the beast with two backswit (FW for future reference) of epic proportions. For the sake of perspective on the boredom, people who didn't smoke took it up as it was something else to do.
FW was new and had decided he would make a name for himself by showing how much money he could save on these wasteful boondoggles. There was an utter lack of understanding that making some extra coin was the only thing that made being in that shithole at all acceptable. For perspective, the reason we'd launch out of Kazahkstan was cost. Average cost there to toss a bird up was 90 million. If we were to do it in say, Florida, it'd be about 150 million.
Near as I can tell, the majority of those cost savings came from paying no attention to safety whatsoever. When a guy fell off the 7+ story gantry around the satellite and bounced on one of the lower levels, they couldn't be bothered to even clean up the blood.
The decision wasn't hard for the powers that be. Keep in mind those numbers when you realize this guy spent most of his time trying to save about $400/day, at the expense of the technicians. Also keep in mind that last time was there I forgot one very special roll of tape, which was then hand carried to us on the next flight at a cost of slightly over 10k. Clearly, FW was clueless, and we butted heads often.
So where were we? It was off the plane, on the railcar (which rolled directly into the clean room), and we moved it onto the handling dolly. That would be like an automotive rotisserie, but for satellites. Let's you tilt it up and down, spin it, access whatever. Don't forget the bolts though, or this happens.
(http://www.spaceflightnow.com/news/n0410/04noaanreport/noaanprime1.jpg)
That was several hundred million. I think 250 was what I heard. Oops.
The brain dump will continue. It's been a while.
Here's the actual satellite I built for the campaign I'm relating.
I'm in the video, somewhere.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=W8PN1Y5Dyf8 (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=W8PN1Y5Dyf8)
Is that you at the 2:24 mark?
Yup-the video people used the worst shot they had of me lining a satellite up with...something in the official vid (I had no idea that was online until today). Like with most other departments, I got along with the video folks with the same cheerful bonhomie exhibited by red sox and yankees fans.
Mostly because every time I tried to do something incredibly difficult and sensitive, those make the beast with two backss would have some scalding hot 9 billion watt light shining in my eyes, making it very difficult.
It was their job to capture these critical operations on camera, so they'd contact me to see when it was scheduled. I would give them the wrong day to not have their lights/camera in my face.
They found someone else to ask. This went on for some time before I made a deal that I would stop actively make the beast with two backsing them if they kept their light out of my face.
Random tidbits.
The hot water in the "hotel" was hot.
So was the cold water.
Wear shoes on the bottom floor of the hotel, because the scorpions do actually come in.
None of the stairs are the same height as the adjoining stairs. This was impossible for me to get used to. I did better navigating while drunk, which was possible for me to get used to.
They can't cook bacon there. Too salty to eat, which was a surprising first for me. I'm convinced they made one batch, and just took the cover off every morning. Similar to the plastic food they use in commercials.
I can't speak for the chickens, but those were the smallest yolks ever seen.
They had a white board upon which the daily meal was written. This was fine until we wandered in one day and were greeted with just the word "meat". Please consider the sheer lack of a common language here. We did not speak Russian ( okay fine, hey baby how much?), but that was no help. They (claimed) did not speak English, however security dictated no work talk in the unsecured areas.
Us:Meat?
Us: What kind of meat?
Russian: Good meat.
Us: half in pantomime like cow? moo? (shows horns)? Sheep? Baa?
Russian: It's good meat-eat eat.
This went on for a bit, given the local custom of eating well, whatever they managed to run over. Not even kidding.
Eventually we ironed out it was some combination of beef laid out, with chicken and lamb on it, then rolled up. They had no idea how to explain this, hence "meat".
It wasn't on my first trip, but on my last one where we went out to eat somewhere in the nearest town. I ordered the chicken and they fed me either a small dog, or a medium cat. I figured it out when I got to the third (and final) piece and realized it was just a ribcage. The jury is out on what it was, exactly.
The jury agrees it sucked though.
Quote from: Satellite smithy on March 23, 2016, 09:04:43 PM
...
Us:Meat?
Us: What kind of meat?
Russian: Good meat.
Us: half in pantomime like cow? moo? (shows horns)? Sheep? Baa?
Russian: It's good meat-eat eat.
This went on for a bit, given the local custom of eating well, whatever they managed to run over. Not even kidding.
Eventually we ironed out it was some combination of beef laid out, with chicken and lamb on it, then rolled up. They had no idea how to explain this, hence "meat".
...
Yes, but was its good?
Couldn't say. I had a meeting that night around 9pm with the folks in California (8 am their time) so I wisely chose to drink my dinner.
Well...I'm done moving, so I have free time again.
Satellite at the Cosmodrome.
We put it on the dolly and the electrical monkeys are making sure they can still talk to it.
Hi? Hello? I'm afraid I can't let you do that, Dave
Whatever it is they do.
That takes some days if all goes well. In the meantime my mechanical crew and I set up the *very* fancy scale and calibrate it using a certified set of weights. This mostly went well. I stopped operations and evacuated at one point because an unknown fluid was leaking into the fueling hall. We were assured it was just water, which is bad enough in the clean room fueling hall, but it was leaking out of one of the light fixtures. This actually turned into an argument.
So-the middle of the satellite is a big ole hollow cylinder-that there is the fuel tank. The rocket is set up to get a certain amount of expected weight up, and no more. One can theoretically make the satellite too heavy-we need to know it's weight, and it needs to be spot on.
Once we got the dry weight of the satellite, we left it on the scale, and let the propulsion guys do their thing. Their thing involved no one else being in the facility while they loaded the various highly toxic fuels into it. It all seemed a bit silly-those guys got suited up in protective suits. We got sent to the hotel.
The same hotel that would have been in the blast zone in case they screwed up. I'm comforted-you comforted? Here, have a beer.
Either way, it takes them roughly a week to fuel it-one of the things I found interesting was they calculated the amount of air displaced from the fuel tank (aka the central cylinder) and subtracted that weight. Like I said-having the weight spot on was vital, and the more fuel we could cram into the thing, the longer the service life would be. Satellite life spans are based on fuel-all the power is supplied from the solar arrays and the sun. The positioning is all the thrusters, which is reliant on the fuel. One company I was aware of was trying to figure out a way to refuel them.
So it's fueled, and ideally the mechanical team is sober.
There was also a party for electrical and RF upon the completion of their checks earlier. There was typically a fueling party, which did occur as well.
At some point during the fueling party I realized there was no celebration for the mechanical team yet, nor would there be at all. Being in a state of drunken belligerence I decided that I was not okay with this. As I am the amenable sort, I gathered the prop team and whoever would listen, and told them about a car I had restored over some years with my dad, and how nice it turned out, and how everything worked so well. I took that car down to the fueling station and the gas jockey filled it up and everyone watching told that pump jockey "nice job!". At this point they began to realize the parallel I was drawing and explaining that they were a bunch of glorified gas jockeys, and this was now the "Dave built a make the beast with two backsing satellite party". I suspect if beating me senseless would not have delayed the launch, I may have suffered for my mouthing off, but screw 'em-it's my bird.
Now the fun! Now we go to pick it up now, but instead of the 4,000 or so lbs it weighted when we put it on the scale, now it's around 12,000 lbs. I think that's about six kilos for our metric readers. For our German readers, it was real heavy. Sorry-I don't actually know any German.
So first time it's being picked up and being put under this amount of strain ever. Good thing now it's no longer just poisonous, but now it's explosive. Why am I sober?
So we pick it up, and we put it on the Russian supplied transporter.
The transporter was old. WWII vintage. Someone had modified some old troop truck, put a flatbed on it and a small satellite fixture. It looked solid enough, but if I climbed on it and gently bounced on the balls of my feet, the entire thing would vibrate violently. All. Of. It. I wouldn't have trusted it to support a half yard of dry mulch. Let's put a bomb on it, drive it over to the other, bomb, see what happens.
Quote from: Satellite smithy on February 24, 2017, 06:44:27 PM
Let's put a bomb on it, drive it over to the other, bomb, see what happens.
The Russians have a special way of doing things, alright.
Thanks for sharing this tale - and the R. Crumb avatar!
[popcorn]
Wa-ow; a real live rocket scientist [bow_down]! I didn't know. I hope all is well for you and the whole dam family in Ks.
For some strange reason I wanted to travel Kazakhstan and Mongolia (in a land curser or a comfy dual sport) ... but now know to avoid staying at a Russian rocket launch sites ... (but where would one stay?)
Can I ask, is it "legal" to be helping Russians launch a satellite?
[Dolph]
Quote from: DuciD03 on February 25, 2017, 10:50:47 AM
[popcorn]
Wa-ow; a real live rocket scientist [bow_down]! I didn't know. I hope all is well for you and the whole dam family in Ks.
For some strange reason I wanted to travel Kazakhstan and Mongolia (in a land curser or a comfy dual sport) ... but now know to avoid staying at a Russian rocket launch sites ... (but where would one stay?)
Can I ask, is it "legal" to be helping Russians launch a satellite?
[Dolph]
Nope...you can't ask.
If you read the first post, however, you'd realize it was the Russians helping his company...not the other way around.
Quote from: ducpainter on February 25, 2017, 12:06:52 PM
Nope...you can't ask.
If you read the first post, however, you'd realize it was the Russians helping his company...not the other way around.
And we had 24/7 security around it. No one was allowed to look inside-not even the customer, who owned it.
There's a reason I've used basically nothing but layman terms and only publicly available video.
And publicly available video someone else has posted at that. Telling someone how to put a satellite works is a major no-no.
Quote from: Satellite smithy on February 25, 2017, 01:32:01 PM
And we had 24/7 security around it. No one was allowed to look inside-not even the customer, who owned it.
There's a reason I've used basically nothing but layman terms and only publicly available video.
And publicly available video someone else has posted at that. Telling someone how to put a satellite works is a major no-no.
I see ... said the blind man as he picked up the hammer ... and saw ...or is it saw?
I kind-a scanned through the thread this morning; amazing what you do and where you end up. ..funny-not / so lol-ing.
Interesting to see what people get up to in work and trips.
So I have my best guy on the transporter-I had made him practice on it during the week-the controls were wonky. The steering was a toggle switch. I think it had pedals. I suggested we not use the brake pedal-we'll just go at .01 miles per hour and let it coast to a stop. It's more weight than that thing probably should have seen, and mounted as high up as was inadvisable.
I wasn't willing to do it the first time I was there, but the last time, I knew I was leaving that particular job. with that in mind, I borroed a portable boobmbox, and cranked this up as we went.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ro4yhp9L6Ok
So, we get to the room with the rocket, park the transporter, pick up the satellite. We put it on a special stand that gets launched with it, and a bunch of Swiss guys hook up a special band with more explosive charges in it that will let the satellite separate from everything else when the time comes. At this point I'm trying to direct a procedure with three languages involved, two of which I don't know any words in. It was not smooth.
Huge volumes of engineering experience on all sides, gesticulating.
We're just hanging it from the ceiling this whole time, watching the crane scale to make sure nothing goes amiss. When the Swiss were done what they were doing the next thing is to put it on the rocket base which is enclosed in this large gantry-the same one I mentioned earlier that had minimal guards on it, and plenty of blood from some dude who fell off of it. This very much helped my dire fear of heights.
The gantry can be seen in this video at about the :16 second mark.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6_YT0P3BSy4
See the huge metal ring at :30 seconds in? Right above the yellow bit-the parts below are rocket-that's where out satellite would sit.
So, we'd casually plop our bomb onto their bomb, making sure it was facing the right way, etc. The Russians would hook it up to their base, we'd disconnect our sling, and move it away.
Now, I don't...like heights at all. Turns out I needed to be all the way at the top of that gantry, and I had to move around a lot. Up down, round and round. I discovered a couple things while doing this 1) if I'm busy, I don't care that I'm up high. I was stressed and very much occupied-I just wandered around like a high steel worker. 2) When the sling was removed and I no longer had anything to occupy me, reality set in.
I crawled off that thing.
All seven stories.
So, we're in the yellow gantry and we do our final checks, paperwork etc. Once we're happy, we need to encapsulate it in the faring.
So the entire mess gets tilted down like so:
(http://www.universetoday.com/wp-content/uploads/2016/03/ExoMars2016_Baikonur_fairing_encapsulation_20160302_077px_1280.jpg)
And then one half of the faring is rolled up under it, and the other half is dropped on with a pair of linked cranes.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CvdoR-LclIQ
I was horrified at the craning process. They had a pair of 50 ton cranes because it was too heavy for either one. They needed to move in sync as they're both connected to the same thing. How did the Russians solve this delicate process? One of the crane operators would watch the other crane operator and just....do what they did. Somehow, this worked.
Two 50 ton cranes for one half of a fairing?
What does that fairing weigh, 100 lbs?
WTFBBQ?
It's the top of the rocket.
(http://2.bp.blogspot.com/-oVuXTG-ux6o/VWs81DTk0ZI/AAAAAAAApRg/JEh9qQEEFLQ/s1600/Proton-M.jpg)
And then?!?!?!
Quote from: Satellite smithy on February 24, 2017, 06:44:27 PM
The transporter was old. WWII vintage. Someone had modified some old troop truck, put a flatbed on it and a small satellite fixture. It looked solid enough, but if I climbed on it and gently bounced on the balls of my feet, the entire thing would vibrate violently. All. Of. It. I wouldn't have trusted it to support a half yard of dry mulch. Let's put a bomb on it, drive it over to the other, bomb, see what happens.
I'm hooked. Keep any non-confidential info coming. Great story/read