Day 18 (Friday, March 9)

FOXSI just cannot catch a break!  We came in today with the intention of doing a quick and easy operation in the morning.  Guess what?  Not so easy!  The operation was to place the experiment in the hollow metal cylinders that form the outer shell of the rocket, called the "skins" of the rocket.  These skins are just a little larger than our experiment and get quite hot during the launch.  To do this fitting, you have to use a crane to hoist the experiment into the skin, then bolt the skin to a special fitting ring to join the two together.  Well, when we tried this there was a big old gap on one side between the ring and the skin!  (By "big," we're talking millimeters, but that's big in engineering terms.)  It took well into the afternoon to come up with a solution.  The best solution is to ship it all the way back to the facility that made it and have them machine it down.  But this would cost us a few days in the schedule, and we have no room for that!  However, there is a machine shop at a NASA facility nearby that could do the job.  After some frantic attempts to get in touch with them they generously agreed to take care of it right away (late in the day on a Friday afternoon/evening!) and had the job done in a few hours.  (Never met those guys, but I'll gladly buy them a beer if I ever do.)  We tried the procedure again and everything fit like a glove.  Yet another problem arising...yet another problem solved...!  :)