2 out of 4 ain't bad...

We had a big plan for this weekend: two individual flights on Saturday from FLL and then two flights on Sunday from the SLF for the residents of the WORLD Ship! We were all worried about the logistics of moving everyone and everything three hours away, but Jen had it all planned out. She even dealt with the WORLD Ship being the training and party location. I was preoccupied with a Japanese TV crew and a British TV show both filming on the same flight!

Everything was going fine. We took off almost on time for our first flight, ZG-51, and were getting ready to take the group picture when we got the call to return shoes and get ready to go back! Frustrating, but necessary. Apparently one of our AC packs had quit working and the crew couldn't maintain a constant cabin pressure. While this is slightly irregular on a normal flight, it is a NOGO for parabolic manuvers. We went back.

While the plane was being repaired, we went ahead with the next training on schedule. We might have to cancel one flight, but the second one would definatly go...right? Wrong. Another problem creeped up and needed to be fixed on the plane. Easy enough, but we had a lift for one mechanic and the job required two. Well, it takes two people to get it done in a reasonable amount of time... So both Saturday flights were cancelled. The group that was set to ferry up with the aircraft (me, Jen, Sarah, Edwin, the AJ crew and mechanics) sat at Jetscape until after 10pm waiting for a GO/NOGO for the flight up to KSC. We finally waived off for the night and got sleep.

The next day we had two good flights from the SLF, though both were a bit bumpy from turbulence. The WORLD Ship passengers and crew had a great time. I learned later that the Ansaris paid for the ship crew to come on the airplane with them. I was astonished. The story is that Anousheh Ansari gave away 14 tickets that got raffled off to the crewmembers. That is worth over $50,000. Jen told me that some of the flyers were engine room workers that had never even seen the conference room on the ship where the pre-flight training was held. It is that strict around there.

Other highlights from the day: hanging out with Jim Kennedy (KSC Center Director), finally meeting Jack Fox (local NSS coordinator), and getting to see the WORLD Ship (after going through 2 metal detectors and 3 security checkpoints). The guys at KSC are really excited about having ZERO-G around. The WORLD is a nice ship. And it is harder to get into than KSC.