Travis and Michelle Fitzgerald's blog

I just finished my week of sitting console with a senior OSO as the last check for my Mission Control certification. Yay! Only thing left now is paperwork. It was a bit of a crazy week. Lots of stuff happening, both on orbit and on the ground. I learned a lot, though, which was the point of the week! Here's few of the more amusing tidbits:

The Russians asked on Monday that we hook up some power on Tuesday. So our group gets a procedure together, submits it, has it uplinked for the crew, does the paperwork to get the activity on the crew's schedule... On Tuesday, the Russians ask us not to do the hook up.

One of the engineering guys talked to me all week on the voice loops. On Thursday, he finally realized he knows me! (Usually on the loops, we address each other by call sign, not by name. I'm OSO...)

Sometimes, we can watch the crew on video as they go about their day. During a maintenance activity, I saw one of the crew members using a speed handle one-handed. I didn't know you could use a speed handle one-handed. After the "demonstration", I'm still not convinced you can (or should) use a speed handle one-handed.

Friday was one of the flight director's last shift. Clay, the astronaut on board the space station, played him a loooong song (nobody in the room seemed to know what it was) and gave a nice little farewell speech. Flight's response, and his last words on space-to-ground comm? "Thank you. Now get back on the timeline." Now THAT is a classic flight director quote.