the launch is in about 10 hours. in 5 they start filling the liquid hydrogen and oxygen. in 7, they wake us up in the middle of the night to go watch it. we get to watch it from the top of a big hill about 5km away from the launch site. when asked if that is close enough to get a good "feel" from the launch, the rosetta project manager, john ellwood, simply laughed . . .

afterwards we go down the main control room (jupiter) to follow the early stages of the flight: separation of the main cyro booster while exiting the atmosphere, one elliptical lap around the earth, then firing the secondary booster at perigee of the lap to maximize the gravity assist and start it on its way out. the lauch is at 4:46am here (11:36pm pacific time) and by 8am rosetta should be on a trajectory roughly towards mars and all the work here is basically done.

though the concentration of linguists in french guiana has proved to be very low, the concentration of rocket scientists is likely the highest i have ever seen. it is very funny to get on a plane in paris and 90% of those on the plane are the proverbial and much referenced rocket scientists. you get on the bus, it is full of rocket scientists. you have dinner, the table is all rocket scientists. you ask a question about the chemical composition of the second stage liquid booster while having a drink at the bar, and most of the bar starts to answer in great detail. they are all very excited.

the two scientists who found the comet esa is going to (and after which it is named) are here. one is from russia and one is from tajikistan. mike has become their default russian translator, and is quite occupied, as everyone wants to talk with them. they are very excited.

they had the intro for all the vip guests today in the jupiter control room and ran through all details of the flight. the vip list is very vip- from heads of state to titans of business and academia. the head of esa science got up and highlighted three individuals in his speech: his predecessor who started the rosetta project, someone else i can't remember, and me/our disk. he went on at somewhat great length about the importance of having the disk on the craft and how thankful he was for his coincidential find of our project from an LA Times article. i was stunned. it felt a little unfair to all the scientists in the room who have been laboring for a decade or more on the craft and included experiements.

the rest of the day was spent driving around looking at the outside of buildings i had seen the inside of before, but now couldn't as everything is locked down before a launch. nonetheless, nearly every stop we got a hard sell about the superiority of esa's services and a steady stream of shots at the 10,000lb elephant in the room, the one always present but never spoken of (i.e. NASA).

then in cayenne it is carnival every night. it is very steamy and thinly clothed. between the parade groups, the boys like to have little brawls in the street, which when they get a little too heated the police throw tear gas bombs into the middle of everything. then everyone runs away about 4 blocks, as that's what it takes to get the sting out of your eyes and throat, then everyone reforms and they start pounding on the 55 gal plastic cleaning drums that form basis of the drum section for the processions, and the rhythmic mob begins to roll again. many of the boys are dressed as girls and many of the girls are barely dressed at all, or dressed in elaborate costumes of death and the afterlife

outside the amazonia hotel, which is right in the center of this whole mess, where mike and i are staying, these two groups meet. or really not meet, but watch each other go by, wondering . . .

jim