Day 57, 5/21/09 -- Crashing code make Hulk AAAAANGRY

Well, the gondola team tried to do scan tests outdoors last night but were stymied by a consistently crashing computer. Turns out that all of the changes people have been making to the flight control code have made it...break. As of today, we have instituted a new code policy so that no non-essential changes are made, all changes are made on a case-by-case basis to determine essential-ness(?), and changes are only made by two people: Milligan and Will, who are the most familiar with the code. By reverting to an old version of the code, it seems that we now once again have working flight computers.

A corollary is that hardware changes are also to be kept to a minimum. We have reached a point where making changes has the potential to do more harm than good.

As such, there's little for a hardware guy like me to do...so I did basically nothing today. Jeff made some structural improvements to some baffling and made a foam cover for the mirror. The detector crew did some noise tests this morning outdoors and everything looks pretty good.

Now, we wait. Depending on the weather, there might be a flight opportunity tomorrow and possibly on Sunday as well. FIREBall gets dibs, though, so if they want it, they get it.

NCT was found perched precariously on the slope of a ravine where they have to get it out by helicopter. The recovery team is surely working hard on getting it home safely.

Pictures:
http://picasaweb.google.com/asad137/EBEXInNewMexico052109#