Notes from the Field

Where’s the coffee?

March 10th, 2010 by Mike Carlowicz

Sent by GloPac co-project scientist Paul Newman on March 8:

Global Hawk in Dryden hangar on March 8

Greetings from the sunny California desert!  After getting up at 4 AM
in Maryland, taking a 6-hour flight to Los Angeles, and then driving two
hours, I arrived at NASA’s Dryden Flight Research Center at Edwards
Air Force Base for the start of the Global Hawk Pacific (GloPac)
mission.  Now you might imagine that the California desert would be
dry and sunny, but no.  At this moment, the flat lakebed is covered in
water and the skies are cloudy (but no rain).

After arriving at DFRC, I cruised into the hangar and found a beehive of activity around the Global Hawk.  Only a couple of the research scientists are here so far; they’re starting to assemble their instruments and install them onto the aircraft mounting plates.  The aircraft crew is pretty busy tracking down a couple of problems with one of the computers that talks between the instruments and the ground.  The crew also fueled the plane today.  If you look carefully at the photo, you can see the wings drooping because of the weight of the fuel inside.

Now I’m on the two most important tasks at the start of a field mission. 1) Find the coffee pot.   2) Find the bathroom.

4 Responses to “Where’s the coffee?”

  1. Peter Curia says:

    Looking forward to all the new things you might discover! Like: Where is the bathroom?

  2. Peter Curia says:

    Seriously…am looking forward to this blog.

  3. Paul Newman says:

    Both the coffee and the bathroom were found. All is right with the world.

  4. Ginger Neumayer says:

    What KIND of coffee??