Go Flight
When Nasa launch a rocket, they spend years preparing for it. It's not just a case of one astronaut phoning up another and saying "What are you doing on Sunday? The regs are out for the moon race". Then again, if Carlsberg did enduros ...
Oh my God. I just had to contend with this thought - what would the moon race have been like if it was a Track and Trail?
Anyway, there's this whole procedure they have go through before launch. The whole countdown - which doesn't start counting down until about 43 hours before the launch - is only the tail end of a very long and detailed process which takes years. It focuses everybody's mind on what they are supposed to be doing - by when. It also serves as an indicator of what needs doing - and when.
Prior to the countdown, they've got all these tests and checks and stuff - Launch Pad Systems testing, Flight Readiness Testing - whole bunch of stuff. If you're really geeky, or just plain interested, you can read them all here.
The Flight Director painstakingly goes through a checklist of several thousand things - looking for a Go / No-Go for launch. He calls them out and, somebody somewhere has to respond "Go Flight", or "No-Go Flight".
Takes a lot of patience, and dedication, to go through that list:
At 6.6 seconds to go, the engines are fired in the order number 3, number 2, number 1 - 0.12 seconds apart. They take 3 seconds to reach 90% of the thrust powr required to launch the rocket or shuttle 150,000 feet into the air. The rocket itself is held in-place by a bunch of explosive bolts. Surprisingly enough, these are bolts which explode. Before they explode, they hold things in place - 28 inches long, and 3.5 inches in diameter. Big old bolts. After they explode, well, you can figure that part out for yourself - they kind of turn into biscuit crumbs.
At the moment of "We Have Lift Off" these bolts are fired - and the engines have reached 100% of thrust capacity. Up goes the rocket. Whoosh.
The reason why I was thinking about this was mainly because I was thinking about navigation. A lot of navigation - and navigational aids - is done by GPS. This is a network of satellites that kind of whizz round the sky. I got to wondering how they get there in the first place, I mean they didn't just jump up there like some giraffe on steroids.
It was also because of the work I was dong yesterday, and The Missus insisting that I make up some kind of checklist of the stuff I need to do before and after a race:
You expect this little lady - this mechanical minx of aliminium and steel - to give you absolutely flat out for three hours solid. To deliver power as soon as you twist the throttle, and to stop you as soon as you pull the brake. To go up hill, down hill, take-off, landing and - in my case - get dropped an awful lot. Yet you still expect her to deliver.
I've done the checking and tightening and greasing and cleaning for Sunday. Goldilocks is prim and proper and ready, sat up all proud like a little puppy who has learned to do the toilet outdoors.
The Missus has started my dietary intake now. Lots of carbohydrates - potatoes, pasta and stuff like that. It's race week, she tells me, and if Martin and I are on the same bike then I have to do well - none of this getting-two-thirds-of-what-he-gets nonsense.
Looking at the map of Malmesbury - grid ref ST974867 - and putting my constantly improving map skills to use (Ordnance Survey Get-a-Map), I am trying to get a feel for what lies in store on Sunday.
I can see a stream - so we'll be crossing (or riding along) this at least twice. I see two sets of woods, and one of them is on the side of a hill. The whole course looks like it's set in a valley where one side is steeper than the other. One of the hills climbs 70 feet over a distance of about 40 on the ground. That's a steep hill. I hope we're going up it rather than down it.
OK, so I won't be stopping to navigate - I just need to follow the 2-strokes - but the more I read maps, the more detail I see. When you learn to read, you start by picking out letters and sounds. Then you put them together to form words. As you get a little better, you start picking out sentences. It takes a lot of practice to get to the point where you're not actually reading the words themselves, you're reading what the words mean.
It's exactly the same with maps. The more I look, and try and imagine what the catrographer is trying to tell me, the more I see. Whereas before I would just see contour lines, now I see hills that get steeper (or less steep) towards the top. I see lines of electricity pylons. I see gullys which I know will get soaking wet if it rains because they're in a bowl with no drainage.
Good navigation is not about reading maps, it's about interpreting them. It's not about figuring out where you are when you're lost, it's about not getting lost in the first place. It's about having an instinctive ability to know which way you are facing - and being able to concentrate on riding the bike.
That whole collar bone thing in Morocco. I put that down to three main things:
Oh my God. I just had to contend with this thought - what would the moon race have been like if it was a Track and Trail?
Anyway, there's this whole procedure they have go through before launch. The whole countdown - which doesn't start counting down until about 43 hours before the launch - is only the tail end of a very long and detailed process which takes years. It focuses everybody's mind on what they are supposed to be doing - by when. It also serves as an indicator of what needs doing - and when.
Prior to the countdown, they've got all these tests and checks and stuff - Launch Pad Systems testing, Flight Readiness Testing - whole bunch of stuff. If you're really geeky, or just plain interested, you can read them all here.
The Flight Director painstakingly goes through a checklist of several thousand things - looking for a Go / No-Go for launch. He calls them out and, somebody somewhere has to respond "Go Flight", or "No-Go Flight".
Takes a lot of patience, and dedication, to go through that list:
- "Main Propulsion?"
"Go Flight"
"Gimbal Servoactuators?"
"Go Flight"
At 6.6 seconds to go, the engines are fired in the order number 3, number 2, number 1 - 0.12 seconds apart. They take 3 seconds to reach 90% of the thrust powr required to launch the rocket or shuttle 150,000 feet into the air. The rocket itself is held in-place by a bunch of explosive bolts. Surprisingly enough, these are bolts which explode. Before they explode, they hold things in place - 28 inches long, and 3.5 inches in diameter. Big old bolts. After they explode, well, you can figure that part out for yourself - they kind of turn into biscuit crumbs.
At the moment of "We Have Lift Off" these bolts are fired - and the engines have reached 100% of thrust capacity. Up goes the rocket. Whoosh.
The reason why I was thinking about this was mainly because I was thinking about navigation. A lot of navigation - and navigational aids - is done by GPS. This is a network of satellites that kind of whizz round the sky. I got to wondering how they get there in the first place, I mean they didn't just jump up there like some giraffe on steroids.
It was also because of the work I was dong yesterday, and The Missus insisting that I make up some kind of checklist of the stuff I need to do before and after a race:
- "Axle grease?"
"Go Flight"
"Chain tension?"
"Go Flight"
"Oil change?"
"Go Flight"
You expect this little lady - this mechanical minx of aliminium and steel - to give you absolutely flat out for three hours solid. To deliver power as soon as you twist the throttle, and to stop you as soon as you pull the brake. To go up hill, down hill, take-off, landing and - in my case - get dropped an awful lot. Yet you still expect her to deliver.
I've done the checking and tightening and greasing and cleaning for Sunday. Goldilocks is prim and proper and ready, sat up all proud like a little puppy who has learned to do the toilet outdoors.
The Missus has started my dietary intake now. Lots of carbohydrates - potatoes, pasta and stuff like that. It's race week, she tells me, and if Martin and I are on the same bike then I have to do well - none of this getting-two-thirds-of-what-he-gets nonsense.
Looking at the map of Malmesbury - grid ref ST974867 - and putting my constantly improving map skills to use (Ordnance Survey Get-a-Map), I am trying to get a feel for what lies in store on Sunday.
I can see a stream - so we'll be crossing (or riding along) this at least twice. I see two sets of woods, and one of them is on the side of a hill. The whole course looks like it's set in a valley where one side is steeper than the other. One of the hills climbs 70 feet over a distance of about 40 on the ground. That's a steep hill. I hope we're going up it rather than down it.
OK, so I won't be stopping to navigate - I just need to follow the 2-strokes - but the more I read maps, the more detail I see. When you learn to read, you start by picking out letters and sounds. Then you put them together to form words. As you get a little better, you start picking out sentences. It takes a lot of practice to get to the point where you're not actually reading the words themselves, you're reading what the words mean.
It's exactly the same with maps. The more I look, and try and imagine what the catrographer is trying to tell me, the more I see. Whereas before I would just see contour lines, now I see hills that get steeper (or less steep) towards the top. I see lines of electricity pylons. I see gullys which I know will get soaking wet if it rains because they're in a bowl with no drainage.
Good navigation is not about reading maps, it's about interpreting them. It's not about figuring out where you are when you're lost, it's about not getting lost in the first place. It's about having an instinctive ability to know which way you are facing - and being able to concentrate on riding the bike.
That whole collar bone thing in Morocco. I put that down to three main things:
- Being completely exhausted from digging the bike out of that horrible mud;
- Inadequate experience of how quickly things can jump up and bite you in the desert;
- Trying to navigate at the same time as ride a bike, and being a novice at both of them
So I really am working on navigation. The next step in this is knowing my compass heading at all times when I'm on the bike.
Martin has laid his hands on a bunch of digital compasses, which we will be fitting to the bikes at AJP - along with roadbook holders. This is gearing up for roadbook and navigation training over the coming months.
And, tell you what, forget gimbal servoactuators - I want one of these:
It's a Tripy Digital Roadbook. Given that you need to be on acid in order to properly interpret a roadbook, there is something very ironic about a "Trippy Roadbook". Nonetheless, they are things of beauty. Not only do they play roadbooks, they also record them. Download them to your computer, print them off into paper rolls. None of this fishing around in wet bike gear for pencil and paper to figure out the roadbook symbols you're trying to write. Route recording, as you ride, backed up by GPS.
The trauma of the roadbook lies ahead of us. For now, it's maps:
- "Navigation?"
"Go Flight"
"Shippee anyone?"
"Go Flight"
Download the Manic Mission Information Pack for the full story ...
posted by 2009 Dakar at
Monday, April 21, 2008
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