Today (Tuesday) the games execution and safety plan passed the FSRB – Flight Safety Review Board – the final authority on whether we can proceed to execute test week this coming Monday.
The plan was briefed by John Kelly (Director of Exploration at Dryden), Trent Theriault (The ops director for this project) and yours truly, to an audience that included all the divisions heads and representatives of the organizations affected by the games – a full round table.
Now one of the things that annoy me the most is when I make an obvious mistake while giving a hard-prepared presentation, and the error goes completely unnoticed – meaning I could have said almost anything and why did I even bother to put effort into it…
Not a chance of that happening with this group!
Which is good, of course – It’s like testing a safety net before walking the high wire. We had a few ”midnight typing” mistakes in our write-ups, and there was no letting any of them slide. The board also found points that we completely missed - for example – what if during laser tracking we cross the sun – will this affect the tracking systems? Can the laser damage the parachute bag? If the helicopter has to make an emergency landing, do all the roving parties have a designated place to go to?
Good stuff. We have a sizeable list of items to correct, but nothing we can’t handle by the weekend. And the final “once around the table” was all thumbs up.
The next step is to detail the schedule for the week – juggling 6 teams, 2 laser sources, 3 locations, 1 helicopter, 1 tether setup, and all personnel so that no resource has to be in two different places at the same time. Next week can be a smooth ride or it can be torture – it all depends on the quality of the planning.
The bad news is that this is my weakest skill (ask anyone). The good news is that I’m at Dryden and have John and Trent. In their scale this does even register as complicated. Here’s to a smooth ride next week.






For the obvious reasons, I invariably get too busy to blog exactly when things get interesting...