September 2007 - Page 2 of 4

2007-09-27

One Day of Contingency Recovered?

As I have read on the web, Discovery seems to have one more contingency day left in its launch schedule. The wizards in the VAB seem to have done real magic. Originally, the rollout to the pad was scheduled for Sunday. Now, it seems to be Saturday, September 29th at 8pm ED. Well, that’s maybe half a day of contingency if I think more about it. Extra contingency time is very desirable, because four days were lost when a damage on a landing gear strut was found and needed to be repaired. Even though the repair was ultra-fast, almost all remaining contingency time was used up. Now, with the excellent processing flow, NASA keeps again up with it. My hope is that some other activities will also be earlier than planned, leaving even more contingency. As we all know, spaceflight is inherently complex and there is a good chance that extra contingency (spare) time is needed at some stage.

For those interested: I assume that NASA TV carries some video footage from the VAB rollout.

Its very promising to see work progressing so well. To me, it looks more and more like the first launch attempt is indeed on the October, 23rd. Let’s hope for the best, including good weather. I’ll keep you updated.

News Source: http://www.raumfahrer.net/forum/cgi-bin/YaBB.pl?num=1173608035/480 (german!)
Picture: VAB rollout during the STS-83 mission (this is NOT STS-120!), Photo Credit: NASA

2007-09-26

oops … did not notice comments…

Sorry to all folks who commented on my blog – I did not react at all. Shame over me. If you take time to provide your ideas, you deserve at least a little bit of reaction.

The problem is that I am an email junkie – I set mail notifications for everything I do. And if I don’t get an email notification, it is almost sure that I forget about it. And when setting up the blog, I forgot to enable email notifications. Guess what happened then…

The good new is that the notifications are now enabled, so I will now reply much more promptly. I enjoy your thoughts and discussions, so keep them coming. Maybe we can even manage to network a couple of folks who want to view this launch. Wouldn’t that be nice? So, if you are in for it – please spread word about my little blog and help get more cool people to read, comment and discuss :)

2007-09-26

hotels, hotels, hotels…

Did I mention that I had quite some trouble booking hotel rooms for my shuttle launch? The nights in Orlando were no problem at all – Orlando simply has so many hotels of all kinds, it is really hard to book them out… But Titusville and Cocoa Beach is a different story.

I made the mistake to not immediately book hotel rooms after I booked my launch transportation tickets from KSC. When I was ready to do that, my fellow “launch viewers” already had taken the majority of rooms. Interestingly, the 22nd was most heavily booked – but the 23rd was much easier to get. It looks like a lot of folks believe in a total on-time launch – or hope to be able to extend if the launch is delayed. The later, I think, is a false impression.

I finally managed to book rooms, but I have to change hotels every now and then. The interesting fact about this is that on certain days I need to pack all my luggage into the car – and if that is on a launch day, I’ll need to drive with my fully-packed car up to KSC. I am not sure what the security guards will say about this… For now, I hope it will not really be necessary, but, if so, I hope I can get along with it. Of course, once I am down there in the Titusville area, I’ll check with the hotels if I can put my luggage into some room even when I have checked out.

So I was all set. Ahem – was I? Actually, I made a second mistake: I was so sure that Orlando hotels are no problem that I simply forgot to book a room over there! Boing… Crazy me. What now? Well, book ASAP. And that I did. Thankfully, I was able to book at the Residence Inn, what was exactly what I wanted. But the bad news was that pricing had changed. I suspect there is higher demand for rooms due to the shuttle launch. Whatever it was, it costs me around 20 bucks (plus tax, of course), per day. Bottom line: if you want to visit a shuttle launch and still stay in Orlando, book as early as possible even if it typically is no problem to get a nice room in the Orlando area…

2007-09-26

Did not manage to release 1.19.8 today…

Sorry folks, I didn’t manage to release 1.19.8 today. There was simply too much other activity that required attention. So I couldn’t finally decide on how to distribute from now on. Anyhow, it is my firm intention to release 1.19.8 tomorrow.

The good news, though, is that some folks are already testing that code. Maybe I get some feedback until tomorrow morning – and maybe that even helps me to get a better release…

2007-09-26

needed to pull 1.19.7 release

Unfortunately, there is a serious bug in rsyslog 1.19.7 that can prevent UDP message reception. Totally. No message received at all. This somehow slipped through our own testing as well as test at some third parties.

The root cause of this problem is interesting: I changed an internal interface to make things more reliable. What I changed had some old code in them that did return’s right in the middle of the code. I overlooked those returns and so an invalid state was returned.

The interesting fact is that the function now returns an enum type (rsRetVal). Previously, it returned an integer. For some reason, the compiler issued no warning when the old (accidentally remaining) code returned an integer. If I’d receive a “wrong type” warning, I’d probably spotted it before even doing testing at all.

Bottom line: what’s wrong with my compiler settings?

Oh, and yes: I’ll release the fixed version soon. It then will be 1.19.8 to avoid confusion. I now fight with the distribution system: I received a patch that allows ommysql to be build as a separate module. So now it is separate – even from a distribution point of view. That causes some grief for distributing it and can possibly break some things in distribution packages. I need to think how to tackle that in the best possible way…

2007-09-26

worklog for 2007-09-25

2007-09-25
– changed ttyname() to ttyname_r() – not a real fix, as this part of the
code was single threaded, but better to be prepared for the future.
– changed localtime() to localtime_r()
– released 1.19.7
– applied contributed patch to improve repeated message processing
(see https://bugzilla.redhat.com/show_bug.cgi?id=303341)

2007-09-25

Discovery being mated…

Launch preparations for STS-120 seem to be on a good track. I just was able to obtain a few stunning images of Discovery being mated to the external tank and the solid rocket boosters. This all happens in the VAB, the gigantic assembly building.

On the images, you can see how the orbiter is hooked on a crane and then slowly moved over and attached to the rest of the stack.

Please note that in everyday speak, we say “space shuttle” and usually actually mean orbiter. The airplane-like crew and cargo transport system is “just” the orbiter. When mated to the boosters and external tank, it *then* become the full space shuttle.

To view all pictures, please visit my STS-120 VAB assembly picture album.

2007-09-25

rsyslog changes until 2007-09-24

Hi all,

I’ve been a bit lazy reporting what I’ve done with rsyslog. The primary reason is that it was a lot of review, which is quite boring to report in a blog. Today, I think, I’ll do a new release, so at least here is my worklog for up until yesterday.

2007-09-17
– possibly found a bug in cvthname() that lead to a wrong size being specified
in a getnameinfo() API call – not sure, though, if it is “the” bug (actually,
it looks like it isn’t). – this is EXPERIMENTAL
– fixed a bug that caused signal handlers in cvthname() not to be restored when
a malicious pointer record was detected and processing of the message been
stopped for that reason (this should be really rare and can not be related
to the segfault bug we are hunting).
2007-09-18
– split the function cvthname() for clarity. Also changed to using the rsRetVal
status return system
– removed some compiler warnings in regard to signed / unsigned comparison
2007-09-20
– code cleanup
– fixed a minor memory leak that occured when the %APPNAME% property was
used (I think nobody used that in practice)
2007-09-21
– more review and cleanup
– simplified code in shouldProcessThisMessage() for debug output
– changed strerror() calls to thread-safe strerror_r() variant

2007-09-24

Discovery in VAB…

I just stumbled upon this webcam image which I thought I should share. It shows Discovery in the VAB, roughly two hours ago. Its getting ready to be mated to the external tank and the solid rocket boosters.

2007-09-24

Discovery rolled over to the VAB

I just read on the NASA space shuttle homepage:

Sept. 23 at 5:30 p.m. EDT
The orbiter Discovery is parked in the transfer aisle of the Vehicle Assembly Building after rolling over from the Orbiter Processing Facility bay 3. First motion was at 12:22 p.m. EDT. This marks a prelaunch milestone.

Overnight Discovery will be rotated to a vertical position, hoisted and attached to its external fuel tank and two solid rocket boosters for its upcoming mission, STS-120, to the International Space Station.

Space Shuttle Discovery will roll out to Launch Pad 39A approximately one week after rollover. The launch of STS-120 is currently targeted for Oct. 23.

This is excellent news. Looks like my reservations are still right.

But what does this all mean? And why was it necessary?

Orbiters are parked in special, smaller buildings called “orbiter processing facility” or OPF. This is where the majority of work is being done on them. For example, the strut repair happened there. As far as I know, orbiters are immediately moved to the OPF when they have arrived in Kennedy Space Center. Then they are checked, repairs conducted and prepared for the next mission. They are not, mated to either the tank or the solid rocket boosters – the OPF is simply too small to do that.

Instead, that is done in the “Vehicle Assembly Building”, or VAB for short. This is a gigantic building (see picture), where the boosters and tank are mounted and the shuttle is then mated to them. As I have now learned, shuttles are typically moved over to the VAB roughly a month before launch. There the mate happens and, I assume, also some further checks.

I requires good weather to move a shuttle from the OPF to the VAB. Thus this movement can easily be delayed, especially at this time of the year (just think about Florida’s frequent afternoon thunderstorms…). This time, we obviously had no or at least very little delay – which is, why we are still on the timeline.