Wildfire brings drama

NASA weather girl Kathy Winters (officially known as the Shuttle weather officer) is relied upon to get the forecast spot on in the days before a Space Shuttle launch.

At the pre-launch press conference this morning her main worry was a cold front moving through Thursday evening, which would mix with the warm and humid air and set off lightening storms.

This is at the crucial time when the launch pad’s so-called rotating service structure is pulled back from protecting the orbiter so the loading of fuel can begin.

Needless to say, any kind of lightening strike in the locality at such a volatile time would not be desirable.

But what Kathy (pictured above) could not know as she was speaking and the relaxed press conference was drawing to a close was that outside over the southern flank of KSC a bush fire was raging out of control.

At first it had seemed rather innocuous as a pall of dark smoke billowed into the blue sky. On the ground it was spreading like wildfire, fanned into life by a strong southerly breeze.

Some six hours later it was still raging out of control, with a helicopter dumping water to try and halt its march. Its progress had been frighteningly quick and far.

The launch pad was sufficiently far away not to come into the equation if it had been launch day - but it would have certainly marred the view for the press and others watching from KSC.

Bush fires and lightening storms aside, Friday’s launch day weather forecast remained positive, with the only possible violation coming in at just a 20 percent chance of high altitude winds making it unsafe for liftoff.

With Mike Moses reporting nothing out of the ordinary in terms of the Shuttle’s processing on the pad things are going smoothly.

And, just for the record, the temperatures in this part of Florida have been in the mid-80s this week, with humid air and strong winds. They say this is more typical of July than April - haven’t I heard that somewhere else recently?

Visitors flood in

NASA managers have an extra problem to deal with for this last launch of the Space Shuttle Endeavour - and it’s a presidential-shaped one.

At the pre-launch press briefing this morning Mike Moses (processing manager) and Mike Leinbach (launch director) were at pains to say that President’s Obama’s presence for the launch would not compromise in any way mission operations.

Air Force One will touch down on the Shuttle landing runway and will have to be moved aside just in case the runway is needed for a return to launch site abort.

The President and his family have been given a number of options as to where they can view the launch from but these will not be disclosed in advance. "I can’t tell you where it will be but I can tell you where it won’t," said Mike Leinbach, referring to his own launch director’s seat.

The Obama’s won’t be the only American’s homing in on the area for a chance to witness one of the final majestic Shuttle launches.

This part of Florida is expecting up to three-quarters of a million visitors, almost double the number who turned out to watch the final launch of Discovery in February.

The crowd estimate means that roads surrounding the centre will be blocked for hours after the launch - a major problem for those KSC workers just wanting to get home after a busy day at the office!

Media badging up

There are going to be around 1500 media at Kennedy Space Center (KSC) for the STS-134 launch of the Space Shuttle Endeavour.

Whilst not a record, it is a 70 precent increase on those present for the last Shuttle launch, that of Discovery at the end of February.

The accreditation process for bona fide media representatives can be a complex affair. First off, foreign media need a visa before NASA will accept an electronic application.

Outside of KSC itself there are two badging stations - a news media access badge and a mission badge. Both require photos, fingerprinting and, if you are to drive through security under your own steam, an FBI check.

All went smoothly this morning, so I’m badged up and good to go. There are security check points on all the roads into KSC, mostly a couple of miles outside of the main area.

As the mission gets closer security levels will be increasingly raised, all adding to the excitement and anticipation.

This morning there is a smattering of the regular ‘space’ journalists here already. In 45 minutes’ time there if a pre-launch news conference.

Most likely, one of the main topics will be the weather forecast and the storm clouds amassing on the horizon.

The prediction at present is for good launch day weather but with thunder storms the night before - which is not such good news for the overnight fuelling operations on the pad.

The great and the good

Perhaps it has finally dawned on America that the age of its ‘remarkable flying machine’ is rapidly drawing to a conclusion.

If all goes to plan, this week’s launch of the Space Shuttle Endeavour will be the penultimate in all time history - and it will be a bittersweet occasion for many.

For the thousands of Americans who have worked on the Shuttle programme for three decades or more it brings home the stark reality that, from this summer, many will find themselves out of work.

The layoffs by NASA and its contractors have already bitten deep. The spaceport city of Titusville, a stone’s throw from Kennedy Space Center itself, was a boomtown founded on American’s human spaceflight endeavours.

But its glory days have gone. Workers have already left in their droves and the once thriving restaurants and businesses are heading for lean times.

This week, as the great and the good gather at Kennedy Space Center to witness a final launch for themselves, human interest stories abound.

It was good to see at the weekend that doctors have allowed Gabrielle Giffords, the US congress-woman who was shot in the head, to travel to Florida to see her astronaut husband’s Space Shuttle launch.

The trip will be the first for Ms Gifford since she was flown from Tuscon, Arizona, to Houston more than three months ago to recover after being shot in the head at a community event in her home state of Arizona.

Husband Mark Kelly proudly told US television that Ms Giffords will be able to witness the launch of Endeavour, scheduled for Friday afternoon, in person.

Ms Giffords has not been seen publicly since the shooting and will likely watch it from a private family viewing area.

Her shooting at a community outreach event back in January could have put in jeopardy the Shuttle mission. Kelly is commander and had he needed to spend longer at his wife’s bedside the flight would likely have been postponed.

Replacing the commander so close to a launch would have been unprecedented and, as there are no backup crews in training for such complex missions, a tricky dilemma for NASA.

President Barack Obama and his family are also planning to watch the launch, though it is unclear whether they will be alongside Ms Giffords or at a different location.

Even on the most routine of occasions, a Space Shuttle launch is an emotionally charged and tense affair.

The fact that this will be the last ever countdown for Endeavour and the penultimate flight of the near 30 year programme makes it all the more poignant.

Flying across the Atlantic

Gatwick airport, 0745 am. To my chagrin the airport shopping experience is already in full swing as a I burst into departures after just about the most rapid check-in and security process ever. I beat a hasty retreat to the bustling Café Rouge with its panoramic view of the runway as a backdrop for breakfast.

I’m almost on my way. Infact, as I retrospectively write this onboard the plane, the inflight information screen shows we are heading well out over the mid-Atlantic en route to Florida. Another seven or eight hours to go before the 747 touches down in Orlando.

Most of the 316 passengers will be heading off to theme park land - a few of us will be travelling in the opposite direction towards Kennedy Space Center on the east coast where putting people into space is, for the moment at least, still for real.

This Friday afternoon (in the evening UK time) the Space Shuttle Endeavour is set to blast off on its final flight - a 16 day mission to the orbiting International Space Station.

I’ll be attending the launch as Editor of Spaceflight magazine. This is the eleventh year I’ve been in the (part-time) post but it’s just my fourth trip to cover a Shuttle launch.

Of the others, I’ve actually only witnessed one live Shuttle launch - albeit a spectacular middle of the night one. The others got postponed for various reasons, so it is by no means a guaranteed event.

I’ll be meeting up with friends and fellow journalists and photographers who do regular stuff for Spaceflight, including Ken Kremer and Dwayne Day from the States, Joel Powell from Canada, and Gerard van de Haar and Rudolf van Beest from the Netherlands. We should have it covered between us!

My nine hour flight between London and the east coast of America is about as good as it gets at present for those of us confined to travelling the globe at heights of 35,000 feet in modern jet liners.

But when the engines of Endeavour ignite on the launch pad at 3.47 pm on Friday afternoon (8.47 pm UK time) the six men onboard will be catapulted into orbit inside just nine minutes.

In that first orbit they may very well fly across the southern part of the UK and, if that coincides with a clear sky, the orbiter can be seen with the naked eye tracking through the heavens as a bright swiftly moving ‘star’, with the just-separated external fuel tank trailing behind.

In that case, the Atlantic crossing for Endeavour will have taken a mere 20 minutes - which kind of puts my own trans-Atlantic journey into a little more perspective.

Work, rest and play

It is as if the planets were aligned – a late Easter coincided with a Royal wedding and the May Day bank holiday to give British workers a rare run of days off combined with three and four-day weeks. And to cap it all the brilliant spell of spring weather continued unabated.

It’s not so long ago that such four-day weeks were envisaged as the future. In the 1950s Winston Churchill saw a time when accelerating technological advancement would enable us to "give the working man what he's never had – four days' work and then three days' fun".

This did not seem as improbable then as it sounds now. After all, the weekend was a comparatively recent and expanding invention.

So where did it all go wrong? Not only has the concept of a three-day weekend pretty much evaporated but, for many, the two-day weekend is in jeopardy.

According to Ian Price, author of The Activity Illusion: Why we Live to Work in the 21st Century and How to Work to Live Instead, this crowding out of leisure time is due to something of a ‘perfect storm’ - hurtling advances in communications technology colliding with changes in attitude to activity.

In the headlong rush to embrace modernity, we have stripped ourselves and our work places of many of the old indicators of hierarchy, such as PAs and corner offices. Instead, we have conflated activity with status - how busy we are has become an indicator of importance.

Simply owning a BlackBerry, or similar device, drives a new kind of compulsive checking behaviour. The little vibrating object, with its flashing light, stimulates our brain's dopamine system in much the same way as the flashing lights of a fruit machine ensnare a gambling addict.

It might feel as if email and BlackBerry have crept into our lives gradually but, in the context of the 5,000 year history of written communication, their arrival has been sudden and disruptive. Hand-writing an internal memo to be typed up by a secretary was still the norm in the 1980s - and tended to make you more selective in its use.

Now that such barriers have been removed, so have the filters that weeded out messages that were either too urgent, or too trivial, to be committed to writing.

One unintended result of our busy way of working, straddling evenings and weekends, is that we have crowded out ‘deep thinking’. How often have we stumbled upon the answer to a problem when doing something else altogether such as showering, gardening or taking the dog for a walk?

It has long been recognised among occupational psychologists and physicians that proper rest and recovery is important, not just for long-term health and happiness but also for resilience at work, productivity and performance.

In all this busyness we may also neglect at our peril the spiritual element to life, of which Easter serves as a poignant annual reminder.

Easter Sunday’s celebration at Peterborough’s KingsGate church was certainly among the highlights of my own weekend. Quite wondrous! For the spiritually challenged it is definitely worth a visit... perhaps on one of those weekend’s off you’ve now promised yourself.

One way or another, I hope you had a restful Easter break. And, if not, the planets may still hold some favour - for there’s a Royal wedding and May bank holiday weekend coming right up.

As for my own plans on Royal wedding day. Sorry William and Kate, I’m afraid ‘The Lighthouse Keeper’ is attending something else on the other side of the pond - of which there will be much more in the coming days.