Analism.

Not only is Ms Big coming to the lab, but also she's sending a QA person from JPL, the Jet Propulsion Laboratory.

[Carl suggested that I call her Dr Big, which would be appropriate, since I'm referring to her in her professional position in the project. I haven't met Fiona Harrison, yet, but everyone seems to have a lot of respect for her. Nevertheless, I have a 'thing' about calling PhDs 'doctor'. I was originally soured on the practice by meeting a couple of people who insisted on it, which seemed lame. And if I ever go down in the streets like a sack of beans, I don't want Fiona Harrison showing up if someone yells, "Doctor!" I don't even call my MD 'doctor', I call her 'Tracy', although I do say 'Dr Tracy' now and then, if I'm in the mood.]

JPL is a federally funded R&D center in Pasadena. It's managed by Caltech. And that's about all I knew about it before I started this job. The first skinny I heard was from Trish, Carl's wife, who told me that everything at JPL is strictly by the book. Then Ken went there a couple of weeks ago with FM0, and I heard some inside stories.

Ken thought it would take one day to mount FM0, so he planned on two. It turned out he was there for four days, which he found extremely frustrating. A lot of the time was spent idle, waiting for one QA check or another. He said there were usually three or four people working, with four to nine others watching to be sure everything was being done correctly. He speculated that the NuSTAR optics would never be finished if they were being built at JPL. Here's one example.

A torque wrench is a tool that tightens something to a specified tightness, or torque. There are different kinds of torque wrenches, with different sizes, torque ranges, etc., but they all do essentially the same job. There are different ways of setting the desired torque. Probably the most complicated way is shown here:

You turn the knurled part of the handle and the set torque is the value on the shaft plus the value on the turned part that lines up with the center line on the shaft. When you're tightening something and it gets to the right torque, the wrench stops tightening. You could probably teach a 5th-grader in 5 minutes how to use this wrench.

Ken was at JPL and someone had to torque a bolt. There were four people there, all of whom knew how to read the torque wrench. But there was a specific QA person who had to approve the setting on the wrench. They sat and waited over an hour for the QA person. When he arrived, he looked at the wrench, wrote down the value, and work resumed.

I suppose there are good reasons for that kind of care on some projects, but it is kind of anal. The JPL QA guy will probably go nuts when he gets to our lab.

State of the project.

I'm a bit behind in blogging because I've been busy reading and sorting all the guest blogs! :p

It took 3 days to repair the damage to FM1. Now, with new layers over the broken ones, the optic is beautiful again.

FM1 is on Layer 109 and FM2 is on Layer 99. If all goes well, FM2 will be finished on March 18 or so.

Ghosted!

In the Nevis Labs building there are offices, etc. The lab itself is a big room with a very high ceiling. It is poorly lit in the mornings. The optics lab is a small room near the center of the bigger room, and it is brightly lit. The door to the big lab is marked "Please Close", and it is almost always closed. I make a point to close it.

I arrived at work this morning just before 3:30 AM. As usual, no-one else was there. If anyone ever is there at that hour, which is rare, it's usually Marcella (our QA person) working late, or a student doing an all-nighter.

I mentioned in an earlier post that there is a ghost in the lab. He doesn't bother me. He makes strange noises and sometimes bangs on the side of the optics lab, but I ignore him. This morning he was more active than usual.

At about 6 AM I took a bathroom break. While I was in the bathroom, I heard a noise outside. "Someone is here," I thought. I wondered who it might be. A minute later I heard a voice say something like, "Don't worry." When I came out of the bathroom, I couldn't see anyone in the hall. I walked to the lab door and it was wide open. "YIPES!", I thought.

I got rid of fear many years ago, so I wasn't afraid. I was curious, though, about who was in the lab. But I didn't see anyone, and there was no-one in the optics lab. That seemed very strange. And when I left an hour and a half later, there were still no cars outside the lab.

It was the ghost, I suppose. I wonder what he was up to.

Call for blogs.

Blog reader, avid commenter, and resident guru Carl made a suggestion that both the Blog Mistress and I like: reader participation. We therefore invite all of you who dare to read this blog to send your own post. It can be on any topic at all and you may sign it with your name or "anonymous" or whatever you wish. We will not reveal your identity - just try not to get us kicked off blogspot.

Please send your blogs to: boopiblog@xemaps.com.

Scientific American, February 2011

I found out this morning that Fiona Harrison, aka "Ms Big", is coming to the lab.

This article is in the current edition of Scientific American (the images are clickable, if you want to read them):

Disaster repairs.

This morning Ken told me that the repairs are going to take 3 days. Tom is gluing new spacer chunks where he can. As I mentioned, we don't have glass to replace the broken panels, but Ken said we wouldn't do that even if we had the glass, because the severity of the damage doesn't warrant it. He said the telescope will have to increase exposure time by 1% to compensate.

Disaster recovery.

The optics disaster was caused by human error, which is all I want to say about that.

While at work yesterday, I took a closer look at the damage. It appears that the wheel only penetrated one layer, which is about the best possible disastrous result. In a few areas the second layer was damaged, and the third layer in one or two places. My opinion is that those were caused by debris.

I am not in the lab today, but I've been watching on a webcam. The damage was photographed. After that, Tom cleaned the damaged areas by removing all loose pieces. Now he is applying epoxy to broken spacers where some graphite remains. Possibly he is going to add small pieces of graphite which will then be ground to the correct height; or he is going to build up those areas with layers of epoxy. Support for the next layer of spacers is the issue. The glass cannot be repaired.

I should have more info tomorrow. Also, I have some potentially interesting information about the glass that we use.