Devotees of Star Wars will remember those classic scenes in the Empire Strikes back where the Millennium Falcon, having cleverly jinked and dodged around its Imperial pursuers, makes to leave them in its dust trails by engaging the hyperdrive system. Levers are pulled, Han sarcastically quips, the engine note rises – and then, accompanied by a very unhealthy series of splutters, the Falcon remains resolutely stuck in normal space.
Right now I feel exactly like Han Solo did. My samples are all nicely cut and ready to be measured, lined up in the lab and ready to go. Sadly, when I try to run the measurement programme for our magnetometer, the computer thinks for a bit, then gives an annoyed beep and claims that the magnetometer does not exist – and I don’t think that it’s trying to instigate a deep philosophical argument about the nature of reality.
In the time-honoured style, I’ve tried the usual fixes: switching everything off and on again, and unplugging and replugging the cable linking the computer and magnetometer. The latter tactic actually worked briefly, before everything died again, which leads me to conclude that the cable is dodgy. Sadly, whatever I did the first time can’t be replicated. Even more sadly, the cable in question is a 9-pin serial cable, and the rise of USB seems to have made these a rather scarce commodity, and the only one we could find in the department is the wrong gender at one end. I have a replacement on order, but as we’re running on African time, who knows when it well arrive?
Lets just hope that my lack of data generation doesn’t force me to hide from my boss in an asteroid field…
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