Border line

Saint Laurent du Maroni (French Guiana) is just opposite to Albina (Suriname), both cities being just separated by the Maroni river.
Here under is the nice view on Albina as seen from Saint Laurent du Maroni. Tourists may afford a day excursion in Albina showing an identity document at the border control. For implementing this plan you may just have to cross  the river.

In such a case, the first common sense idea is to go the to official harbour and board the local ferry commuting between the two cities. As you can see below, it is never extremely crowded. This place is only populated by the custom control policeman accommodated  in little hut on the right hand side. Once the control is done, the "Gabrielle", the name of this ferry, is just waiting for you, ready to go...

After a while, you will realise that the speed of the ferry being 0 km/h, the time needed to reach Albina will not be compatible with your initial plans and then you do have to implement the plan B. For this, move first to the (much more dynamic) local pirogue harbour,

where a crowd of hectic "taxi" drivers is waiting for you on the street. Negotiating a single or a return ticket is a piece of cake and few seconds later you are on your way. Forget the passport control.

This process looks so easy that the idea that those two countries have signed up for the Shengen Agreement may cross your mind during the four minute trip. Considering the number of pirogues in both directions you will also realise during the river crossing how intense is the traffic between French Guiana and Suriname...

When you return to Saint Laurent from Suriname by the same type of transportation, you may ask the pirogue driver to drop you at the "official harbour" for personal convenience: a nice opportunity to check if the situation has changed from what you experienced earlier in the day: indeed, the place looks as desert as in the morning. Only the custom control staff may have left (?)

Anyway, it is nice to feel safe and back to France!  After such an experience, you may want to have a drink or a snack. Saint-Laurent du Maroni is not a very large city but you may easily find a nice café or a small restaurant around. There is one in particular where you will notice something peculiar: a stack of caps...

showing evidence that in Saint Laurent du Maroni, custom controllers are getting depressed or have definitely decided to change job :-)

K.B.

P.S.: The situation with Brasil, on the other side of the country is not better despite a brand new bridge (Pont sur l'Oyapock, Oyapock river bridge) has been built between Saint-Georges de l'Oyapock (French Guiana)  and Oiapoque (Brasil). The infrastructure of the bridge is completed since August 2011 but still missing... the  border control personnel on both sides to be fully operational. The commissioning of the bridge in planned for January 2013 (...just the time needed to re-train, re-motivate and re-locate the personnel from Saint Laurent? ).

Saftey again: the "sock" test

In few weeks, once fuelled, MSG-3 will be moved to the BAF (Batiment Assemblage Final/Final Assembly Building) where it will be mated on the Ariane 5 rocket. The few MSG-3 team members that will be authorised to operate in this building do have to follow a safety training. One of the practical tests is to train people to quickly escape from the top of this facility in case of danger.
As it can be seen on the picture below, the BAF, which accommodates the rocket is in fact a tower. The staff operating on the payload are working on the PFEI (PlateForme Elevatrice Inférieure) at the 9th level which is located in the upper part of this building. You may then take an external staircase, or even better:
are you ready for the big jump?

In case of alarm, the staff shall have to move quickly into a shelter located on the ground floor or even to leave the BAF. In both cases, if staff are operating on the PFEI, they imperatively need to use a (very) long "sock" to evacuate.
Posted signs indicate the way to follow... up to this closed door.

Then, you just open it to discover the sock in which you will have to jump in.
By walking on the grid, you get a shower, not to wake you up, but to decontaminate or put out your clothes in case of need.

Before jumping, have a look upstairs to make sure that nobody is already on its way. First, he/she may fall on your neck and second it is not sure that jams in socks have ever been tested...

Once on your way down, the speed can easily be regulated just by spreading elbows and/or knees. The trip from top to bottow will anyway last few seconds. So no time to be scared by local bugs that will be slightly surprised but for sure disturbed as the sock is fortunately extremely rarely used.

The training for the "sock" test  is performed in a dedicated tower in order not to disturbed operations in the BAF. In such a case members of fire brigade helps the trainees landing on the ground floor or those who may get stuck to get out...

In any case, Christian was ready to wake up fainting or shocked colleagues.

Finally everything went very well, all MSG-3 team members successfully passed the test and qualified for BAF operations.

A special thank you to Vincente (who took the picture), our training manager today, and the two firemen (members of the Paris Fire Brigade).

Love letters

On 11/05/2012, the acceptance of the EPCU S5B area, where MSG-3 will be fuelled, took place. S5B is an hazardous processing facility (HPF) which will be described in more details in a dedicated message.
Once fuelled, each Spacecraft (SC) is transferred from this S5B building to the BAF (Final Assembly Building/Batiment d'Assemblage Final) where it will be mated on an Ariane 5 rocket. The transport between these two places will be carried out with the CCU (Container de Charge Utile/Payload Transporter Container).
The (empty) CCU-2 is now ready in S5B for further MSG-3 use and can be seen in the transfer hall.

Once the SC is loaded onto the CCU, this is the last moment the propellant teams may see their own "baby". Therefore, this emotional moment often triggers some farewell words, ranging from love letters to humoristic slogans as it can be seen below...

"it was not always easy and sometimes you made my life miserable. Whatsoever there was great moments!, For all of us and for my daughter (7 months old), that I missed a lot, after 4 weeks drinking Rhum, show us how brave you are..."
David, Mechanical chief

CCU-2 tagging may also offer new perspectives for anonymous artists...

Finally, the presence of old project stickers reveals that this CCU-2 was already used in the MSG-2 launch campaign (2005). Unfortunately the signatures of the propulsion team and the launch manager were erased by effects of time or erosion...

Anyway, Archaeology is never far when working on MSG project :-)