Well…this is about as real as it gets for me. This week, I had the wonderful opportunity of experiencing what it’s like to be in the center of causing a launch delay! 
Last weekend, the guys at KSC had trouble getting a good leak check of the crew cabin on the shuttle that is at the pad currently. The launch was scheduled for this coming Tuesday, and once most of the work is completed on the pad, they do an integrity check on all the hatches to ensure they aren’t leaking. It isn’t intended to be a leak check of the hardware I am partially responsible for, but unfortunately, all signs were pointing towards an issue with one of our positive pressure relief valves (PPRVs). These valves are used in launch, throughout the mission and in landing if there is an overpressure event in the cabin, and the air has to be relieved overboard. It’s a fairly big deal, as they are considered emergency hardware. If they fail to function, the crew cabin can become overpressurized and essentially burst. (Not a good day!)
By Tuesday night, we were scrambling to get a story together to tell our management. We had A LOT of “help” from A LOT of higher up’s this week, which is also not another situation you want to be in. Turns out, the head guy we had to convince was sending out emails to headquarters before we were even able to bring forward the story with the opinion that we could assume the risk and leave the ”bad” hardware in place since there is a backup valve. He obviously didn’t fully understand the hardware or the failure scenarios, so we had to go in on Wednesday with a very unpolished story and a whole lot of unknowns and convince a very intimidating NASA community to change out the valve. Luckily, they agreed. Then, we had problems testing the new valve! So, they jumped over and started testing the 2nd valve and accidentally left tooling on that they weren’t supposed to and almost damaged the 2nd valve! Uggh! We finally got that worked out and had a good replacement valves, so that work began.
By this point, I was getting really nervous. I had planned to go to Buffalo on Thursday night with a few of my teammates to checkout the bad valve that was being removed from the shuttle. By 9am Thursday morning, I got a call that they had already removed the valve, and the guys were flying up on the USA plane and starting the work that day! Unfortunately, because I am a NASA employee, I couldn’t ride the contractor plane, so I had to fly commercial. The only flights available were out of Intercontinental airport, which is at least an hour drive from my house (on a good traffic day). I had less than 2 hrs to go home, pack, drive to the airport and catch my flight. I had to race across town in pouring down rain, and the clock was ticking. When I finally made it to the airport, I found out that the funding had not gone through on my travel orders yet, so I had to use my credit card to pay for the ticket. Then I forgot about the “no liquids” restriction as I was standing in the security line, so I had to stuff all of my toiletries into a quart sized bag in about 20 seconds. Of course, I was pulled aside for a bag check. As the security officer was taking her time, I could hear my name being paged over the speakers. I ended up running to my gate and stepped on the plane that left at 12:15 at 12:14! Needless to say, I got my exercise for the day! Then, we sat on the runway for 20 minutes which made us late for all of our connecting flights in Detroit. I had to run through that airport and barely made it to my next flight. Then, the caterer opened the door after they had it secured for departure and broke the pin. Maintenance had to come out to replace it, and 30 minutes later, we were ready to head out. The tug that pulled the plane away from the gate then broke, so we had to wait for a new one to be delivered. By this point, I thought I had some wiggle room because the team decided not to work on the valve that night but start on Friday morning. When I got into Buffalo and turned on my phone, I had 3 messages from the guys asking where I was because they decided to start the troubleshooting after all. I told them the story and said I would race to get my rental car and head down. When I got to the rental car counters, it was a madhouse! Even though I had reservations, I had to wait 45 minutes because they were out of cars! Oh brother!!! At this point, I just had to laugh.
I missed the first part of the inspection, but they were nice enough to wait until Friday morning when I could be there to witness the more invasive inspections. By 8:30 Friday morning, we had solved the mystery. We found a tiny little rice-sized piece of teflon or nylon debris on the sealing surface of the valve. Although it was good to find the culprit, it wasn’t good to know that we can get debris in the valves after all the checkouts are complete. We have a lot more work to go do, but hopefully we’ll resolve it.
By 9:30, we all had changed our flights, and I was back at the airport again for a noon flight. I finally walked in the door at 8:00 last night. It was a very long day of travel, and I am sooooo thankful to be at home and have a few days to rest before gearing up again to support the mission. On my way home, a coworker called to inform me that the launch had been delayed by a day because they didn’t have time to complete all the work from changing out our valve. After all that, I couldn’t believe it! The good thing, though, is that we at least know we have good hardware installed now, and we are ready for flight!
On
Space,
Tech @ 04/08/2007 |