Grand Finale prep

[nanila]

[Deliberately low-resolution screenshot of my desktop with the short form of one of the design runs.]

Today I submitted, for my line manager's scrutiny, the final set of pointing designs that I will ever do for the Cassini spacecraft. These commands will execute in late August/early September.

Pointing design has been one of my favourite instrument operations tasks for ten years. I am quite sad that it's leaving my repertoire.

(I would be going off to have a whisky now, but since the toddler came home today after four explody nappies due to a gastrointestinal bug that's doing the rounds at nursery, I will instead be trying to get some other work done as he's banned from the nursery for 48 hours. And thus is melancholy tempered by necessity.)

Comments

[quoththeravyn]

That looks... so familiar. And I'm sorry the mission is coming to an end. It's been quite the ride.

At one point early in my present operations role, my then-boss said that some day, somebody in this group, perhaps one of us at this table right now, will be staring into a computer monitor saying, "Well, damn. That's the mission then." I sincerely hope to be long retired before that day comes.

It's been a day of recovery from a safe mode (not all that deep, but all day) whilst waiting 14 hrs for them to fix whatever's up with the DSN. Odd mix of the familiar and hurry up and wait programmatic stuff, working around the DSN schedule (so 5am and 10pm the same day). The cat likes things to happen at the same time every day, kthxbai. It's not happening today.

Anyway, onward to Juice!

[nanila]

:) I thought you might have a rather personal understanding of this post.

Glad to hear about the recovery, and I feel you on the (im)patient waiting involved!

Onward to JUICE indeed. Hard to believe it's already been almost five years since mission selection.

[quoththeravyn]

Aaand then we had another pointing error and another day-long recovery effort. I'm totally fried. And I'm also really stupid when beeped out of the deepest part of my sleep cycle. They should hire parents of young children to do this... (well, formerly young children).

How the time flies when you're having fun :-) There are people I knew who went out on paternity leave, oh, not so very long ago. The kids are now in college. Eeple.

[davidgillon]

My programmes tend to come in fleets, not singletons, but this has made me reflect that at some point some of the aircraft I've worked on will go the way of the dodo. There's a fair chance 777 and Eurofighter will outlive me* but Tornado theoretically leaves RAF service next year, and it was RAF (and Saudi, wince) specific bits I gave several years of my life to.

*Not that I'm exactly decrepit, but some aircraft are ridiculously long-lived - the B-52 is a 1940s design.