Hi, everybody! I've arrived in Huntsville, AL today. I'm here at Marshall Space Flight Center getting my vibe testing groove on. There is a vibe test underway for the IBA OSE h/w (for those of you who don't know, that's the "jackstands" that will hold the "Orbiter Boom" on the station so the shuttle doesn't have to keep bringing it up itself) at MSFC during the next week.

Today, they set up the test stand and did a functional test on one of the two OSE's. It was interesting to see how these things go. I'd never even been in the lab when they did a functional test (exercised all the joints and stuff so that they can verify that it's in working order), so I didn't really know what to expect, but I had to laugh a little. Doing this functional test reminds me of that chip commercial (or is it a salsa commercial?) where the guys are standing up in an office looking out the window at a work crew saying "Isn't that typical - one guy does all the work while the others just stand around". There were basically two guys doing all the work, one guy supervising, and a bunch of us guys standing around making sure that everything is going well.

After the functional test, they decided to call it a day at 3:00 pm. I was a little surprised by that, except that I found out later that everybody is supposed to be at work at 7:00 am around here... Hope I can do that! Anyway, the original schedule had the functional happening on Thursday not Wed, so I guess we're a day ahead of schedule already. I think that means we'll do the sine sweep test tomorrow instead of Friday. That will be when I'm the most nervous. I hope we get good data! AND above all else, we don't hurt the hardware. I'll let you know how it all goes tomorrow.