• Music: I Kissed a Girl - Jill Sobule

Proposal submitted...

Since last summer, I've been part of a group that is proposing a life detection instrument in response to the call for potential 2020 Mars rover mission instruments. My part would be to lead the development of the sample acquisition and transfer subsystems, getting Mars dirt into an inlet funnel. As well as the ground software to talk to/from our instrument from/to Earth. Given project experience, I also wrote the sections on project organization and management, procurement regs compliance, past relevant flight experience, and rewrote our initial-phase task plan and our implementation plan.

This collaborative effort, spanning the US, Spain, UK and France, has consumed most of the past six weeks. Not only did I not get time to relax during the holidays, we were meeting and working on weekends and evenings. Hence few LJ posts. The past few days built up to a crescendo of effort spanning the Atlantic, and by 6pm PT yesterday it appeared we were done. The proposal had to be submitted by CAB in Spain, by midnight today ET. So we had margin. I went out for dinner and contra dancing with tenacious_snail while others finished the final tweaks and their corrections. When I returned home at 11pm, there was an email saying that the final version was complete and had been uploaded.

But not submitted yet, as it was still night in Spain. Because I'm a bit obsessive or paranoid (take your pick), rather than go to bed I started reading the final version. Which... had two sections that in reformatting had extended over their required maximum page length limits, by two pages. It was noncompliant, and would be disallowed or at least penalized if submitted as-is.

So I called our proposal manager, woke him, and we looked at it. Everyone else was non-reachable at that hour, so he and I fixed the issues and I re-uploaded a now-OK proposal around 2am. And then at 5am (here), the principal investigator in Spain hit "submit" and it was done.

Now, to catch up on everything left back-burnered, like my home mortgage refinance or neglected friends and sweeties...