I survived my first rendezvous (well, undocking) sim!
It was extremely nominal, so there wasn’t much opportunity to screw up. That’s always nice when you’re starting out.
The most amusing “mistake” was that while I knew I had to have separate permissions for the workstations for both my old and new console positions, I didn’t realize that the separation applied to the PCs as well. When I tried to publish a flight note with the undock timeline, it kept getting sent to the FDO working directory no matter how many times I put “GPO” in the address line. I was made fun of for that, don’t worry. “RPS still wants to be a FDO…”
I may not be able to publish a flight note to the correct directory yet, but rest assured that I am very happy here in GPO-land. 🙂
(For non-NASA folks, here’s some background. FDO is Flight Dynamics Officer. That’s who I work with during launch and ascent in my position as ARD Support. RGPO is Rendezvous Guidance and Procedures Officer. That’s what I’m training to be now, starting out by certifying as RPS, Rendezvous Procedures Support, a backroom position. When I’m done with that — hopefully by the end of the year — I will train for RGPO in the front room. The front room is the one you see on TV. A key point is that both FDO and RGPO are involved in a rendezvous. Put simply, FDO deals with all ground-targeted burns, and RGPO takes over once we start using the orbiter’s onboard guidance and targeting to compute burns. RGPO continues to work during the final phase of rendezvous, otherwise known as proximity operations or prox ops, when the crew is manually flying the orbiter. Because FDO and RGPO are both involved in the rendezvous, there is much good-natured arguing and ribbing about who really is in charge of rendezvous.)