State of the project.

First, here is a fascinating if at times arcane description of NuSTAR (PDF format). If you're at all interested in the science behind NuSTAR, it's worth a peek. I was made aware of the document by our friend Carl, who, despite his protestations, has a brain the size of a small... no, a medium planet. And Carl says that my boss, Bill Craig, a very nice guy and a scientist at Lawrence Livermore Labs, is much more intelligent than he, which completely blows my mind away. On Saturday I was listening to Carl talking about NuSTAR with Ken Blaedel, another nice guy and our "Cognizant Engineer", and I was like, "HUH?" I wish I'd recorded their conversation for later study. I'll try to spit out a few tidbits that I might or might not have gotten correctly, mixed in with a few things that I actually know, so you should be thoroughly confused in a few minutes.

Originally NASA contracted with CalTech for only two optics modules, FM1 (Flight Module 1) and FM2. However, Bill, who along with his other qualities is a world-class salesman who could probably sell a gross of granny panties to Lindsay Lohan, convinced NASA that it would be nice to have a "calibration module". Therefore, what was first FM1 became FM0, and my six broken layers of glass will not soar into space. (Deep sigh of relief.) Everyone on the project learned a lot while building FM0, and the actual flight modules will be much better because of that knowledge.

The current state of the project is:

FM0 - In an earlier post I included a photo of a room I said had something to do with the cyclotron. That was incorrect - it is actually the source room for X-rays so powerful that they could reveal the entire inside of your body in a millisecond. The disadvantage, of course, is that you would then be a piece of dust. Whatever, yesterday FM0 went into a room where it will be bombarded by those X-rays for calibration. Calibration is, as I remember it (Carl, feel free to jump in at any time), a couple of things: 1) Locate and compensate for anomalies (such as my broken glass); 2) Determine if the assembly algorithm has any flaws.

FM1 - Today the techs laid Layer 53, which is close to a milestone. The layers that are subject to the most stress are those closest to the mandrels, which are the objects that the layers are mounted on. The inside mandrel is a cylindrical rod. The middle mandrel is the area where the layers change from sextants to dodecants (6 segments to 12 segments). Because of the increased stress at the mandrels, when we get to Layer 57 we'll be using spacers that are rated higher in tensile strength. The switch to dodecants occurs at about Layer 65, and our work will increase by 50%.

FM2 - Layer 35 today. When this module changes to dodecants, our work will increase by another 33%.