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i am here at the kennedy space center

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and we are actually in one of the labs

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where they are processing the payloads

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and getting them ready to go into the

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space x4 dragon capsule joining me now

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is jennifer wahlberg and she is an

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integration engineer here at the kennedy

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space center and jennifer um

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probably got a lot of time on your hands

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right now right this is a real exciting

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week for us so the week before launch is

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always really really busy for us

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what are you doing here what do you do

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to get these payloads ready i'm part of

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a team of people that enables the

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science teams to do the last minute

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preparations for their science you know

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a lot of the science that goes to

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station can't be pre-prepared elsewhere

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and then shipped in

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so we have the facilities and

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accommodations here

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to assign different labs to different

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teams they can do the last minute

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science preparations or packing some

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things don't come together until right

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here at the facility and get packed at

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the last minute before we take it out to

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the vehicle

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and that is your job to get it ready to

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get out to the vehicle and and you have

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to have a lot of different equipment for

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that too right yeah i coordinate with a

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lot of folks um working with teams that

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are visiting here from payloads all over

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the country and the world actually from

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jsc

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from marshall and elsewhere

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and really it's

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getting everybody where they need to be

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at the right point in time

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some of the payloads have to maintain

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power during transport we have equipment

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powered

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that will maintain power and batteries

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for that we have other equipment that

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will maintain lockers in the correct

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orientation while they're still in

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gravity and you have these things left

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over it's a rich history you did this

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during the shuttle days too right yeah

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we would go out for late load at

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shuttles and would be there on the

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runway when it came back to early still

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wow so now with spacex four you guys

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take it all out to the pad and then and

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then your day is done right

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it's a long day

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a lot of these signs payloads get loaded

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at l minus 24 hours we actually start

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here gathering things up three to four

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hours before that

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going around to the different labs and

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doing final packing preparations loading

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our vehicle

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it's a 20 minute drive or so over to the

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spacex facility

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there's a team of people small team

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there's only about half a dozen of us

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here plus a handful of folks that travel

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with us from other centers

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and we get out to the launch pad where

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spacex meets us and we hand things over

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to them and then they do installation in

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the vehicle we stay throughout

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installation making sure everything goes

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goes fine and gets loaded correctly

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we assist in the battery or the power

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transfer from battery to the vehicle

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power

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you tell me an interesting thing so they

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have backups uh if if something were to

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go wrong a lot of these payloads have

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backups back here but that would be a

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quick turn right it would um they do

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have backups running here in the

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facility but again there's that drive to

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deal with and sometimes it's not a

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one-for-one backup the science and the

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primary unit needs to get moved over to

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the backup unit so we're always looking

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at the schedule how much time do we have

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left will it fit in and then sometimes

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they

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you know i don't know that there's had

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to be decisions made very rarely in the

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past where something's not working but

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let's go ahead and launch it anyway and

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hopefully we'll get it working on

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station

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all right well it sounds like exciting

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work busy work

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and really really fast i mean it

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probably doesn't seem that way to you

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though

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right i mean we work for three four

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months um

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until we get down to this last week but

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then when it comes down to it our

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schedules are built in 5 10 15 minute

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increments where we've got to be here at

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this point in time and here the next

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point in time