The shell after applying a second layer of extra white paint

Day 12 in Palestine was beautiful outside.  Low 60’s (°F), a little breeze, plenty of sunshine.  It was the perfect day to paint outside.  And that’s exactly what Sarah and I did until 4 pm.  In the morning we had to cut a band of insulation to fit onto the midsection of the shell.  Since it was fiberglass insulation, the two of us had to keep as much of our bodies covered as possible in order to avoid the annoying itch that results from handling the material.  This meant despite it finally being warm out I was wearing a sweatshirt and sweatpants.  Even though it was worth it in the long run, it was very uncomfortable in the moment.

Do you really need a caption to see that these are cats?

After trimming the insulation to size, we took a break for lunch.  I grabbed lunch with James at a nearby Italian restaurant.  When we exited the restaurant I learned that Palestine has a large population of wild cats.  Two of them were waiting for us outside, begging for food.  On our way back to the hangar we made sure to gather more painting supplies.  Upon my return, Sarah and I applied a layer of extra white paint to the paper side of the insulation.  After that, we added a second coat of paint to the shell and played a little bit of soccer while we waited for the paint to dry.  About an hour after applying the quick-drying paint, we administered another coat of paint to the insulation and a few touch-ups to the shell.  It wasn’t until I stepped back inside that I realized how bright the paint actually was.  As soon as I entered the hangar I could see practically nothing.  My eyes had adjusted to the extra whiteness of the paint and could no longer handle being in a normally lit room.  It took a few minutes to adjust.

Brian configuring one of the black box data recorders

During the time Sarah and I spent working outside, everyone else had their own jobs to do.  The work Brian was doing on our black box recorders continued.  We are still deciding whether we will power the recorders with non-rechargeable batteries or with power siphoned off from one of the power sources we will already be using.  Brain needs to have the black box recorders prepared for either decision.  James kept himself busy with the time-consuming task of preparing the flight cables as well as configuring the charge controller.  Pierre-Simon analyzed the data from the night before and noticed that something seemed off.  Robert suggested that the issue may be with the tracker board and therefore he reconfigured the tracker board and changed the default configuration variables of the FPGA (Field Programmable Gate Array) firmware.  This allows us to reduce noise in the strips.  Pierre-Simon will analyze the data from this after a new test has been run.  More importantly, Pierre-Simon helped move the spare bottom shells and in the process ripped his pants.  He had no choice but to rush over to Walmart to buy a replacement bottom shell for himself.  I’m pretty upset I missed Pierre-Simon’s exploits, but the rest of the team was more than happy to fill me in on everything.

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-Matt Collins

Status of the hangar to start the day

The 11th day in Palestine, Texas was busy for everyone.  James continued his extensive work with the charge controller and the flight cables, working on his wires through all hours of the day.  Brian finished up his job of setting up open port data throughput to one of the GSEs and one of the black box recorders.  Robert, Pierre-Simon, and Sarah spent their day analyzing data from a ground run of the instrument from the night before.  Once they analyzed the data, they compared the response with the higher trigger 2 pressure.  As expected, the rate of trigger 2 increased as the threshold for the Cherenkov effect decreased.  This means that more particles will create Cherenkov light in the CK tank, especially muons at ground level.

I, on the other hand, had only the most important and science heavy tasks out of everyone.  My first vital task was to reverse the lug nuts on two of the wheels on the shell cart.  Apparently someone, hopefully not me (but definitely me), put them on backwards back in Delaware.  Once my logic heavy chore was complete, I moved on to my next intellectual feat.  I painted the shell.  For hours (Pierre-Simon has informed me that it was only 90 minutes) I applied the extra white, latex-based paint to the shell.  Brian seemed to think the paint had a strong odor. I couldn’t smell anything, though, which probably isn’t very good.  It would have been better to paint outside with better air ventilation, but it was so windy I couldn’t guarantee the whole cart wouldn’t tip over.  I applied one coat, had Sarah do a few small touch ups, and then set it to dry for the night.

Sarah’s first bread

After I finished painting, I went back to my usual work on the website.  The official URL is now aesoplite.com, however I would prefer it if everyone reading this would use www.bartol.udel.edu/aesoplite.  It makes it sound more like this blog is actually educational and not simply me rambling about little events during the day.  Sarah also baked bread for the first time.  With Bread Baker Chris’s help, it tasted pretty good.  We waited too long to eat it after it came out of the oven, so it was a tiny bit hard, yet still yummy.  Finally, it turns out one of the tracker boards on our device had a faulty amplification chip.  That simply won’t fly for our project when the balloon takes to the sky.  In order to fix it, the board had to be taken out and replaced with a new one we had as a backup.  Robert was given this precarious duty and completed it without problem.

Robert putting the new tracker board into place

Pierre-Simon failing to cut the first slice of pie

Oh, and I forgot to mention that we had a special treat for lunch.  Some of the CSBF guys had a meeting that was catered by a local restaurant.  They ordered way too much food and sent a portion of the leftovers our way.  Since they told us they only gave us a small fraction of the leftovers, the original meal must have been a feast.   We received enough food for everyone in the building to have seconds and then struggle to swallow a piece of pie.  I didn’t learn exactly where from CSBF they were from, but thanks Brian (not our Brian).

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-Matt Collins

Status of the hanger, shell not painted yet

Day 10 in Palestine was a short one, at least for Brian and myself.  It began with a Lowe’s trip (see Palestine, Texas Day 3) for John and Pierre-Simon to pick up a roll of insulation.  Although the hangar could use some extra insulation, it’s actually for the flange of the shell.  We want to minimize any temperature fluctuations inside the shell, especially once it holds our instrument.  James also made a run to pick up paint later in the day.  Sarah and I wanted to paint a blue hen and a banana slug on the shell; the mascots of UD and UCSC respectively.  And maybe a penguin because penguins.  Instead, the paint is extra white.  That’s right. Not a slight white.  An extra white.  Our airtight shell will be bright.  We’ll probably be able to see it at night during its flight.  It’ll be quite the sight to see as it lifts off from the launch site.  Okay, this is getting extremely trite… smite.  There is a reason that it has to be white, however.  The color white reflects all wavelengths of light.  Therefore, by painting the outside of the shell with a white paint of known reflectiveness we gain more control over any thermal factors involved in our experiment.

Brian continued working on our black box data recorders, ensuring they are ready to go come flight time.  He also got the port server up and running.  A little before 2 pm, once Brain finished his tasks and I updated the website, the two of us left to go watch the AFC and NFC Championship games at a local sports bar.  It was great because everyone there hated my beloved Patriots.  They chirped around me all game long while the Pats were losing.  One guy, who was actually amiable, would come over to check on me occasionally to see how I was handling the situation.  When the game ended and the Pats won, the beautiful sound of disappointed silence filled the bar around me as I cheered.

View of a few CSBF buildings from the launch site

While this was happening, John, James, Sarah, and Pierre-Simon were still at CSBF doing their jobs.  Sarah bridged the Monte Carlo to the data, which is a big step in the development of the analysis software.  Our neighbor Chris, the bread baker, also started teaching her how to bake bread.  Hopefully her bread tastes and smells as good as his.  Then they all took a walk around the launch site simply to get some exercise and enjoy one of the first nice days in Texas since we arrived.  Finally, they set the pressure of the C₃F₈ in the Cherenkov tank to 11.8 psi.  The purpose of this is to remove as many muons and protons from the tank as possible.

After their work was done, Sarah, Pierre-Simon, Chris, and James joined us at the bar to watch the Eagles destroy the Vikings in shocking fashion.  I mostly stopped watching after halftime because it was simply embarrassing after that.  Brian though, loved every minute of the game.  His Eagles will face off against my Patriots in the Super Bowl this year, a rematch of Super Bowl XXXIX in which the Patriots won by a field goal.  Unfortunately, I won’t still be in Texas for the Super Bowl.  It would be fun to watch the game with him in that sports bar, but I’ll be back in Delaware by then.

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-Matt Collins

John using the oscilloscope to analyse PMT signals

The pre-flight testing continued on day 9 in Palestine.  John spent a good chunk of his time analyzing PMT (photomultiplier tube) signals on the oscilloscope.  John describes a PMT as a reverse light bulb.  More specifically, a PMT is a device that takes in light and in response emits signals that are then able to be read by the oscilloscope.  We wanted to see how precise the resolution of our energy reconstruction was using the tracker on the payload while comparing those results with the calorimeter previously used for LEE.

Pierre-Simon and James bringing the shell back inside after the pressure leak test

The shell pressure leak test concluded today with results that weren’t immediately useful.  The drastic changes in the temperature here recently (9 °F earlier in the week and 60 °F when the test ended) meant the results had to be calibrated before being of much use.  That task was delegated to Sarah.  After her calculations, the test was deemed successful.

I continued my work fine tuning the website, adding pictures and videos, and working on this blog.  We finally upgraded to premium status on WordPress, and with that came hundreds of new themes to choose from for the website.  I had the pleasure of sifting through all of them in order to pick one.  Hours after beginning, we decided on our current theme called Opti.  I think it’s pretty good, gives a newspaper kind of feel.  While I did this, on the other side of the room James drew out schematics for flight cables.  Instead of doing with some CAD (computer aided design) software, he did it by hand.  James admitted that it would probably be easier for him to design his plans on his computer, but he had been doing it by hand for as long as he could remember and was comfortable doing it that way.  No need to fix what isn’t broken, I guess.

Brian working on the smaller of the two AESOP data recorders.

While James worked on his schematics, Brian did some electronics work on one of the AESOP data recorder boxes.  He intended to make sure all the components worked together correctly.  Well this was all very entertaining, the best part of the day had to be our neighbor in the adjacent hangar, Chris, baking bread in our shared kitchen.  The aroma wafted in through the door all day and kept my mouth watering.  When the bread was done, he put it out on the table with a stick of butter and a knife for everyone to try.  It was soft, warm, and delicious.  Definitely worth coming in on a Saturday for.

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-Matt Collins

Sarah working on the analysis software

Day 8 in Palestine saw, shockingly, yet more testing and analysis.  Sarah and Pierre-Simon focused most of their day on developing software for analysis.  This meant a lot of coding, testing, and debugging.  Not the most exciting stuff save for an occasional shout of joy when the code finally hums.  The shell pressure leak test continued outside in the sea-container without any noticeable issues.  Everything was business as usual.  That does come with a couple of small exceptions, though.

The day had two main highlights, and I use the term highlights in the sense that even a dim bulb is bright in a dark room.  The first is that we signed a temporary armistice with the invading wasps.  Ever since John and I killed two wasps back on day 4 we would occasionally see another wasp fly overhead at a distance safe from our fly swatter.  However, on this day a wasp got brave.  He or she landed on the table directly to the right of my computer as I typed.  Naturally, I grabbed a nearby 2×4 and stealthily moved in to strike.  Before I could land a hit, John commanded me to hold my fire and let the wasp live another day.  He believed that as long as we didn’t bother the wasp, it wouldn’t bother us.

Unrelated picture of John talking to Brian while James talks on the phone in the background

The next few hours went off without incident, until disaster struck.  The wasp had mistakenly flown too far into the demilitarized zone around John’s face.  John took swift action.  With the speed of Trump’s twitter hand, John lashed out with a nuclear swat and displaced the unprepared wasp onto the nearby table.  The wasp, still dazed from the attack, flew off never to be seen again.  Most likely it is hiding in a cave somewhere, biding it’s time to attack again.  Still more likely is that it flew back through the whole in the ceiling from whence it came.

After that casual little incident, we had the pleasure to meet John’s friends from growing up.  They had known John since childhood, even going to the same high school and college as him.  Most importantly they divulged an important detail of his past that I was previously not privy to.  Turns out John was in a fraternity back in his college days, but we’ll keep the rest of the details a secret.

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-Matt Collins

Sarah using the heat gun to dry off her laptop.

On the 7th day in Palestine, even more testing was conducted.  Robert and Pierre-Simon continued tracker tests and analysis.  We continued monitoring the shell pressure leak test.  There was a small drop in pressure (1 psi), but given the temperature changes over the past few days a small change was expected.  Sarah converted the barometer data for Palestine and then spilled her coffee for the fourth time in 7 days.  This was the second time she had spilled it on her laptop, which actually isn’t even her laptop, but a friends because her own laptop stopped working.  I have a theory that coffee was involved.

After John made a short trip to the hated Lowe’s, we got to work adjusting the legs on the calorimeter, which is a tool that allows us to measure the energy of the particles crossing the detector above.  It was a very delicate process that involved taking off the old legs, placing the calorimeter on blocks of hood to prevent it from touching the ground, screwing on the new legs, and then flipping the calorimeter upright and on its three new feet.  The difficult part was not applying any pressure on the 4 photo-multiplier tubes.  The first one sticks straight out of the bottom and the other three stick out of the side symmetrically every 120 degrees.  Trust me, it was very tempting to use them to lift the calorimeter, however that would probably render them useless and potentially ruin the calorimeter.  The next step was to place the the calorimeter onto the lab stand and under the instrument.  It was a tight fit, but we got it in there without causing any damage.  It was stressful work, nevertheless it was necessary.

Sarah assisting in moving the calorimeter into place

Me assisting in moving the calorimeter into place

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-Matt Collins

Day 6 in Palestine, Texas was a cold one.  It was as low as 9 °F (~ -13 °C).  It was so cold that John went out and bought us a space heater to keep us warm.  To everyone’s dismay, it turned out to be more of a glorified hand warmer out max power.  Fortunately for Pierre-Simon and myself, we had the advantage of sitting on either side of it, so our hands were plenty warm while we sat at our laptops doing work.

Robert, James, and John setting up the shell pressure leak test and putting the shell into the sea-crate

Plenty of more ground runs of the instrument were performed that day and with them were plenty of more computer analyses of the data they output.  We also prepped the shell for the pressure leak test. James led that task and I lent him a hand as needed.  In order to start the shell pressure leak test, we had to move the shell outside and into a sea-container.  This also meant we had to open up the massive hangar doors on a day considered freezing in any state.  While we had the hangar doors open, we also moved all the empty crates and boxes outside and out-of-the-way.  Visually and physically it was a huge difference compared to the condition of the hangar before.

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-Matt Collins

[profanity redacted]SNOW DAY!! WOO HOO!!

The Texas blizzard of 2018

We didn’t do any work on day 5 in Palestine (save for data analysis and a little on this website). We had a snow day.  There was a light dusting and a little bit of ice here or there, but it was nothing compared to the icy conditions were worked through in Delaware; not even close.  Around the hotel at least, the roads were perfectly driveable.  Texas disagreed.  The main road was littered with car crashes and in response they were shut down.  CSBF was shut down as well.  Basically, we were told by every body that held any authority over us to stay off the road and stay home, so stay home we did.  I’ll use this opportunity to praise the amazing hotel we are staying at.

We are staying The Redlands Hotel , also known as the Redlands Historic Inn est. 1914.  It’s a fairly small hotel.  The first two floors house businesses and our open to the public.  The first floor contains a boutique, a gallery, a beautiful upscale restaurant, and the main offices where the retired couple that own the hotel manage their business from.  The second floor is home to a variety of businesses and more importantly quite a few historical artifacts.  Palestine used to be a major railroad town and The Redlands Hotel honors that by having a mini museum on their second floor.

What’s important to us, however, are the amazing hotel suites on the floors above.  The rooms are unique, no two are the same.  My room has two large smart TVs, a kitchenette with everything I need to cook for myself, a full-sized fridge, a granite counter, central air, a queen sized bed, and my own private bathroom.  Apparently the chief of police stayed there, so they updated the room to be fully modernized.  For all intents and purposes, it’s a very nice small apartment.  The owners are extremely friendly and the house keeper is fantastic.  I’m used to cleaning up after myself for the most part, but when I got back to my room one day the dishes were done and the entire apartment was spotless and organized. Even my toiletries had been neatly laid out on the bathroom counter.  I was unreasonably excited about this.  Overall, I would say Redlands is the place to stay in Palestine, Texas.

-Matt Collins

The 4th day in Palestine, Texas was another day or organizing and setting up.  Actually, it at the time it was the most efficient day we had had yet.  Sarah and I managed to finish building the last of the shelves we bought from our controversial Lowe’s trip the day before as well as fill as the shelves up with semi-organized items.  This enabled the two of us to finally move all of the crates and boxes onto our side of the hangar. As I mentioned in a previous post, this was MLK day.  Since MLK day is a federal holiday, our team members were basically the only people at the entire NASA base.  Also, two more members of the AESOP-Lite team arrived in Palestine, James Roth and Robert Johnson.  James is our Senior Technician while Robert is an important collaborator from UC Santa Cruz.  With their help we purged the Nitrogen from the CK (Cherenkov) tank.

John escorting the mangled wasp outside

By the end of the day, we had some semblance of an organized work space.  We even grabbed an extra table to put computers on.  A few other things got done besides arranging equipment.  Pierre-Simon analyzed test data and Brian finished setting everything up for the GSE computers.  We had a mini picture day so that I could put everyone’s portraits up on the People page of the site.  Then a couple of wasps invaded the hangar.  There was mass panic in the hangar as we all scurried around trying to avoid the wasp as it flew about.  I killed one with a hard hat and John killed one with a fly swatter.  It was temporary chaos.  Beyond that, it was a fairly uneventful day.  We got back to work and kept our eyes on the weather forecast.  The next day had a chance for snow, a very rare occurrence in Texas.

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-Matt Collins

Status of the hangar to end the day

Day 3 in Palestine started off with more of the same.  General unpacking, setting up of equipment, and moving boxes around ensued in the morning.  I set up a printer.  Then I set up another printer.  Brian continued configuring the GSE computers. We all made an effort to organize the hangar.  What I’m getting at is that the morning was very uneventful.  Sunday’s main event wouldn’t start until after lunch, so let’s cut to it.

Pierre-Simon’s pencil zebra

The whole team headed out to a Tex-Mex place for lunch.  It was delicious and the serving size was insane.  We were all too full to get up, but it didn’t stop us from grabbing a cone of the free ice cream available at the front of the restaurant (I’m starting to like Texas…)  After our midday meal, we went to Office Depot and Lowe’s to gather more supplies.  The trip to Office Depot went off without a hitch.  Pierre-Simon even bought a pack of mechanical pencils that came with a little zebra figure to hold them all.   Next up, was Lowe’s.

The mission was to buy shelving units, a flexible wire grabber, and a box fan.  We had no difficulty finding what we were looking for, but we found that buying them would be next to impossible.  Since AESOP-Lite is a university project and John is a professor at the University of Delaware, all major purchases are paid for with a University of Delaware credit card.  John had bought things before with his UD credit card, but this specific Lowe’s in Texas simply wasn’t having it.  They had recently instated a new system for processing purchases and it requires a pin number for purchases.  Unfortunately, the UD credit card does not have a pin associated with it.  The specific details are lost on me, but essentially John didn’t have the pin number that Lowe’s wanted and he had never needed one before.  Furthermore, the system was painfully slow in processing anything and no once had the authority to override it.

Managers were called over to assist the poor cashier to protect her from John’s fury.  When he failed to fix the issue, he called the regional manager.  Once again, failure.  Then Brian tried ordering the items online for store pickup; the idea being that we’re here and the items are here, so we should be able to order them and pick them up simultaneously.  After waiting 10 minutes for the Lowe’s system to process our new purchases, we found out we were wrong.  Our order got moved to get picked up at a Lowe’s that was hours away.  As we walked to customer service to see if they could help us fix the issue and pay for the items we already had in hand, John’s frustration began to bubble over.

We spent the next hour sitting at the customer service desk, John’s mustache shivering with rage, powerless to do anything.  All we could do was wait and hope that customer service could figure it out.  John berated the situation; completely fed up with everyone’s inability to fix our issue.  After waiting, powerlessly, for what felt like hours, customer service essentially told us that no one knew how the new Lowe’s system worked and that they couldn’t find anyone who had the authority to override anything.  John decided to cancel the order and let the workers know they had lost his future business due to the overall ineptitude (he would be back the next day).  He had no choice but to pay for all of the items out-of-pocket and storm out of the building.  To top it all off, as we walked towards the automatic sliding door to exit, it didn’t open.  It was broken.  Fueled by his wrath, John forced the doors open and continued mumbling about how ridiculous the whole experience was.  Personally, I started laughing wholeheartedly at the situation.  I couldn’t handle watching my professor lose his temper to such a degree and started cracking up uncontrollably.  Best. Lowe’s. Trip. Ever.

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-Matt Collins