Pre-Departure Preps Underway

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They rolled the payload over to the ship this morning, and tomorrow we'll do some RF power checks from the launch vehicle up to one of the equipment rooms. If that goes well (it always does), then Friday morning we'll flow live data from the ship, through the NASA TDRSS network and do an "End-to-End" test of the entire network we use to relay telemetry from the launch site to all the places it goes.

Yesterday they filled the LN2 tanks in the Launch Platform with NINE tankers of Liquid Nitrogen, and today they started loading the LOX. There were 8 tankers on-site when I left, with another 25 on the way. The day before departure they'll bring in three more to "Top Off" the LOX supply, for a total load of THIRTY SIX tankers of Liquid Oxygen. Something like ONE TON per day boils off during our transit down to the Equator, and we carry enough to make three launch attempts. The fuel can be drained back out of the launch vehicle and saved, but pumping LOX always incurs losses.

Almost all of the RF testing my little group handles is finished, and we're kind of sitting around twiddling our thumbs until Sunday, when we do "Roll Out and Erect", and run the full countdown, minus fueling the launch vehicle. The satellite builder for this launch is an American company we've worked with many times, and things go very smooth, as all involved have done this before, and we all speak English, unlike the last launch, when we could barely communicate with the foreign customer, leading to some "interesting" problems, and very long days.