Or, if you prefer, the Wall of Not Doom (WoND, pronounced “wand”). Whatever you call it, it’s everyone’s favourite absurdly large sun shield extension—and it was mostly assembled today. The gravity of the occasion called for such background music as Carmina Burana and Ride of The Valkyries.
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- The plan: it looks so easy on paper
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- Nick models a half-naked BLASTpol primary
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- we couldn’t avoid indirectly illuminating the primary. Don’t worry, the window is on.
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- The wall starts assembled on the floor, beside the main sun shield frame
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- Some extra support beams are left floating at the side
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- The dangling ends are taped in place for now
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- More tape
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- Lorenzo Wants You!
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- We start to lift the wall. The crane helps Tony out
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- Nick and Lorenzo help too
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- Once up, it is quickly bolted into place
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- Juan waits and supervises from above
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- Group action shot: lifting, bolting, supervising
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- Even behind the telescope, it sticks out a lot
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- …as evidenced by the view from outside
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- Pockets are useful, but eventually the tool belt was taken out
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- Nick provides some essential support
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- Lorenzo plays with the star camera while helping raise the wall
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- The ISC hat is on to take dark images
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- Playing with the telephoto lens: extreme closeups
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- Juan attaches clamps for mounting extra cross-beams
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- Jeff’s brand of strippers
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- The clocking of the cross-beam ends needs to be marked
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- The ends are a tight fit. Not the first picture of Nick wrestling with parts, certainly not the last
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- With the clocking marked, holes are drilled for the end pieces
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- Portrait of Juan admiring the wall’s awesome hugeness
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- When lifting the shield assembly, counter weights are needed. Enter Natalie
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- and enter Jamil
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- and Juan
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- With the crane in use, we must move the gondola the Nick way
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- The wall is finally kind of attached to the gondola
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- My job for the day was crane operator (and photographer)
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- We rotate everything to try to fit it inside
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- Orange Death: crane power on the side towards which we were originally raising the wall
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- More fun with telephoto: the secondary actuators
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- It fits inside!
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- Look how much room it has!
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- All of the stuff that used to be where the gondola is now
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- Lorenzo’s pretty happy
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- Bolting on the Scoop
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- With bolting complete, Natalie demonstrates the wrench dance
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- Lorenzo passes up the other scoop support bar
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- Tony applies the finishing touches to the scoop mounting
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- A BLAST-eye view of the shields
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- Jamil marks the mega pole’s clocking as Juan struggles to hold it in place
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- Lorenzo helps out to make it a sort of Iwo Jima moment
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- Nick has a big chair. Big chairs are good
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- Juan finishes drilling the mega pole. Lorenzo is much safer than this picture makes it look
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- The wall is now mostly attached
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- The full wall, jutting forth from the old sun shield frame
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- The full wall again, in portrait
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- Natalie demonstrates the “We’re Done” dance. It is very different from the wrench dance
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- Except we’re not quite done. Nick supports the last cross bar we can reach; there’s a couple others we can’t
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