Minority Report

This has been an interesting week (or couple weeks really) at work on Project Orion. Orion is supposed to be the vehicle that replaces the space shuttle and carries the crew in orbit after being launched on an Ares rocket (or potentially other rockets). The project has been run really well, however the budgets that were projected never materialized so it always "appeared" to be over budget when things got trimmed over the years for the smaller budgets. Don't be misled by people or companies that stand to gain by telling you otherwise because if Orion were to get cancelled they would 'get' that money, nice huh.

Anyway, the powers that be in the executive branch really, really hate Orion, Ares, and all of Constellation and tried to cancel it. Congress is pushing back, but now there is sort of a limbo where we will probably, not certainly continue but at significantly reduced, as in less than the already smaller, budget. The immediate effect of this has been a massive reduction in non-prime contractor staff (e.g. me and my coworkers) in the neighborhood of 60-70% reduction. This week was all the final decisions on the who stays and mostly the who goes. Thankfully, I am staying for now, at least until the NASA budget is approved and Orion either continues to exist with this or more budget. If Orion gets cut again, I doubt very much the project will even be functional.

So the short story is, I am still working on Orion but most of my colleagues are not starting October 1. Which means it has been a tense week, to be followed by several more especially for those more much more dramatically affected than me. Oh, and the first major round of Shuttle layoffs also occur in October given the only 2 maybe 3 flights left and the reduced amount of staff needed to support these and retirement. Anyone looking to invest in cheap real estate may want to check out Clear Lake, TX.

Knees and Toes

The ladies at Zara's school have started calling her their little Navy SEAL because she has her commando/army crawl down pat and does not seem at all inclined to crawl on her knees thus far. She swims across the floor on her belly pulling with her arms and pushes with her toes. She is quite adept at it though and can track us down in different rooms if you leave her alone. She is also pulling up on the furniture and couch surfing lately too.

But she doesn't mind her knees at other times...

"Work"

Lately, I've had a little fun at work courtesy of STORRM (Sensor Test for Orion Relative Navigation (RelNav) Risk Mitigation). Perhaps you've heard of us on such sites as Popular Science? Or maybe the NASA webpage? Note that cool and aloof person standing behind the crew in the first picture on the NASA webpage.

Anyway, this project is flying the Orion rendezvous sensor on the last Shuttle flight STS-134 next February to test it out. This week we installed the hardware and performed an integration test to make sure everything is working in the shuttle Endeavour. Everything went great and now its ready to go for February. After the test went off well, most of us were able to get in and see for ourselves. Also went a few other places at KSC this week. The external tank in the photos is the one flying with Discovery in November but it is all stacked with the SRBs already.

Back to Flight

It's been awhile (3 months in fact) since I last flew, but Saturday Becca arranged a flight up to Brenham again for a hamburger and it was a good excuse for me to ping Jim and get up in the air. Jim is one of my managers from my Boeing days and he is the dude crazy enough to start teaching me to fly, this being unofficial off the record teaching. I officially "learned" at the Delta Flight School, but really Jim taught me first, thus making me the best student ever at school. Here is us with Jim's Tomahawk before takeoff from Brenham.

We also flew both ways in formation with Becca in the 172. In case you need a little perspective on what that means. Here are the photos.