Sunday January 25th 2009. Launch -81 days.


Quite apart from the launch campaign, there is a quite separate problem on my mind. Somehow, I became President of our Golf Club (like the rest of the members who have obtained their licence, I am a 36 handicap hacker) and am also organising the 1st ESA Golf Tournament. By shear luck, we have access to a tournament standard course that is in construction that is only used by a handful of people at present, allowing us the chance to take it over completely for two days. Nine holes of the course are complete and the other nine will be finished this summer. Each ESA centre has been invited to send a team. The event will be held over weekend in May. There will be team and individual events and there is every indication that people in other centres are taking winning the event very seriously. Our only aim is to organise the event well and not to get too badly embarrassed by the result (we hope to do no worse than come last in the team event). There are various lakes on the course which, we begin to believe, are full of magnetic water… at least, they attract our balls like magnets. In our own internal Championship, in November, in which I came a fairly honourable 3rd, one player lost no less than 6 balls in the water on one particular hole!

 

In a few weeks time we will find out if we have any remote chance of avoiding coming last in the ESA event, as we have a match arranged against the NASA tracking station. Herschel will supply three of our team: let’s hope that we’re on form; losing to NASA would be worse than embarrassing.