Day 11 - Windy Weather

Day 11 Pictures: http://picasaweb.google.com/bjg222/MDRS2010Day11

Today was a day full of plans. Unfortunately, Mother Nature contradicted most of them. Jillian’s antennas had arrived, so we were going to put the antenna on the roof of the hab, do an EVA to put the repeater up on radio ridge with its antenna and pole, and then do another mapping and radio range test EVA. The winds, however, have been consistently blowing at about 20 to 25 mph, with gusts up to about 40 mph! That prohibited us from getting on the roof of the hab to put the antenna out, so there was no point in putting the repeater up, either! And with no change in the radios, we knew we’d have no radio coverage, so there was no point to an EVA, either. So the morning was spent studying, instead, at least by Jillian and I. Dan did a quick EVA up to check on the wind turbine and make sure everything was still in order. We stuck the radio repeater just outside just for some testing so that we were accomplishing something with the antennas, at least. The wind also wreaked havoc with our internet connection. The internet out here is a satellite connection, and it’s very limited bandwidth. With such high winds, the satellite dish kept blowing around, so our internet was intermittent, which was extremely annoying! After lunch, I decided it was time to work on the robotic rover that I brought and get it up and running. In case you were wondering, the rover’s name is Leoplurodon, or Leo for short (And yes, I’m aware that’s not how it’s supposed to be spelled! That’s on purpose!). The one that I brought is the third iteration, with the fourth one being built back in Atlanta right now. I spent some time on my computer updating the rover’s software, because last year’s software was less than optimal due to some last minute fixes we had to do at the competition. Once I got the cleaned up software working, I loaded it onto the rover’s computer and started the thing up. To my delight, it worked as expected, perfectly, the first time! The point of bringing the rover out here was to get software working on it that could pick up a loss of radio contact, so my plan for tomorrow is to get the software finished up and maybe even get testing started. I definitely want to get the testing going on Thursday, at least. Today was yet another non-cooking day, so it was more instant food that I’m really getting tired of! I’ll be happy when we’re done with sim and can go into Hanksville and get some real food (Now that DG fixed our truck!). I’m really looking forward to Stan’s burgers and shakes (They’re some of the thickest milkshakes you’ll ever have!). Hopefully we’ll be ending sim on Thursday. Anyway, after we ate and everybody submitted their requisite reports, it was movie time. We finished the final episode of Firefly yesterday, since there were only 14 episodes made before the show was canceled by FOX! No idea why, because it’s a great show. There was enough of a fan following, though, that the director of the show took some of his remaining story ideas and made a movie that followed up on the show, named Serenity, after the spaceship in Firefly. So we watched Serenity. Great movie! I just wish it wasn’t so windy, because the wind was louder than the movie at times! After the movie was done, and everybody was tired, we all headed off to bed.