so i've been gone for a while...

it all depended on what ya did, i think upper management got project specific clearance, and on down got background checks of varying degrees...

i, myself had nothing done to my knowledge, as i was not part of that project...

edit: but i think there was a generalized NDA in my contract...
 
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Oh and I forget, are you a student or graduated?

And do you have any suggestions for getting one of these telescopes put at the other end of the galaxy faster than the speed of light? That way, we can see what happened in the past and know if Mel Gibson's interpretation of Jesus' cross ride was factual.
 
Oh and I forget, are you a student or graduated?
i'm staff there, w/ little time to take classes...

And do you have any suggestions for getting one of these telescopes put at the other end of the galaxy faster than the speed of light? That way, we can see what happened in the past and know if Mel Gibson's interpretation of Jesus' cross ride was factual.

thats a side project of mine, i'll look into it more after i perfect my "punch you in the face through the internet" device...

i believe that is more important now...
 
Do you guys actually pour the glass or do you buy it that way?

edit: Is it even glass?

we buy our glass in chunks, and excise any bad parts. its a type of glass called E6, a borosilicate much like pyrex, but more expensive and better properties.

the chunks are then carefully laid into the mold...
we rotate the furnace at a set rpm to impart a parabolic curve to the glass as it melts and fills the mold...

we then slowly decrease the speed and temperature over 3 months...
 
we buy our glass in chunks, and excise any bad parts. its a type of glass called E6, a borosilicate much like pyrex, but more expensive and better properties.

the chunks are then carefully laid into the mold...
we rotate the furnace at a set rpm to impart a parabolic curve to the glass as it melts and fills the mold...

we then slowly decrease the speed and temperature over 3 months...

Does this shit have to be done in a clean room? And why haven't we developed something better/lighter than glass to do this job? For Christs sake, Galileo used glass.
 
Does this shit have to be done in a clean room? And why haven't we developed something better/lighter than glass to do this job? For Christs sake, Galileo used glass.

no clean room needed, furnace gets to 1800F, burns off any contaminates. its all about cte, coefficient of thermal expansion. metal is no go unless its invar, but its expensive and harder to get a good optical finish, plastics are somewhat ok for small things but wont hold up very well in the open air environment.

glass is very cost efficient. we do make thin shells, 2mm thick, that are used in adaptive optics, ie you can bend out any distortion. there are glass-ceramic hybrids like zerodur that basically don't thermal cycle, hit it w/ a torch, then dump it in cold water and it wont crack. the thin shells are made of that, as well as some larger mirrors. 3 i've worked on are ~6 ft in diameter. that material is expensive and is grown, instead of molded.

there's pix in my other thread showing some mirrors made of zerodur.
 
Do you ever get time on the telescopes themselves? Could you take a picture of the constellation Eridanus. It always reminds me of Beerad's dry asshole.