
Today I woke up at 0320 local time here in Sweden to have a look at the launch of Space Shuttle Discovery with the first Swedish astronaut Christer Fuglesang on board. Swedish Television (SVT) was broadcasting live but I was immediately rather disturbed by the quality of the recording. As usual the reporters did not seem to understand the subject at all and very posing a lot of rather strange questions. So I more or less turned off the sound and looked at my full screen image of the webbased NASA TV broadcast instead. I am a space-buff and really enjoy the technical NASA-lingo which actually provide some information of what is happening with images from the launch room and the pad. While that was happening SVT just hade studio discussion with some invited guests. The count-down proceeded down to T-5 minutes and was then stopped waiting for the final weather check from the Shuttle Weather Officer. Unfortunately they soon announced that the launch window had closed and the attempt was scrubbed. And what did the Swedish reporter asked !? “Oh…what a disappointed (turing to Sven Grahn) and how much do you think this attempt cost?”
And what does make my most annoyed is the repeated focus on Christer Fuglesang as a guy “who just waits and will not get his launch”. Like he has been on many crews and then the missions have been scrubbed. In fact the only time he has been officially named as a “reserve” was on the Euro-Mir projects back in 1995 when Thomas Reiter was selected instead. During that time Christer served as CAP-Com in Moscow gaining a lot of experiences of long space-flights.
Well, I look forward to a second attempt on Saturday and I actually understand that 30 % chance of suitable weather conditions means just that. Wouldn´t it be great to have NASA TV available on Cable TV here in Sweden. Imagine actually looking through Christers camera while he is doing his space-walk…