Safety Pathfinder, Lisa, Antennas

I have way too many pictures from yesterday, so I had to cut a bunch that I normally would have posted. This is partly because I took a bajillion pictures of CREAM, as The Boss dragged it out onto the wooden pad. Such operations are delicate, from a safety point of view, so it’s really great to have CREAM around to sort out all the red tape before us.

Also, we got three more people into the highbay: Lorenzo, Enzo, and Barth. That makes for a the-highbay’s-kind-of-crowded-now twelve people. Twelve! Some work was done on attaching antennas to the suns shields.

And the great helium saga continues. At the end of the day, we finally got our 250L dewar from pole. A small team stayed behind and prepared to spend the night making helium fills. But the dewar only had 150L of helium—not enough for an initial cooldown. Just a tease.

: With three new people, it’s getting crowded downstairs

: When Lorenzo’s computer is misbehaving, he says moving it in 3D helps

: Barth meets Luke and Gabe

: Then gives the scoop mylarization an inspection

: Fire and Sharps. Fun with telephoto

: More fun with telephoto: Matt’s face

: Lisa

: Juan and his reflection tape up some more mylar

: Elio in a holding pattern

: CREAM gets lifted

: The pad is ready for it

: The closest approach to my vantage point on the Payload 2 deck

: The Boss, action shot

: The Boss, backing up to the Pad (and Mt Erebus)

: The Boss’s little forklift friend comes to play too

: The sun shields, laid down so antennas can be attached

: The Janos come by for a tour. Nick enters lecture mode

: Chris, one of the flight engineers, attaches the CSBF antenna boom

: And Joseph (our flight engineer) too. I watch lazily from the mezzanine, with a telephoto lens

: Our visitors pose for a picture before leaving

: CREAM, Cones, Volcano

: Just before lunch, Ben shows up again. That way he gets an LDB lunch

: Our long GPS antenna tube. And Elio

: More CSBF folks cable up their antennas. Matt (picutred) and David (not pictured)

: COMM2 GPS

: Omnidirectional TDRSS antenna

: Back upstairs, Juan concentrates on his mylar

: And Lisa Smiles Strangely

: In anticipation of arriving helium, we transfer the nitrogen in the helium tank back to the nitrogen tank

: Elio and the frozen transfer tube

: With no more door, one must Commando Roll to get in or out of the scoop

: Lisa gets in, and peeps out

: Tristan’s Hot Rod. Temporary heating replacement for the Rod of Power, who’s light bulb was broken in shipping

: The 250L teaser dewar, on its cargo Delta (taken from Ivan, as we left)

The other reason I have a lot of pictures is that Juan had another visitor volunteering her day off to work on his arts and crafts project. This time it was a DA (dining assistant) named Lisa. She came out with our chef, Michael, and skied back to base with him when they were done. Lisa took a bunch of great pictures, so we conducted an exchange before she skied back to base. A few that I like follow.