Pictures from JP Aerospace's DSS3/Oklahoma flight

Day 3: Wednesday, March 20, 2002

March 20 was the third and final day of the drive to Oklahoma. Starting from Albuquerque NM we made it to Clinton OK in the afternoon.

According to the plan we had made the previous evening, JP and Norm were out with the van and trailer at 5AM. But for the rest of us who were supposed to be out at 7AM, things didn't go according to plan. One member of the group didn't set the alarm clock correctly and had to be woken up by telephone. Then we got checked out, fueled up and found the on-base McDonald's for a to-go breakfast.

By the time we were out of the base, it was 8AM. We were an hour behind schedule with no hope to catch up with the van before Oklahoma. Even worse though, was that some of our team would be arriving at the Oklahoma City airport that afternoon and expecting to be picked up. We needed to be there for all the transportation plans and equipment setup to come together.

Descending from the mountains we ran into two thin bands of fog. We guessed that it was worse when the van came through. What they told us by cell phone was that it had been ice fog earlier and the van got a coating of ice before they got out of it. It slowed them down.

We stopped for fuel in Tucumcari NM and Amarillo TX. We had been expecting to reach Amarillo by noon. But when we crossed the Texas border at 11AM MST, we saw the sign that reminded us of the time zone change. So it was noon Central Time and we were still an hour from Amarillo. Oh well.

We got a quick to-go lunch in Amarillo at 1PM. There was still 3 hours to Clinton OK. But we could do that without stopping. And we did.

Soon after we arrived at the Ramada in Clinton, the van arrived too. JP and Norm had dropped off the trailer in the hangar at the spaceport. The spaceport personnel and fire dept gave them a nice welcome. Apparently the firefighters had been studying our web site - JP said he had been asked if this was going to be the 4- or 5-arm version of DSS. (It's the single-length 5-arm version, like was successfully flown in Nevada in May 2001. Though the double-length arms were shown on some media photos, that version (ahem) hasn't yet passed all its testing, as seen in its brief Oct 2001 flight.)

JP and Norm also showed us some newspapers they picked up from nearby towns on the way there. DSS was on the front page of every one of them. It was only just beginning to dawn on us how much the people of the state of Oklahoma were following this. The recognition is wonderful. But there was also an element of pressure to succeed, wanting to deliver for the people and the kids.

But there wasn't time to read the papers. JP got a call on his cell phone. Donna and Aubrey (his wife and teenage son) were on the ground at the Oklahoma City airport. As is often the case, JP had to be in two places at once, since he was also needed at the spaceport to begin setup. So Al and I went to the airport to pick up Donna and Aubrey while JP went back to the spaceport. We picked up a rental car that the Ford/Chrysler dealer (McKinsey-Ballard) in Clinton provided to support the spaceport opening events - the car would be used for shuttling our people to or from the airport.

We quickly got into the habit of calling Oklahoma City's airport (OKC) "the airport" and calling the Clinton-Sherman Industrial Airpark (CSM) "the spaceport".

It was an hour and a half to the airport. And made even longer because we missed the signs on I-40. We thought we were still going the right direction when we saw aircraft around Tinker AFB. (Apparently what we saw must have been a tanker aircraft but they look like airliners when all you see is the silhouette.) So by the time we got that strightened out, we owed Donna and Aubrey some big apologies for making their wait longer than necessary. They seemed to take it well, especially after hearing some of the stories from our trip.

Everyone met at the motel around 9PM. Plans were finalized for the next day. (Of course, plans had been made for each day but you have to refine them when you know who and what has arrived and what other problems have been discovered.)

Back to Ian's Pictures of DSS3