{"id":1294,"date":"2009-10-13T07:20:28","date_gmt":"2009-10-13T12:20:28","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.spaceelevatorblog.com\/?p=1294"},"modified":"2010-02-03T21:45:17","modified_gmt":"2010-02-04T03:45:17","slug":"nss-testing-at-trumpf-day-1","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.spaceelevatorblog.com\/?p=1294","title":{"rendered":"NSS Testing at TRUMPF – Day 1"},"content":{"rendered":"

<\/a>All in all, a pretty good day, I think.\u00a0 The NSS team came here to qualify their optical system and Climber with a TRUMPF laser.\u00a0 Three tests were run today.\u00a0 There were two successes and one “I don’t know yet” results.<\/p>\n

<\/a>Several members of the NSS team were here, along with Ben Shelef (CEO of Spaceward, the organizer of the Games), John Piatt (from NASA – making sure that the equipment met not only Spaceward’s standards, but NASAs too.\u00a0 John gets ‘special points’ – a government employee coming here on a Federal holiday – thanks John!), Nic DeGrazia (chief filmographer from Chicago video production<\/a> company Bitter Jester Creative Inc., the team filming the entire Space Elevator Games story) and yours truly.<\/p>\n

<\/a>Some members of the NSS team left yesterday and are being replaced with others today.<\/p>\n

The first test was a reflectivity test, making sure that the Climber did not reflect any of the laser beam back in a dangerous or uncontrolled manner.\u00a0 The climber was mounted on an aluminum rack, held aloft by a forklift truck.\u00a0 The TRUMPF laser was directed onto a mirror and then onto the bottom side of the climber.\u00a0 Both Ben and John then examined the results to ensure that no untoward reflections were being created and, I’m happy to say, no issues were uncovered.\u00a0 Test 1 – Pass.<\/p>\n

<\/a>The second test was much more fun and consisted of trying to melt the Climber – i.e., this was a test which directed the full power of the laser at the bottom of the climber in order to determine if it could really handle the expected load over the expected run time of a competition climb.\u00a0 NSS uses a very novel heat dissipation system – a liquid cooled one.\u00a0 Over the top of the solar cells, they have created a (mostly) liquid-tight reservoir which holds several ounces of Acetone.\u00a0 The top of the reservoir opens up into 5 plastic bags.\u00a0 The theory behind this design is that the heat from the laser would boil the acetone, turning it into vapor.\u00a0 This vapor would then ascend upwards to the top of the plastic bags, cool, condense, and then run back down into the reservoir so the cycle could restart.<\/p>\n

<\/a>Now my background is software, not hardware and I was a bit dubious that this would all work.\u00a0 The NSS team was confident, of course, as was Ben.\u00a0 For me, it was a case of ‘wait and see’.\u00a0 I’m happy to say that, outside of a small leak, the system performed flawlessly and, as a bonus, produced some of the coolest images I’ve seen.\u00a0 I’ve got video showing the acetone merrily boiling away, doing its thing and I’ll be posting these videos soon.\u00a0 So Test 2 – pass.<\/p>\n

<\/a>The third and final test scheduled for the day was the one where we tried to melt the Optics; i.e. making sure that the NSS Optical system could also handle the full power load expected during the climb.\u00a0 The results here were much more ambiguous.\u00a0 When the system was turned on, about a minute or so into the test, the NSS team became a bit worried about the smell they detected, coming from their optics, and they had TRUMPF shut down the laser.\u00a0 They quickly determined that the laser beam entering their lens was wider than expected was and was spilling over onto (and melting) the ‘bumpers’ that were holding their lens in place.\u00a0 Discussions with TRUMPF personnel then ensued.\u00a0 It was quickly determined that instead of handing a 200 micron-sized beam to\u00a0 the NSS optics (which NSS was expecting), TRUMPF was sending them a 600 micro-sized beam.\u00a0 NSS believed that this might have been the source of the problem.\u00a0 TRUMPF didn’t believe so, but did change their side of the system so that they were sending out a 200 micron beam.\u00a0 The test was repeated but the results were the same; i.e. the beam was wider at the lens than expected.<\/p>\n

<\/a>Then the real trouble-shooting started – lots of fun discussions about what possibly might have been the cause.\u00a0 I got involved in these discussions, even though I know squat about lasers, because I do understand debugging and troubleshooting.\u00a0 It seemed to me that there should be some easy way to ‘qualify’ the beam; i.e. to make sure that it was the size and power that TRUMPF team said that the beam was generating could be independently verified.\u00a0 A test like this would quickly determine whether the source of the problem was on the TRUMPF side or the NSS side.\u00a0 Alas, there doesn’t seem to be any such device.\u00a0 However, I gave the idea of this device to TRUMPF and claim patent rights when they finally build one.<\/p>\n

<\/a>Lacking a way to quickly determine where the souce of the problem was, and still wanting to be able to qualify their optics, NSS built a temporary baffle so that they constrict the beam into the diameter size that their lens was ‘expecting’.\u00a0 The test was then repeated.\u00a0 All seemed to work well for the first several minutes and, as a bonus, resulted in more uber-cool photos and videos.\u00a0 About 6-7 minutes into the test, however, the TRUMPF system reset, killing the laser beam.\u00a0 More discussions and trouble-shooting ensued and the upshot was that the TRUMPF system was recycled and the test was repeated.\u00a0 The results were the same; i.e. several minutes into the test the TRUMPF system was reset, killing the laser.\u00a0 A fault \/ error-message was detected in the laser feed driving the test.\u00a0 TRUMPF then loosed their more senior technical personnel onto the laser.\u00a0 We won’t know until Tuesday morning what they found and corrected, but they did say, preliminarily, that perhaps their laser WAS generating a beam that was out of specifications.<\/p>\n

<\/a>Assuming the TRUMFP personnel can fix their laser feed, we’ll rerun the test on Tuesday morning.\u00a0 The NSS optics have already performed at an acceptable level for a time period longer than a 5 meter\/second run will take and have now been provisionally been qualified for the competition.\u00a0 However, no one, not NSS, not Ben or John and certainly not TRUMPF are happy with the situation and want to rerun everything with a correctly functioning laser-feed.\u00a0 This test will be rerun as soon as possible.<\/p>\n

On Tuesday, then, the schedule is to first try and rerun the “Optics melt test” to everyone’s satisfaction.\u00a0 Once that is completed (or is determined to be not possible at this time), then the Tracking test will be run.\u00a0 We’ll all head out to a location that TRUMPF has set up and we’ll see how well the NSS Manual tracking system performs.<\/p>\n

Stay tuned – follow us on Twitter today for up-to-the-minute updates at http:\/\/www.twitter.com\/segames<\/a>.<\/p>\n

I’ve posted some photos here too, for everyone’s viewing.\u00a0 The first (topmost) photo is of the bottom of the NSS Climber.\u00a0 This climber is easily the smallest of the Climbers in this competition and is on order of the same weight as the Kansas City Space Pirates Climber.<\/p>\n

The second photo is an ants view of the bottom of the climber – the climber (mounted on the aluminum rack) being held aloft by the forklift.\u00a0 I had to lie down on the floor to get this shot – the things I do for this blog \ud83d\ude42<\/p>\n

The third photo shows NSS Team member Aaron holding a shot glass used for measuring the amount of acetone injected into their Climber’s cooling system.\u00a0 I can assure everyone that the shotglass was used only for acetone and not anything else (at least while they were onsite)…<\/p>\n

Photo #4 shows the NSS Mirror with the cover removed.<\/p>\n

Photo #5 shows Aaron injecting the acetone into the NSS Climber’s cooling system.\u00a0 They need to do this just before the runs because the acetone does soak into \/ eat into some of the cooling system material.<\/p>\n

Photo #6\u00a0 shows a side view of the NSS Climber.\u00a0 The cooling system bags are held in place by an aluminum frame, as you can see.\u00a0 I still can’t get over how well it all seems to work…<\/p>\n

Photo#7 is the target’s view of the business end of the NSS Optical system.<\/p>\n

Photo #8 is a gypsum board after being scorched by the TRUMPF laser and NSS Optics.\u00a0 Kind of looks like Don King with bangs, no?<\/p>\n

And finally, photo #9 shows a top view of the NSS optics while the full-power test was taking place.\u00a0 You can clearly see the laser reflecting off the temporary baffle that the NSS Team members put into place to constrict the beam.\u00a0 With this camera, the laser-reflections are blue.\u00a0 In my video camera, the laser reflections are orange.<\/p>\n

I’ll be posting more photos and videos soon.<\/p>\n

As always, you can click on any of the picture thumbnails to see a full-size version of the picture.<\/p>\n

(In my original post, I mis-identified NSS Team Member “Aaron” as “Eric” – sorry Aaron!) <\/em><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

All in all, a pretty good day, I think.\u00a0 The NSS team came here to qualify their optical system and Climber with a TRUMPF laser.\u00a0 Three tests were run today.\u00a0 There were two successes and one “I don’t know yet” results. Several members of the NSS team were here, along with Ben Shelef (CEO of […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[6,4],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-1294","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-news-announcements","category-spaceelevatorcompetitions"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.spaceelevatorblog.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1294","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.spaceelevatorblog.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.spaceelevatorblog.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.spaceelevatorblog.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.spaceelevatorblog.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=1294"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.spaceelevatorblog.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1294\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.spaceelevatorblog.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=1294"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.spaceelevatorblog.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=1294"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.spaceelevatorblog.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=1294"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}