Monday March 2^nd 2009. Launch -45 days.

At times today it has been impossible to avoid watching the progress of construction in the carpark. At lunch today we took a closer look at the portacabins. Having spent two years in a similar temporary structure, some team members have a rather jaundiced view of them as they are definitely not ideal accommodation either in very hot or very cold weather, although, if truth be told, they are not as bad as all that. One feature of the construction though is the bars on the windows: looking at the building in its half-finished condition, we did speculate how popular this feature would be with its occupants. There is also a degree of nervousness as to who exactly is going to be put in there. We don’t think that any of our team will be re-located, but the Boss conspicuously failed to answer a direct question on this and we do know that some people are going to be moved around. For the next year or so the pressure on office space is going to increase, before relaxing again as missions start to run down and end.

Preparedness for the mission is slowly ramping-up. Rotas are now being made for the first months of the mission, along with costings of the extra overtime. No one knows exactly how well things will go, so the assumption is that we will work a basic 50 hour week, covering weekends and any public holiday (actually, there probably won’t be any). As we do not know what to expect, we have to be prepared. That means having people available so that we can respond to problems when they happen. Of course, maybe everything will work perfectly and we will not need to work weekends, or extra hours in the week, but no one is exactly holding their breath about it. Things will go wrong. They will go wrong at the worst possible times. And they will need fixing… yesterday and no excuses.