Dave's Kazahkstan adventure

[Popeye the Sailor]

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

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.



Hotel room with view!







Rush hour:



Tour de Kazahkstan frontrunner:





All of those buildings were basically derelict, empty except for the roving packs of wild dogs.

[Popeye the Sailor]

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.









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.

[Popeye the Sailor]

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.

[MendoDave]

 

[Howie]

 

[Oldfisti]

It has to do with how one actually launches a satellite, which I'll go into next.

First you must clear the launch site...

[1.21GW]

 

[Speeddog]

First you must clear the launch site...

That's not him, he's a little bit younger.

[Bick]

[stopintime]

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


You're next 

[Oldfisti]

Patiently awaiting the launch...

[Popeye the Sailor]

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

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

Give it a look and feel free to ask questions. More later.

[1.21GW]

Basic question:

What's the purpose of all the tinfoil-y stuff (both the gold and silver)?

[Popeye the Sailor]

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.

[1.21GW]

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.