Unfortunately, the "Scotty" target we picked out last time doesn't seem to be worthy of more detailed study. So we won't be hanging around here; we'll be moving on. Or, as the LTP lead puts it: "It's time to say a fond goodbye to 'Scotty' and turn and go where no rover has gone before." We plan another 30m drive south -- another step toward Erebus.
However, we're not done with the Scotty theme yet. The target names for thisol follow a Scottish theme (e.g., "Glasgow"). I go a bit nuts with it, attaching a picture of Scotty to our uplink report (as "today's guest rover driver") and adding a bunch of Trek-related comments to the sequence. The get-fine-attitude command becomes "remodulating the shield harmonics." One of my comments on a drive command speaks of going to warp 5. A little ripple we cross along the way is grandly named "DenebianSlimeDevil." And, of course, our destination target for the drive is named "FinalFrontier."
I think this puzzles Paolo Bellutta, who grew up in Italy and apparently doesn't know much about Star Trek. As if he didn't have enough to deal with -- he's shadowing Frank (whom I haven't worked with since forever) as RP-2, and we're kicking that up a notch.
"You want to handle the walkthrough?" I ask him.
"No, no," he says.
I clap him on the shoulder and grin. "That's exactly why you're going to do it."
And he does. He's kind of shy, I think, so I feel for him. But it's the only way he'll grow. And you know what? He does a fine job with the difficult circumstances, proving himself a true engineer. Paolo doesn't know it, but Scotty would be proud.
[Next post: sol 555 (Opportunity sol 535), July 26.]
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