(See previous posting for some help if you are completely at sea here. It may or may not help, but it’s worth a shot.)
Young man, there’s no need to ask why.
I said, young man, don’t you let yourself cry.
I said, young man, launch your crew to the sky
There’s no need to be unhappy.
Young man, there’s a place you can go.
I said, young man, where your stature will grow.
You can stay there, and I’m sure you’ll achieve
Many things they did not believe
It’s fun to star on the A-C-S–R.
It’s fun to star on the A-C-S–R.
They have everything for you all to enjoy,
You can rebuild without the noise …
It’s fun to star on the A-C-S–R.
It’s fun to star on the A-C-S–R.

Check this out! The ACS Repair hardware is loaded into the LOPE (Large ORU (Orbital Replacement Unit) Protective Enclosure) and ready for launch. Hubble’s best camera will be working again soon!

The ACS Repair hardware in flight configuration, stowed in the LOPE
You got your Low-Voltage Power Supply Replacement (LVPS-R) up at the top, and your CCD Electronics Box Replacement (CEB-R) at the bottom of the picture. The aluminum-colored plates on the top of each box swing up and out of the way by turning the T-handles, then the boxes slide out. Well actually for the CEB-R you also have to flip the green handles and move them out of the way first as well.
Once installed on Hubble, the harness you see sticking out of the LVPS-R gets connected to the CEB-R, where you see the red shorting plug on there now. There’s more info on ACS Repair at their website.
So now it’s up to the installation crew to get the carrier loaded into the payload bay, and then our astronauts to install it. And we have to not get eaten by alligators, which doesn’t seem too difficult.
Here are some more shots from yesterday’s tour of Endeavour. This post really should be put into my standard slideshow format, but when my hard drive died it took my /bin folder with it. I had /Applications and the important parts of /Documents backed up, but /bin is the poor cousin in the Mac hierarchy. So I don’t currently have the script to build a slideshow page. I’m sure it’s on some hard disk somewhere, but I don’t have it now. So you get ’em like this.
Let’s start outside the Vehicle Assembly Building. Look, it’s Cepi’s Angels!

Erin, Kathleen, and Becky in front of the VAB. We didn't go in there.
But nothing was happening in there, so we didn’t go in. Later this week they’ll be stacking Endeavour in there (attaching it to the external tank, and boosters). With any luck I’ll get to see that too.
Continue reading ‘In Which I Endeavour to Avoid Geek Fanboy Syndrome’