Tears in space.

"Tears in space" is a perfect title for this post, but there are two groups who won't understand it at first: astrophysicists and "Fringe" devotees. For them, I'll explain. In my intended context, "tears" rhymes with "beers", not with "bears".

I wanted today to illustrate the difference between sextant assembly and dodecant assembly, so when I arrived at the lab I immediately whipped out my cellphone camera. Here is FM2, currently in sextants, with all the assembly hardware attached (probably an apt analogy is "hair rollers"):

Here is FM1, which was just promoted to dodecants:

It was an unexpected bonus that FM0, which is complete, had emerged from its cocoon:

I snapped the pix for you, then removed the hardware and began to prepare it for today's layer of glass. Before I knew what was happening, I was crying. None of my tears actually made direct contact with spacers (approximately 12,000 spacers per optic, btw) or assembly hardware, but since with every breath we are, they say, inhaling molecules of air that were once breathed by Cleopatra, and maybe even Paris Hilton, I think it's reasonable to assume that desiccated fragments of my tears landed on a spacer here or there and thus will be traipsing around space, someday.

Why I was crying is, I suppose, the question. This time I know the answer.

It is far beyond my language skills to describe how beautiful these optics are. They're shiny glass, yes, but they're much more than that. Every single section of mirror, every drop of epoxy, every spacer is added to the optics painstakingly and with loving care. There are four guys I see in the lab on a regular basis - Todd, Ken, Tom, and Iliya - and I'm proud of every one of them, and honored to be working with them, because they care so much about this project, as do I. NuSTAR optics are being built by hand, and to say that love is a major component is far from exaggeration. I cried because I became overwhelmed by being lucky enough to be a part of this.

If all goes well, sometime in 2012 an L-1011 flying over the Kwajalein Atoll will drop a Pegasus rocket which will then carry NuSTAR into orbit (link). That will be one of the happiest, most exciting, and proudest moments of my life.