Monday January 26th 2009. Launch -80 days.

 

Back in the 19th Century, Field Marshall Helmuth Carl Bernard Graf von Moltke made the famous quote that “No battle plan ever survives contact with the enemy”. This quote seems very appropriate to me in a paraphrased form: “no test plan ever survives contact with reality”.  Yes, it’s been one of those days!

 

Actually, quite apart from his very apposite phrase, often used by planners, von Moltke has two significant links with astronomy, if not directly with Herschel. One of them was to fund publication of an important Moon map. This led to his name being given to a small crater on the Moon. Now probably very few people could actually say, off-hand, where crater von Moltke is, but millions of people have seen this crater. If I say that it is on the Sea of Tranquility, a lot of people will think of Apollo XI – in fact, the Apollo XI astronauts passed low over the crater and photographed it shortly before landing and that photograph is still one of the most famous of the space programme.

 

Today I have added a countdown to our notice board.  We are now 80 days from the nominal date of launch. It’s a low-tech solution, but seeing the number of days to launch in large print reminds people how close it is and how much there is to do (although also just how far we have come, which has been a very long way indeed). There is talk of getting a proper countdown clock to be put on the wall, although that probably doesn’t make sense until we have got past that next February 12th launch and finally have a definitive date and time.

 

However, back to von Moltke. This is the third set of tests that I have coordinated, including writing the Test Plan, which is where everything that should happen is detailed. Even though the Test Plan for this particular set of tests has been circulated several times since mid-December, today it was time to present it to the team, exactly one week before we start. We booked the large meeting room and around 40 people, not just from Herschel, but from the teams that support us, such as the Computer Support Group, came along and find out what is expected of them. Sometimes these meetings are routine: we talk, the team listens and then everyone goes back to work. Today, though, the meeting was anything but routine. As the plan was spelt out there were a lot of questions, debate, requests for clarifications and suggestions about how the plan has to change. People definitely got involved: the fact that when we finish the second campaign of simulated operations we will just be 24 days from launch, is only one of the things that has concentrated peoples’ minds wonderfully. I am resisting, but some things in the plan may well have to change… reality has arrived as the team suddenly realises the full implications of what they are being asked to do.

 

At face value, we have two periods of two weeks pretending to operate the telescope in space. In reality we have two very intensive campaigns to (a) ensure that our systems are ready to support the spacecraft and (b) to ensure that the people are ready. Making sure that the people are ready includes ensuring that the team has the experience and confidence to tackle problems when they arrive. We have to make sure that we have people working at the weekend, and ensure that we have people available if something critical goes wrong out of normal working hours (Herschel does not respect weekends, Bank Holidays, or night time – if it yells for help, we have to respond, whenever it is), yet ensuring that people get enough rest and that people with families (various of the team have young children) are not working every weekend. Our team is not very large and covering all eventualities means a lot of juggling and requires a lot of good will from the team. Planning also means ensuring that the canteen is operating at weekends so that the people on duty can eat and ensuring that if something goes wrong with the computers, or with our Internet connection, the appropriate help will be available whenever it happens. It is a lot more complicated than anyone would imagine to get all the planning right.