Day 29, 4/23/09 -- This title intentionally left blank

Today we achieved a pretty big milestone: We installed what we call the "triangle support", some long aluminum bars at funny angles that are intended to hold up parts of gondola when the experiment lands. Jeff and I spent a lot of time on these parts, both in machining as well as in fixing some manufacturing mistakes, so it was very satisfying to see it all come together.

The triangle support is one component that is important for the planned attitude control system test that the gondola team wants to do this weekend, before the cryostat and gondola meet. The gondola team is working hard to make this test happen, and the cryostat team is working hard to make sure we can get all of our receiver tests done. To that end, I cycled our sub-Kelvin refrigeration systems today while Hannes and Dan prepared to do tests.

I took a few minutes out of the day to try and sharpen the crappiest knife edge I've ever seen. I bought the knife from the local supermarket, and straight out of the box it was pretty much useless. So I took it over to the bench grinder in the machine shop and, after a few attempts got what looked like a reasonable edge. Once I got home, I tried it out and, wouldn't you know it, it actually cuts now! Kind of amazing, given that I'd never sharpened a knife before.

Also, we lowered the adjustable hoop outside our high bay door and had some fun pretending to be NBA superstars. Check it out in the pictures:
http://picasaweb.google.com/asad137/EBEXInNewMexico042309#