And a very Merry Christmas to you! or, Happy Peace to All People Day!
Christmas in McMurdo has involved many happy times. It kicked off with a happenin' town holiday party Sunday night after work in the vehicle maintenence facility, a big metal box transformed with tinsel, plywood cutouts, Santa in his sleigh, a trash-material Ruldolf, and various other decorations into a celebratory hall. The party kicked off with carols from the Holiday Party, including traditional Deck the Halls, The First Noel, and The 12 McMurdo Days of Christmas. A few choice lines: On the nth day of Christmas a penguin gave to me, ... 7 hours resting, 6 days a-working, 5 skua eggs, 4 free meals, 3 , a pair of bunny boots, and a flight on a C-130! Then of course we wished them a Merry Christmas, but we wouldn't go until we saw some fuzzy penguins. :) Scotty, my heater-maintenance friend, made my eggnog a little happier and dancing wrapped up the night.
The next morning we climbed to Castle Rock under beautiful blue skies, and I remembered not to be grumpy on such a glorious day. While curling up before a fire with a good book also sounded lovely, the fire is banned and the book just involved more sitting around. I spent the rest of the afternoon working on my Christmas gifts for folks here (3-d, cut-paper snowflakes) before going to dinner. The tofu with apples, allspice, and rosemary was topped only by the chocolate lava (think flourless chocolate torte-like goodness in a cupcake paper).
After dinner Kevin, Rob, Yoann (my French recovery colleague), and I enjoyed the hilarity and thoughtfulness of Rosencrantz and Guildenstern Are Dead. The Tom Stoppard play was brilliantly acted, and all of us were delighted with the bits of physics dropped in it. Paper boat in a bathtub, watch the rise and fall as he starts to get out and sees it himself. ... I would highly recommend this even if you don't like movies. And it was good enough that even Yoann, who has serious work ahead of him for basic English comprehension, enjoyed it.
We ended the night with the lessons and carols service. I sang again with the choir, which continued to exceed my expectations. The readings rang too much with "thou shalts" for my taste, particularly given the decrees daily passed down from on high without regard for reasonableness here. But I was in it for the music, which satisfied.
Christmas morning I slept, and slept... and slept! It was lovely. Then the choir had one last gig: singing over the radio to the field stations and South Pole. SP and Siple Dome checked in, and South Pole even sang, impromptu, carols back to us. What a way to spread the joy. :) At dinner I distributed my snowflakes and hugs, then I chatted with Anne as her partner Peggy worked at the Coffee House.
Tomorrow it's back to the regular. I'll go out to LDB with Yoann and get out the recovery tool kit and other bits, ski with Anne at lunch, and bring the linux desktop back to Mactown for continued work. I'm looking forward to Thursday, when the 2 soccer teams I picked up with play in the finals. Even if we don't win, it'll be great to run around with teammates. ...Speaking of which, plans are still in the works for some outdoors ulti. !!
Friday and Sat I have snow school, where they teach us how to survive and build igloos... or at least piles of snow to crawl into! And supposedly there's time to build a snow bar into the snow wall. :) Sunday and Monday we have another 2-day weekend for New Years, and I have high hopes for more joy and revelry.
Which will make a nice contrast to mourning my Grandpa's passing. It was too soon and I miss him dearly. At least tech will help out again: I'll be calling my Aunt's cell to attend the funeral.
And so I wish you a season of peace: not the absence of noise and bustle, but the stillness within it.
25 December 2007
18 December 2007
launch attempt #2
We successfully completed all our tests early today and are now just waiting on the winds to die down before heading to the launch pad. At that point it'll be ~2hrs before launch, still with the possibility of being canceled. More then...
Well, the winds are good and we've just gone out to the launch pad (1.30p NZT). Expect 2 more hours for ballooning stuff: laying it out, filling it up, etc. and then weather will tell.
Things are looking up... especially now that I've had a nap!
Also, for those interested, everyone else's Thurs flight out is now delayed until Fri at 4a (NZT), so they'll have a little more time for packing, if weather allows and needs be.
In the meantime.....
And it's away at ~4.30p NZT! I hope you got to see some of it!
It was a pretty much perfect launch. The balloon inflated, they released it and it made a deep note as it caught the wind, then the payload just lifted off the pin and everything floated gently into the blue sky.
Now we wait for it to reach float altitude (2-5hrs) before turning on the instrument and starting our science tuning.
Well, the winds are good and we've just gone out to the launch pad (1.30p NZT). Expect 2 more hours for ballooning stuff: laying it out, filling it up, etc. and then weather will tell.
Things are looking up... especially now that I've had a nap!
Also, for those interested, everyone else's Thurs flight out is now delayed until Fri at 4a (NZT), so they'll have a little more time for packing, if weather allows and needs be.
In the meantime.....
And it's away at ~4.30p NZT! I hope you got to see some of it!
It was a pretty much perfect launch. The balloon inflated, they released it and it made a deep note as it caught the wind, then the payload just lifted off the pin and everything floated gently into the blue sky.
Now we wait for it to reach float altitude (2-5hrs) before turning on the instrument and starting our science tuning.
16 December 2007
and then...
...as we finished up our instrument check-out, the low-level atmospheric (just above ground level) winds picked up from the south, beginning to blowing hard off the continent, canceling our launch opportunity for today.
I am sad for my fellow compatriots who will likely not get to leave on Thurs now. At least we get to sleep soon!
Next launch opportunity in a day or two.
Over&out.
I am sad for my fellow compatriots who will likely not get to leave on Thurs now. At least we get to sleep soon!
Next launch opportunity in a day or two.
Over&out.
Launch?!
Well, today I had a nice Sunday of freshies for brunch and a pressure ridge tour. Then we CREAM folk met for dinner and then headed out to Willy Field on Ivan at 9p. We have begun our pre-launch sequence under the midnight sun and hope to fly at 7a Mon (NZ time).
You can watch it happen! (or not, depending on how the winds go -- so far so good!) In ballooning, this is about as much notice as you get.... wake up one morning and off you go. Also, the local weather conditions as observed and reported by Ross, our local weatherman.
As to why we've waited until now to launch, as you see in the following plots, the stratospheric winds have only just set up over the pole, giving us reliable circular orbits.
Dec 10:
Dec 15:
You can watch it happen! (or not, depending on how the winds go -- so far so good!) In ballooning, this is about as much notice as you get.... wake up one morning and off you go. Also, the local weather conditions as observed and reported by Ross, our local weatherman.
As to why we've waited until now to launch, as you see in the following plots, the stratospheric winds have only just set up over the pole, giving us reliable circular orbits.
Dec 10:
Dec 15:
14 December 2007
Wallops Hilarity and, A Leave-Taking
It was a balmy summer's day in McMurdo when Bryan, Nick, and I ventured forth to LDB, so they could see our beautiful payload and the rest of business at my workplace. Imagine our surprise when we found this tableau laid before us....
That's Erebus in the background. When the boss is away.... Fortunately, we also saw it being staged (I took the pic) and all I can really add is, my, what a beautiful sense of humor.
On a slightly more sad note, Nick, Bryan, BLee, Rusty, and the rest of Stacy Kim's awesome banthic research group (ocean bottom studies) left today.* It has been awesome laughing and making music with Nick and BLee, talking physics with Bryan, and dive-tending for Stacy and Rusty. I hope at least a few of the friendships I form here will last. I mean, who wouldn't want a friend to crash with in California or Canada? :)
*The background I should've written a while ago; apologies!
Bryan is an undergrad major at MIT, signed onto this group because he's built a bunch of robots and programmed their tethered underwater camera-carrying vehicle (ROV).
Dive-tending is basically just helping them put their gloves on and then pulling their tanks and weights when they're done. I hung out in the hut with BLee while they were down. If they don't come up in their allotted time, we sound the alarm. Their dive went safely, if less productively than earlier in the season because visibility has been reduced by almost 2 orders of magnitude (to only a few to 10 ft) due to the algal bloom precipitated by the increased sunshine through the thinning sea ice. It was cool to see it once; I think I'd get a little bored doing it more than a few times.
Nick is an undergrad at Monterey Bay, CA and was here doing his senior research project on the pile of poo the navy left in the sound before McMurdo got its waste treatment facility. He used the ROV to map the extent of the pile as well as helping Stacy with her research by diving. He's done a bunch of other things, including being a park ranger in Yellowstone.
BLee lived on a nuclear submarine as a mech for 18mos and was the ALVIN pilot for many years (small manned, early extremely-deep sub). He lives near the Bay of Fundy in Canada now and coaches soccer, passionately. :)
More on the adventures which've kept me from blogging soon...
Over&out.
That's Erebus in the background. When the boss is away.... Fortunately, we also saw it being staged (I took the pic) and all I can really add is, my, what a beautiful sense of humor.
On a slightly more sad note, Nick, Bryan, BLee, Rusty, and the rest of Stacy Kim's awesome banthic research group (ocean bottom studies) left today.* It has been awesome laughing and making music with Nick and BLee, talking physics with Bryan, and dive-tending for Stacy and Rusty. I hope at least a few of the friendships I form here will last. I mean, who wouldn't want a friend to crash with in California or Canada? :)
*The background I should've written a while ago; apologies!
Bryan is an undergrad major at MIT, signed onto this group because he's built a bunch of robots and programmed their tethered underwater camera-carrying vehicle (ROV).
Dive-tending is basically just helping them put their gloves on and then pulling their tanks and weights when they're done. I hung out in the hut with BLee while they were down. If they don't come up in their allotted time, we sound the alarm. Their dive went safely, if less productively than earlier in the season because visibility has been reduced by almost 2 orders of magnitude (to only a few to 10 ft) due to the algal bloom precipitated by the increased sunshine through the thinning sea ice. It was cool to see it once; I think I'd get a little bored doing it more than a few times.
Nick is an undergrad at Monterey Bay, CA and was here doing his senior research project on the pile of poo the navy left in the sound before McMurdo got its waste treatment facility. He used the ROV to map the extent of the pile as well as helping Stacy with her research by diving. He's done a bunch of other things, including being a park ranger in Yellowstone.
BLee lived on a nuclear submarine as a mech for 18mos and was the ALVIN pilot for many years (small manned, early extremely-deep sub). He lives near the Bay of Fundy in Canada now and coaches soccer, passionately. :)
More on the adventures which've kept me from blogging soon...
Over&out.
03 December 2007
antarctica and the moon
Probably the most significant question looming for me after watching the antarctic premiere of Werner Herzog's Encounters at the End of the World Thanksgiving Sunday, was, why do so many people say that coming to Antarctica is like going to the moon? Is it even a true statement? Few humans (30-some) have ever even been to the moon. I doubt that many of the people making such statements have listened to first-hand accounts of or done substantial research into the lunar experience. Even our big red parkas aren't as cumbersome as a space suit, and there's an atmosphere we can breathe. So why this assertion?
The woman drawing the blinds on my sunshine in the galley during my after-yoga dinner reading said, We're having a movie in here in a few minutes. I looked at her. You could close them when it's about to start. I nodded. Shortly thereafter, a British accent came on said something about space travel and it being another premiere, this time southern hemisphere, and I sat back down with my cereal as the movie started, blinds fully extended. Perhaps, I thought, I'll find some answers to my question in this tale of the Apollo moon missions.
The documentary did a good job putting the space mission in the context of its time, showing clips of Kennedy, both speaking and in coffin, race marches and other protests, and bombing (napalm?) in Vietnam. As Herzog started making movies in the 60s, perhaps he did at least watch the first steps on the moon on TV in July of '69. One of the astronauts spoke of how he felt guilty for missing "his war", while his fellow pilots fought and died. Hopefully he found some refuge in one comrade's response that this was the one good thing Americans could be proud of at that time. As In the Shadow of the Moon progressed, it conveyed a fair picture of the astronauts' personalities, preparing us to hear their reactions to their travels, while pretty good movie music made the old preparation and launch footage dramatic. (Come to think of it, it was the kind of music you could write a figure skating routine to. :)
I took a short nap and woke to their reactions. Mike Collins, the Apollo 11 command module pilot impressed me the most with his humanity and dry humor. He said he was not scared; the time to be scared was when something actually broke, but worried constantly. While he was disappointed to go but not stand on the moon, he enjoyed the sensation of being the only person on the dark side of the moon, while 2 + billions waited on the other side. Unlike what most people said, he was not the loneliest person in the world then, with Houston talking in his ear most of the time.
Other astronauts realized the fragility and insignificance of the world: he doesn't complain about weather or traffic anymore, or were moved spirituality, the belief in the existence of a benevolent god, or even to Jesus: "my walk on the moon lasted 3 days; my walk with Jesus lasts a lifetime." They described how lucky we are to have this beautiful jewel hanging in the blackness of space to call home, how you can see pollution from space now as you could not then, and how small the earth is from the moon: you can cover it with your thumb. Perspective.
But in direct answer to my question regarding antarctic and lunar similarities, the film was rather silent. Instead, the best resonance seems to be in the human effort required to reach into the unknown and the human reaction to being alone in a vast and rather inhospitable place. (Vast... such a small, seemingly simple word for such an enormous concept!)
It took solid, smart leaders like Amundsen and Shakleton to meld and motivate their technically skilled companions to survive on this continent and make the pole. Kennedy captured the heart of the nation and challenged Americans to make the moon in a decade, a huge expedition which killed the first 3 Apollo 1 astronauts in testing because they didn't consider carefully enough the combination of poor wiring and a pressurized, pure Oxygen cabin atmosphere. (spark = poof, fire) Scott and his polar party paid the ultimate price for their poor decisions, dying of starvation, exhaustion, and exposure ~10 mi from their furthest-out food depot.
Today, we have gone from the drive and spirit inspired by Kennedy's challenge to make the moon in a decade, to enough monetary crises that we won't have space flight capability for at least 4 years, starting in 2010, while transitioning from the shuttles to Orion. Bush's mars proclamation seems a cheap imitation.
At least we're still working on the idea, despite failures. And perhaps, we'll again find a hopeful reflection of humanity like Collins did: during their journey around the world after returning from the moon, he said he was amazed to hear people everywhere saying "we did it" not "the Americans did it", though the challenge began as a political competition. 'The world was united, at least for a little while'.
The woman drawing the blinds on my sunshine in the galley during my after-yoga dinner reading said, We're having a movie in here in a few minutes. I looked at her. You could close them when it's about to start. I nodded. Shortly thereafter, a British accent came on said something about space travel and it being another premiere, this time southern hemisphere, and I sat back down with my cereal as the movie started, blinds fully extended. Perhaps, I thought, I'll find some answers to my question in this tale of the Apollo moon missions.
The documentary did a good job putting the space mission in the context of its time, showing clips of Kennedy, both speaking and in coffin, race marches and other protests, and bombing (napalm?) in Vietnam. As Herzog started making movies in the 60s, perhaps he did at least watch the first steps on the moon on TV in July of '69. One of the astronauts spoke of how he felt guilty for missing "his war", while his fellow pilots fought and died. Hopefully he found some refuge in one comrade's response that this was the one good thing Americans could be proud of at that time. As In the Shadow of the Moon progressed, it conveyed a fair picture of the astronauts' personalities, preparing us to hear their reactions to their travels, while pretty good movie music made the old preparation and launch footage dramatic. (Come to think of it, it was the kind of music you could write a figure skating routine to. :)
I took a short nap and woke to their reactions. Mike Collins, the Apollo 11 command module pilot impressed me the most with his humanity and dry humor. He said he was not scared; the time to be scared was when something actually broke, but worried constantly. While he was disappointed to go but not stand on the moon, he enjoyed the sensation of being the only person on the dark side of the moon, while 2 + billions waited on the other side. Unlike what most people said, he was not the loneliest person in the world then, with Houston talking in his ear most of the time.
Other astronauts realized the fragility and insignificance of the world: he doesn't complain about weather or traffic anymore, or were moved spirituality, the belief in the existence of a benevolent god, or even to Jesus: "my walk on the moon lasted 3 days; my walk with Jesus lasts a lifetime." They described how lucky we are to have this beautiful jewel hanging in the blackness of space to call home, how you can see pollution from space now as you could not then, and how small the earth is from the moon: you can cover it with your thumb. Perspective.
But in direct answer to my question regarding antarctic and lunar similarities, the film was rather silent. Instead, the best resonance seems to be in the human effort required to reach into the unknown and the human reaction to being alone in a vast and rather inhospitable place. (Vast... such a small, seemingly simple word for such an enormous concept!)
It took solid, smart leaders like Amundsen and Shakleton to meld and motivate their technically skilled companions to survive on this continent and make the pole. Kennedy captured the heart of the nation and challenged Americans to make the moon in a decade, a huge expedition which killed the first 3 Apollo 1 astronauts in testing because they didn't consider carefully enough the combination of poor wiring and a pressurized, pure Oxygen cabin atmosphere. (spark = poof, fire) Scott and his polar party paid the ultimate price for their poor decisions, dying of starvation, exhaustion, and exposure ~10 mi from their furthest-out food depot.
Today, we have gone from the drive and spirit inspired by Kennedy's challenge to make the moon in a decade, to enough monetary crises that we won't have space flight capability for at least 4 years, starting in 2010, while transitioning from the shuttles to Orion. Bush's mars proclamation seems a cheap imitation.
At least we're still working on the idea, despite failures. And perhaps, we'll again find a hopeful reflection of humanity like Collins did: during their journey around the world after returning from the moon, he said he was amazed to hear people everywhere saying "we did it" not "the Americans did it", though the challenge began as a political competition. 'The world was united, at least for a little while'.
02 December 2007
weather, or not
Weather changes rapidly here.
We walked into breakfast and walked out to the shuttle. On the way in, the weather was fine, calm and clear. On the way out, it had begun snowing smaller, dryer flakes.
Whether or not we hang test and launch depends on the weather being fine, so no hang test yet today. Of course, that may change again soon enough, but for the moment, I must admit to a sense of relief, not so much that we're delayed, but that I won't be asked to leave after only being here 2 weeks. There's still so much to do and experience!
We walked into breakfast and walked out to the shuttle. On the way in, the weather was fine, calm and clear. On the way out, it had begun snowing smaller, dryer flakes.
Whether or not we hang test and launch depends on the weather being fine, so no hang test yet today. Of course, that may change again soon enough, but for the moment, I must admit to a sense of relief, not so much that we're delayed, but that I won't be asked to leave after only being here 2 weeks. There's still so much to do and experience!
01 December 2007
Big News!
We are coming into the final stretch of our preparations for launching the balloon carrying our instrument to 132,000 ft. We will hang test (practice launch procedure) tomorrow, and then come back again at 2.30a to start the launch procedures Tues.
If our systems all work during the hang test and the weather and anticyclone (circumpolar winds) allows us to launch Tues, it'll be another CREAM CSBF record: the earliest launch ever, by 4 days. (The first record was for CREAM I having the longest flight at 42 days.) You can check out the pathfinder balloon's track; it was launched today.
Exciting hard work.
Luckily, there was much fun had previously, including kite skate-skiing yesterday!
If our systems all work during the hang test and the weather and anticyclone (circumpolar winds) allows us to launch Tues, it'll be another CREAM CSBF record: the earliest launch ever, by 4 days. (The first record was for CREAM I having the longest flight at 42 days.) You can check out the pathfinder balloon's track; it was launched today.
Exciting hard work.
Luckily, there was much fun had previously, including kite skate-skiing yesterday!
Subscribe to:
Comments (Atom)
