Burke
]]>GW
]]>And though it is a bit moot now, you're welcome to quote me, Josh; I don't think there's anything in my post that the higher-ups haven't mentioned or alluded to in the press already. Well, maybe not the justifications for getting an exemption, but those aren't exactly a secret.
]]>We are definitely concerned here. We do have some schedule slack, and people are willing to work double shifts and weekends to get things back on track, but we can only absorb so much delay. If this drags out much more than a week we'll start freaking out. If things get really bad we might be able to swing a some tricks to extend our launch window a few days: the payload is actually slightly less than what the deltaV numbers were originally run for so there some slack there, and we could also do a less-than-desirable orbital insertion at Mars, but those would be last ditch efforts.
Besides the budgetary problem (we'd have to pay people to be on the mission for 2 extra years), there's good science reasons why delaying 2 years would be terrible. We'd be getting to Mars at dead solar minimum, when the atmospheric escape processes we're studying would be inactive and we wouldn't see much variation over our nominal 1 year mission. Our saving grace politically could be that our ability to act as a relay for ground missions is being depended upon for the future of the Mars Exploration Program (a much bigger deal than MAVEN alone), and delaying 2 years would throw a wrench in those plans.
We've got people working the politicians hard to get an exemption by the end of the week to continue work, but it's not for sure yet. Stay tuned.
]]>I see that the idiotic government shutdown may have stalled your MAVEN launch. The news reports indicate that your launch window closes in Dec. After that it's 2 years' delay waiting for a launch window again. That's terrible! How does it look "from the inside"?
GW
]]>Amazing log-scale data. Sort of makes the 100-year flood concept seem a tad irrelevant.
GW
]]>Midoshi:
Did you survive the floods OK? Been worried about you!
GW
Yes, I'm fine thanks. The apartment building I live in is not far from the Boulder Creek, but the land here was high enough that we did not need to evacuate. At no point did we loose power, but the main sewer line did get clogged temporarily. It was pretty intense; the creek was carrying over 5,000 cubic feet per second, which is ~100 times its normal flow for this time of year and well over 2 times the previous record in 2003. If I step outside, even now there is a load roar coming from the creek a few hundred feet north of here; normally you can't hear anything.
It's somewhat ironic, seeing as we've been in a drought recently. Since folks on the forum here are scientifically minded, you might enjoy checking out this graph of the Boulder Creek discharge rate over the past month, along with the 26 year median (just scroll down a bit):
http://nwis.waterdata.usgs.gov/co/nwis/ … o=06730200
And yes, that is a log scale.
]]>Did you survive the floods OK? Been worried about you!
GW
]]>I don't know about you probe launchers, but we in the rocket missile business used to laugh and joke about sacrificing a virgin (or a reasonable facsimile thereof) to the test gods.
Whatever it takes, I suppose. None of the lady engineers or technicians ever volunteered. Yet we still usually had successes, even in development work.
GW
]]>I did manage to come around Saturday for the afternoon, but didn't bump into anyone I knew. After the end of the plenary I went to the session that started with the talk on the cubesat mission. Sadly, I wasn't able to make the banquet due to preparing for a MAVEN instrument science team meeting.
Actually, we just finished the team meeting here in Boston an hour ago. Things are shaping up well; looking forward to launch!
I was reminded at the meeting that I can invite friends to the MAVEN launch (window begins November 18th). Would anyone care for an exclusive NASA invitation to the MAVEN launch at Cape Canaveral? If so, just PM me with your full name and a valid e-mail. Be sure to contact me by the end of the month so I can get it submitted in time.
]]>You met Midoshi, we went to dinner with him on Friday night. I'd guess he was too busy with MAVEN stuff for the conference on Saturday, though.
]]>Sorry I missed you. We (wife and I) were there at the Saturday banquet with Josh Friedman.
GW
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