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Just kidding
Remember the scene in Airplane where Johnny (my favorite character) pulls the power cord to the runway lights? The whole airport stops, the camera shows him, and he says "just kidding" and plugs it back in?
...well that's how today felt at work. Early this morning (Tuesday), they decided to roll the space shuttle Atlantis back to the Vehicle Assembly Building to shelter it from the oncoming Tropical Storm Ernesto. It got about halfway back to the building before the powers-that-be decided that Ernesto wasn't as big a threat as they thought. So they stopped the crawler, and took it back to the launch pad.
Those of us on the training team for this mission just want it to launch. I feel bad for the crew. They've been in training longer than any other mission in the history of NASA. And I'm not kidding about that. 4.5 years. I've only been on the team for 9 months, but I feel bad for this crew. They've worked hard, and deserve a safe, successful flight. The sooner the better.
Luckily, with Atlantis back at the pad, now KSC has to evacuate because of Ernesto. Assuming the tropical storm doesn't damage anything important, we should be able to launch on the 6th or 7th. We can't slip much later than that, because the Russians are planning on launching the next ISS crew on the 14th. It would be much too busy to have three crews (off-going ISS crew, on-coming ISS crew, Shuttle crew) there at the same time, so we won't do that. So Atlantis must be undocked before the Soyuz arrives at the ISS. Complicated, huh?
