July 02, 2004
The gantry
The gantry is a huge orange, white, and rusty metal structure that towers over the trees like a giant spider. It's visible from outside the research center grounds and looks as though it belongs in a shipyard, except that it's miles from the sea. Beneath it is a rust-stained concrete slab with weeds sprouting up in the cracks. They used it to test and practice landing the Apollo moon lander. Here's a picture of the gantry being used for its intended purpose. Nowadays it's used for dropping things off to see how they break.
And now that the Hamsters are doing their thing, it's time to start testing them with real data. We'll start out on the roof of the building that houses the lab, but then we're supposed to install them on the gantry. The guys all laugh when they talk about putting me up on the gantry to run the Hamsters. I laugh too, but I'm having to restrain myself from saying, "When? You're serious, right? So when do I get to go up on the gantry?"
179 words | July 2, 2004 08:19 PM | Rocket science