Deepest, Darkest Borneo

It might be a week or so before my next post as I’m about to depart from the connected world for a bit. Internet availability in Borneo is expected to be patchy – that’s why they’ll benefit from more satellite communications.

If I manage to survive the jungle, the mosquitoes, leeches, snakes, spiders and the occasional Orang-utan I hope to surface eventually in Singapore. Then immediately travelling on to colder climes.

After having made some 6,000 flights I never really want to see another plane again. At least I usually manage to be asleep before they even push back from the stand.

That reminds me of the time I boarded the wrong plane in Stockholm and nearly spent Christmas in Helsinki instead of at home – but that’s another story in itself, involving a smoked leg of reindeer, a very rapid trot through Dutch customs and wrecking a Christmas day for a whole bunch of friends.
I might save that story for 25^th December.

Photo courtesy of and copyright © Ralph Arbus. He has a very interesting website at www.orangutanpix.info

First and Last Launches of the Space Shuttle

Well spotted. The internal photo isn’t a picture of the Space Shuttle. It’s the European Space Agency‘s (ESA) first astronaut, Wubbo Ockels, inside the ESA Spacelab D1 in the Shuttle’s cargo bay (both pictures are courtesy of and copyright © NASA).

I’m writing this piece now because today is to be the very last flight of a space shuttle. As I type, the launch is scheduled for about 5 hours’ time, weather at Cocoa Beach permitting.

Spacelab was developed in parallel and in conjunction with NASA’s space shuttle to be the orbiting laboratory in the Shuttle’s cargo bay, as a follow-on for Skylab and prior to the ISS (International Space Station).

The Spacelab programme was run from ESA’s ESTEC facility (European Space Technology Centre) in Noordwijk, The Netherlands. I worked at ESTEC all through the 1970s – not on Spacelab but on different communications satellites.

I had many friends and colleagues who were working on Spacelab. A number of them were American, having previously worked on the life-support systems for the Apollo missions to the Moon. My next door neighbour was the quality manager for the Spacelab programme.

Being so close to the ins and outs of the shuttle development programme revealed all sorts of interesting snippets of information. The most disturbing surrounded the decisions taken to prevent the programme going way over budget and significantly slipping the first launch date. In a nutshell, the testing at component, equipment, subsystem and system levels had to be pared back.

On the day of that first Columbia launch I sweated - literally. I seriously feared that that there might be just one little thing that hadn’t been picked up in testing and would jeopardise the mission. My relief (and disbelief?) at a perfect first launch and mission is hard to describe. YES, YES, YES – you did it, guys!

So, my best wishes and congratulations now go to the thousands of people who have worked on the Shuttle and Spacelab programmes over some 30 years. Good on’ya! And for today’s Atlantis crew – God speed and God bless.

Following and Commenting

A couple of people have had questions about following and posting comments on the blog.

If you want to follow, then click the blue-background ‘Join this site’ button on the right. That should take you to some sign-up options. You can then follow using your Google, Yahoo or Twitter sign-ins.

If you’re already a Blogger member you can sign in via the ‘Already a member’ link underneath the Followers’ pictures.

I’ve tried to set this up so that only Followers can post comments. To post a comment click the “n comments” link underneath the blog post text. Right now, it’s set up so that I have the option to moderate all comments. Why? Well there are a few folks I know where the language could become somewhat florid! Let’s see how it goes.

Now, I hope the above is clear and that I’ve set things up correctly. I’m not very good with programming things like TV remotes or DVD recorders. In fact, I shouldn't really be let loose on any equipment or control mechanisms at all. I remember once carrying out some antenna pattern tests on a geostationary communications satellite 36,000 km up and located over the equator at a few degrees East. Some users thought the downlink power wasn’t what it should have been:

“Let’s nudge the satellite pitch axis a bit and see if we can check the transmit antenna gain roll-off”.

“OK, that’s good. The downlink EIRP (Equivalent Isotropic Radiated Power) decreased by 0.7dB. Let’s nudge the pitch by another 1.0 degrees and see what it does”.

“OK, that’s good. The EIRP is down by another 1.1dB. Let’s nudge the pitch by another 1.0 degrees and see what we get”.

“Oh S**t – we’ve lost the spacecraft!”.

A couple of the IRESs (infrared earth sensors) lost Earth-lock, the on-board AOCS (Attitude & Orbit Control System) panicked and initiated an Emergency Sun Acquisition, which caused the satellite to flip onto its back and track the Sun. How embarrassing!
(More details on this and how we recovered the satellite will be in a later Post).

I hope you have better luck with Following and Commenting.

Prologue : Satellite Spy’s First Blog Post

How do you start a blog that you know will go on for years? My answer: Dive in at the deep end!

This is the book I’ve wanted to write for years, but organising a book, spending months getting everything organised and in the right order is just plain boring. When, if ever, it’s finished it’ll be out of date, things will be missing and it’ll need a re-write.

No, much better to tell the story as it flows and let events and readers’ responses trigger half-forgotten incidents. Thank goodness someone invented blogs.

I’ve been into space and communications ever since I can remember, as evidenced by the photo. Yes, that’s really me back in the 1950s in my space suit with plastic (a new invention!) helmet and an old valve radio/TV chassis.

Never in those days did I even dream that I would end up with a PhD in Microwave & Telecommunications Engineering and be designing and operating satellites - they hadn’t been invented then. No, I was into Martians, Robby the Robot (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Robby_the_Robot) and pre-pubescent thoughts about beautiful, unattainable female aliens.

The only problem with imagining female aliens when wearing a space helmet in a UK winter was that the thing would steam up inside. Then I’d trip over because I couldn’t see, and end up with a bloody knee and a torn space suit – my God, all the air will be sucked out into space and I'll suffocate!

My female alien childhood dreams weren’t realised until I saw the film Avatar on a flight from Singapore to Frankfurt last year.

If you’ve read this far then there’s no hope for you either. I plan to entertain you and to bring you insights into the REAL world of space, communications, satellites and related high-tech, military and EW things that most people only get a sanitised, skim view of via the “sound bite” media. It’ll be sprinkled with some interesting stories, hilarious moments and anecdotes along the way.

There may be a few people out there who will read this, figure out who I am and think “Oh No! He’s not going to spill the beans on XXX is he?”. My message to you, friends, is relax. There are limits and lines drawn in the sand. Also, I don’t particularly relish being dragged out of bed in the middle of the night by men in black, bundled into a black SUV with tinted windows and driven off into the sunset (well, sunrise) never to be seen again.