Dave's Kazahkstan adventure

[Speeddog]

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.

[NAKID]

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!

[Popeye the Sailor]

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.

[Speeddog]

A quick Google said that the commercial blankets are a good thing to have, and no danger in electrical storms.

[NAKID]

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

[triangleforge]

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! 

[ungeheuer]

BTW, thanks for sharing this adventure, Dave! 

+1

[Popeye the Sailor]

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.



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

[Randimus Maximus]

Is that you at the 2:24 mark?

[Popeye the Sailor]

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.

[Popeye the Sailor]

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.

[1.21GW]

...

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?

[Popeye the Sailor]

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.

[Popeye the Sailor]

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.

[Popeye the Sailor]

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.