Off-Nominal - 162 - falcon_9.mp3 (with Logan and Alan from MSI DFAT)

Episode Date: August 9, 2024

Jake and Anthony are joined by Logan and Alan from MSI DFAT to talk about blasting satellites and spacecraft with sound. Seriously, that is their job.TopicsOff-Nominal - YouTubeEpisode 162 - falcon_9.mp3 (with Logan and Alan from MSI DFAT) - YouTubeMSI DFATPhotos | MSI-DFATJWST suffers new problem during spacecraft testing - SpaceNewsSurround Sound - Orion Service Module for Artemis 1 Undergoes Acoustic Tests - NASAFollow Off-NominalSubscribe to the show! - Off-NominalSupport the show, join the DiscordOff-Nominal (@offnom) / TwitterOff-Nominal (@[e-mail]) - Spacey SpaceFollow JakeWeMartians Podcast - Follow Humanity's Journey to MarsWeMartians Podcast (@We_Martians) | TwitterJake Robins (@JakeOnOrbit) | TwitterJake Robins (@[e-mail]) - Spacey SpaceFollow AnthonyMain Engine Cut OffMain Engine Cut Off (@WeHaveMECO) | TwitterMain Engine Cut Off (@[e-mail]) - Spacey SpaceAnthony Colangelo (@acolangelo) | TwitterAnthony Colangelo (@[e-mail]) - jawns.club 🐘Off-Nominal MerchandiseOff-Nominal Logo TeeWeMartians Shop | MECO Shop

DLS and go for main engine, start. Hello, we have made it, Jake. How's it going? We made it. Good, good. Sorry for the delay, everybody. There's always something, there's always something, some kind of wrench to throw into our plans.

That's how it goes these days, especially in space. I said that's been the theme of late. It's been the theme is things not going right. Yeah, yeah. We're very excited to have the crew from, I actually have to ask, there's a lot of acronyms in your company. company name and I'm not sure which letters we say and which words we say.

So maybe the two of you can just introduce it so I don't mess it up and then we can go from there. Well, we are MSI-D-FAT services. So MSI is Maryland-in-Mound International and that's the company that was originally started back of the 70s doing concerts. So in 99, he was approached to start doing direct field acoustics, which is DFAD, direct field acoustic test. So it's been 25 years. Right so you get another thing that comes up next. You're going to have a whole other acronym attached.

So that would be good. You have to keep appending acronyms for every use case you get. That's awesome. That's awesome. Cool. So, yeah, so maybe the two of you can introduce yourself as well and who you are and what you do. And then we can kind of dig into the interview here.

So I'm Alan Merrick. I started testing. with aircraft and did some ground measurements around aircraft for noise suppression systems. Very little experience with it, mostly did vibration. And then some years later went up to Lockheed Martin and ran the acoustic and the vibration facilities for spacecraft test. Did that for 20 years. And then moved over to space systems in LaRalle, which is now a Maxar. and they did not have an acoustic facility.

I had actually done some testing for space systems Laurel at Lockheed, because they didn't have a chamber. They'd go to other people's chambers. And after the first quote, I found out they didn't put any extra charges other than basic materials and labor. So I had to done some money for that and actually bought some speakers and started doing some acoustic direct field acoustic testing there at Lockheed. but they never bit because they had two big chambers and they didn't need that.

But then I joined Laurel and my knowledge helped out. And I certified MSIDFAT to start doing all the testing for Laurel in-house. And one customer we had, just a horrible customer, really, really difficult. And we managed to do a test at another facility where they accepted everything. So I said, we're just not going to do them. We're going to send that off. I got called into the VP's office. That's not going to happen.

All your testing is going to be done in-house. So we've been doing that since 2015. And when they laid off, MaxR picker or MSI picked me up. Wow, okay. And then, Logan, what's your route to hear? I'm actually, I graduated from the University of San Diego in 2022 and moved to Baltimore, started working here and just doing whatever is required of me, basically. It's crazy, the system we set up to test on the road and in-house.

So it's been a really interesting experience, getting involved with a lot of really cool projects. So that's sort of my route. Yeah, we got the quick course in that. They put him on the road, putting together systems, and now he does all the design work and makes them stable for all the earthquakes. So we've got all kinds of braces and concrete weights and all kinds of things so we can test anywhere from California, Florida. That's awesome.

Yeah, we're excited to have you guys on. When we got the email, you guys are. Oh, oh. Sorry, I'm getting some lagging. Is this a Starlink thing? You cursed us because you were like, we have everything. It's been going so good on a technical front. No storms have come through my house.

And then here we are. We got laggy Starlink man down there. All right. You take the question. Okay, I'm back now. All right. Yeah, you're back. I was just going to say that we're excited to have you guys on because we got an email from you.

And you're just like, we're the company that has these big speaker stacks and we blast spacecraft with it. And I was like, this is exactly up our alley. this is exactly the kind of interview we want to doing this. So I'm stoked to start today. I just realized, Anthony, we haven't even, like, we're, like, way off our game now because of all this time thing here. We haven't done drinks yet.

Should we, should we do that before we stick into this? I mean, I guess so. I brought another blueberry slam, Jake. I don't know. You were out. You were on vacation when I unveiled that the Kansas City Royals sent me a bunch of drinks. Okay. So I'm still working through my, my status.

I finished off the beers that they sent. But given how I sound, because I am sick, I figured the seltzer would be a good variety because it's a little bit more hydration than a usual situation would be here. So that's what I'm rolling with. What you got? That's good.

I am also sick, and I just, I couldn't do it this week. So I got a nice cup of tea that my wife made me. Look at that. And this great cup. Is there a little lid on it? Steeping in there. It's got a little steeping lid. Look at that.

And check this out. It's got like the little, like filter to hold the tea bag. Wow. This is pretty slick. You really brought it. Yeah, a little bit of honey in here. We're going to have a good interview. Are you guys partaking in anything fun?

I don't know. You look like you're in places that would be bad if you spilled a lot of stuff. Yeah. I'm still morning. It's still morning. I'm in coffee. I want to start like historically here, Jake, because I feel like we have, we have grown up in the space industry knowing that this kind of testing existed.

But, Alan, you were like, you were saying, oh, I stifled away some money and bought some speakers. Was this kind of testing always a thing of like, what if we just blasted it with sound to simulate different environments, or is that a, hey, what? What if we did this as a way to test this out? Well, it started way back when I was young. My dad had a hi-fi store. And I helped him set up the speaker test room and all that stuff.

When I was at Lockheed, what did get me into speakers? It just seemed like a quick way to do it. There was an option at Lockheed in Denver of building an acoustic chamber in the new facility where they were going to build the GPS satellites. And I was involved with all of the setup and inspections and stuff on a new chamber for a thermovac and their vibe system. And there was talk about an acoustic place. So I started going down that path. And my God, things have changed. We bought the big crown amps, you know, and they were big 1,000-watt amplifiers.

So I got a few of those and 14 speakers and set them all up. You know, of course, blew up the first of the mid-high ranges myself and wrote back to the company who built the speakers. Oh, you needed to have more low frequencies. You guys gave me the crossovers. Didn't tell you that I could make them lower. So what are the amps now, Logan? We're running PowerSoft X-RELs for most things.

How many what? I'm actually not sure. We have some special behind the scenes tinkering with the amplifiers, but that's... All of them. Every one. That's pretty much. I think they're more like 10,000 now instead of 1,000. So, yeah, the world has changed a lot.

Yeah, yeah. I love that this is basically, I bought some speakers to start this out. Like, that is just, that's such a. scrappy start to it like what i we i get what anthony said i would have thought this was like an established industry that we have been doing for like a long time and so hearing that there was just you know some guy that buys some speakers on a stereo store and put a spacecraft in front of it i love that also and what was the inciting incident of like oh i guess we should do acoustic testing of these things was like was there a time before that and and then you know i don't know was a couple

things went wrong and they were like, I guess we should have done that in the lab before we put it out here. No, they've been testing acoustics since the 60s. Lockheed Martin has a chamber that's 100 feet tall. And it's very capable. It does 155 decibels. And then they had a new chamber that I helped certify, validate. Anyway, when it was being built by one of the other guys in the company, West Main, he worked for Wiley Labs at the time.

And I got it brought in just as the concrete and stuff was being poured and went through the whole certification process of that chamber. But no, it was just, you know, I guess my history was speakers. Thing was really interesting. When I researched back into the history of it, the choice speaker at the time was an electro voice. my dad had three different kinds of electrovoice everywhere from a bookshelf to a six-foot-tall speaker. And apparently that was the speaker of choice at the time when they were doing direct field testing.

So that was in the 60s, late 60s, mid-60s. They got basically pushed into going with the big chambers, with noise generators, with nitrogen gas pushed behind them because they were much more powerful. and they could get higher levels. So like my test, I only got to 140 dB. And most of the testing requirements were around 145, almost 146. So I wasn't there yet. Yeah, when I calculated how many speakers I needed to get from 140 to 146,

I figured I'd probably have too many speakers in there and probably need more to overcome the absorption. That was as far as I got. didn't get any more funding for that. Okay. So I'm trying to figure out. Can you explain sort of what you put in the sound? Like what sounds are actually playing at a space?

Because actually maybe I should go back. Like the point of this, as I understand it, is to like shake out a spacecraft so that you know it can survive a rocket launch. Right. That's like the ultimate goal of this testing. What are you trying to break? Yeah, or is there more things that you're sort of like, you know, proofing. Yeah, let's get a short list of shit that's broken.

Give me the, you know, the survivorship bias chart of things that have broken by your testing. So most of the units are all tested as individual components, like your big reflectors, your solar arrays, those things that really are on the outside and they do a lot of absorbing and reflecting of the sound. So, yeah, we've popped loose the hold downs for the solar array. So it's only been like one out of six, but still, that's a failure. We've actually cracked or actually broken loose, the footing on one of the reflectors up on top. Those are the earth-looking receive signals for the satellite. And so that's one of those that has been broken, the mounts for it.

The dishes are pretty well tested. Everything that they look at, they'll put a couple hundred channels with accelerometers on there. And so the engineer has to go through all of the data from the individual component testing and see that nothing happens on the spacecraft that exceeds what they've seen before. If they've seen it before, they have to write up a report and say, why it's okay. White rationale, yeah. Yeah, they always managed to get it through. I'm not sure if it's a lot of a player.

So, um, I guess like, so do you, do you have like, I'm just trying to wonder what you play. Like is there, is there like rocket specific like audio profiles? Like do you have like Falcon 9.m.3 that you just like put on there and then it like plays Falcon 9 sounds at the satellite? Like I'm kind of curious. Or is there like more of a generic like this sounds, you know, profile will cover everyone. It's just like, we just blast it with everything. And if you pass that at any rocket's fine.

It's usually a spec given by the client. Right. And there is the overall one. When a contract starts, they usually use an overall one. They take all the rockets and put a whole envelope over the top of them. But that's really brutal. So they do come down with different rockets have different profiles. The SpaceX one is actually a pretty good low profile.

We have some of the smaller satellites that are put up at 138 dB, whereas all your big Arian since those guys are all 145. 145.7. So that's quite a big increase when you get up to the larger rocket. What's the noisiest rocket? 145-7, I think, is probably the noisiest. We did do an engine for Aerojet, which they wanted 152, and we got to 150. So we made it within their lower tolerance levels.

So the overall was a little lower than they wanted, but we did enough to qualify them to make them happy. The other thing that's really good about the direct field with speakers is they're very linear. If you go up 3 dB, everything goes up 3 dB. So in the chambers, they use noise generators, which pushes nitrogen gas through a horn. The 25 hertz horn was 20 feet long and 8 foot diameter in the front. And it's got 2 30,000 watt noise generators on the end of it. They only go up to 600 hertz, but they distort like crazy, which fills out the rest of the field. Where was I going?

Well, Logan, you were saying that most people come with some sort of spec on what they need tested. Is that driven from what they know they're launching on or where they sit on the stack? Like, what are the actual criteria that they have as inputs for that? It's dependent on, like, what's where. Like, obviously the engine's down at the bottom, and it's going to get a lot of, like, the low frequencies, basically. So we brought a lot more subwifers to that test than we normally would. and we kind of can sometimes change our test set up based on what people are looking for.

So it depends. That test was the noisiest one we've ever done, I think, so far at least. But we, you know, there's other, sometimes, like, for example, next year, we're going to be testing an article that necessitated us designing a whole new like ultra low subwifor just to just to hit the low specs on this one test article so

it depends basically on on what we're on what the client wants that we'll build something to get it yeah so normally we come out with an even match of the mids and the snubs and so that's um you know four by four six by six eight um for that engine test, we wound up with 18 subs and six mid highs because we need a lot of low frequency. So it's a very versatile system. We've actually had some other ones where we've gone up super high frequencies, 31 kilohertz, where we came in with some mid highs and then some highs and then it's some super highs to get out to 31 kilohertz. And all the testing they've done in the chambers before because nobody ever tried it with speakers.

They just kind of said, best effort, whatever you can get out there will take. We nailed the spec all the way to 31 kilohertz. 31, that's high. That's a high sound, 31 kilohertz. And yeah, you can't hear it. Yeah, I was going to say, that's way outside of human hearing, right? I know that I went to school for music and I played drums. And so I have like some generalized idea of like frequencies of the different.

parts of the drums. And I always know that like symbols like the worst is the highest, you know, you get a little eight inch splash symbol. And that's kind of like up in the 13 to 16, you know, kill a hertz range maybe. And so 31 that's high. That's a high sound. Like what, what on a rocket makes that sound? I'm trying to figure out what that comes from. That was a secret program. So I have no idea. Some kind of. I'm sure you don't. Yeah. It's a It's the sound weapon to blast the Chinese satellite Now we know what the Havana syndrome was coming from

It was your freaking test installation Oh my jeez, yeah Wow, wow Wait, so you, so in all these cases I don't know, I think I assumed this was like test bays in the way that other components have like Oh, we've got a wind tunnel that's this size and can go up to this speed But it sounds like you custom assemble the stacks

that you're using based on those profiles. So is the, and I don't know, Logan, you sound like you were traveling around a little bit, setting these up at different spots. So what does that mean? Are you going to people's actual facility and doing the testing there? Or is there a special facility that you have where you can assemble these stacks? We do have an in-house test chamber that's pretty small. Occasionally people send their components to us, and we can do like a component test.

But the real, you know, all the cool photos come from when we pack all our gear onto trucks. And we, you know, all the trucks go to Cape Canaveral or Palo Alto or Boulder. And yeah, and we set them up. It's usually like anywhere from two to three to we've even done like eight tractor trailers of gear. Just we roll in, unload it all, set it all up, fly it, wire it. Yeah, all those speakers that you can see, except for maybe the ones on the bottom, those are all built in-house here. We have a very talented wood shop and assembly crew. Yeah.

And only some of those are concert speakers. We only really have one client now that really wants the concert speakers. Everyone else is really down for the purpose-built boxes because they are so much louder and more effective. So these speakers are all called MPs. There's MP-21s and MP-150s, and now the new one he's talking about is an MP-40. So MP is Matt Polk. I don't know if you know back from the 80s, the bookshelf. speakers were Polk audio.

Yeah. So Matt Polk is our designer. He's on the top of the staff here and he's on vacation most of the time being retired and having sold Polk Audio but when needed, he does come up with some designs and he's actually

stunned the guys when they come out and test what he's designed and say, oh my God, he's so close. Minor changes. isn't it and we have a new speaker design. Wow. Is there a science to like the diameter of that ring? Because you have the speaker sort of like a range in a circle around the spacecraft.

Is there something different about how far away you get from it? Yeah. So we were involved with the handbook. And NASA Handbook 87010 specifies the diameter, the annulus. So you want to keep the microphones, you know, two to four feet from the test article. And I found that's the most critical dimension, especially when you get lower levels. I've been given projects where they give me a test article that was smaller than what they said. So my speaker system is too far away than I wanted.

So then I just go with the rule that I have to stay within three feet plus or minus. get the field out of that far, which, unless we're going to really high levels, then that's not an issue at all. Right, right, right. It's a basic rule then is a two meter, six foot annulus. Right, because you have like that, I guess it would be like, what is it, inverse square law would mean? The further away you are, the less energy you're going to be imparting into it, right?

So you'd want to have that close enough that you can reach whatever level you need to reach. Yeah, and you get close enough until the point where you're, start seeing reflections back and then the test articles change in your your levels. We are exploring the idea of surface mount. I did a test where the customer didn't do the space off the floor that we recommend. So I took the opportunity and stuck a microphone in under there. And indeed, it was 3db higher just like everybody said.

So there's a rule on that as far as, you know, the flat facing surface in front of you, you have to be at least half the width of that panel away from the test article with the microphone. Right, right, right. Otherwise, you get reflections back and you don't get numbers that match up very well. We do sometimes adapt to like a room geometry. Some of the test base that we're in are very oval-shaped or very tight, and we have to narrowly drop all our stacks around in a shape.

So sometimes we scoot some things in a little closer to, you know, adapt. But we always, usually we have our speakers six foot away from the test article. That's usually what I shoot for when I do some drawings. Yeah. Yeah, I imagine that matching the room would be like one of the harder parts of these setups, right? It's because you're going into these other facilities to test things. It's like a whole big variable in your math, right? It's like, what is this room going to do to the sounds that were blasting at it?

And you wouldn't want to have something like some sort of false reflection from some wall on the other side of the room that's sending the, you know, that's hitting some sort of resonance and sending the sound right back at the test article again, right? I think we're pretty well insulated. Okay. With the solid circle around like that. I guess some of the more open ones might. we did find down at the Cape we tested in a concrete block room and noticed that it required less power but normally we're just testing in a regular clean room highway so sheet rock walls and hung ceilings and lights and stuff does that like I'm how self-contained is this because

could you not like cause damage to other things in the room that's I was going to ask how much Prep do the rest of the room. Yeah. I remember stories when they first started testing one of the first customers. They always do a simulator test first, prove the system makes the levels and basically test everything out. And they called it an acoustic cleaning. They knocked all the dust off, all the rafters and beams and stuff up there.

So then you have to wait for the room to clean itself. I think that facility now is clean, but they've been doing that for 20 years. It's how you make clean rooms, actually. You put your setup in there and you blow all the dirt out of the room, and then we're good to go. It's a new service you guys can offer, a cleaning room, and you can add one more acronym to the name room cleaning services, RCS. I have cracked the drywall, like the seams. in the corners of one building.

They went back in and used the Alastameric, what is it, paste, whatever, instead of the normal plaster type. And they haven't had any more problems since then. They blamed us one time for the crane malfunctioning, but yeah, there's no way you can affect a beast like that. But so they got over that. Good try, though, on that insurance claim. That's pretty solid.

Yeah. Yeah, you have always been on the microphones. Oh, sorry, we have put microphones near like sensitive equipment in the past for people who are concerned. But like you said, Inverse Square Law, especially with all the speakers sort of containing all the sounds shooting in. It's it's not as loud like elsewhere in the high day. It's it's usually pretty okay. Do you have to like vacate the room or like can you be yeah being there with like headphones on or something like that? I don't know how far away do you have to get from this test before it's safe?

What's the safe minimum keepout zone? Well, we usually have, we talk with the client and they have their own like security team with headsets, radios. And they will make sure no one walks in to the test facility while, or the room rather, while the test is going on. That's just for safety purposes. That being said, we've, you know, we have a little system here in house and we've definitely gone. up close to it while it's firing. I don't know. I've heard rumors that people have like walked inside while it's testing,

but it doesn't feel good. It starts like, start feeling your organs shake around and all that. Okay. All right. But yeah. That's how you clean them off. You got to shake on that checkout.

Big over ear muffs and the foams is usually, you know, when we're super close. And we do like yearly audiology for the test crew to make sure that there's no damage or anything like that. When I started, I actually walked in front of some ear foam, ear muffs, really good ones, and walked in front of it at 135. And it's physical. I mean, it's beating on you.

It's a lot, and that's 135. So every 3 dB is double the power. So when you get to 145, I don't think you survive it. Well, I mean, anyone who's been to a rocket launch will be. be able to tell you that because they can, you know, they're miles away and you can feel that in your chest, right? And so if this is supposed to simulate that, yeah, being in the middle of it, well, that's something, yeah.

I mean, you know, is the maximum or one of the ones that, that hits that, like, maximum spec that you're testing to, is anything with solids up at that level? Like, is that, because we always get, you know, when we go to launches, if it has solids, you get that effect where you, like, hear the clipping physically, like, you actually can here not being able to go louder. So is that what that level is set at with like, you know, Air and 6 compared to the space shuttle or anything else that's flying with solids? Is that how you get to that top value? Even space shuttle I think was about the same because, yeah, at Lockheed, we did some shuttle work and stuff that went in the bay of the shuttle. Now, maybe the bay has

more insulation than just a shroud. So the noise that the 145 is the measurements inside the shroud that the satellite's in. So you're the all the way up of the top of the rocket and inside a shroud. And there is some dampening of the shroud itself too. We actually tested the Milstar satellite and it was like two rectangular boxes that folded up. And so they were worried where the box facing. each other would have higher levels than it would see in flight. So they actually had a shroud that we had put the satellite in the shroud and rolled

that whole thing into the chamber. I don't know how much difference they made inside because we never measured inside. But it would so for years we had that. We had to rebuild it a few times. Yeah. Yeah, I can imagine. I'm just trying to think of like what scenarios would be the worst. ones, but like thinking about maybe SLS, like the RS-25 is probably in a pretty noisy part, right?

Because it's like right down on the bottom. It's got three other engines like it and the two solids right next to it, right? I feel like that must be a very, very audio dynamic environment. I don't know what you is. How do you? What's the type of way to say noisy? You sound like you're on a NASA press call right now. That sounds like some shit that Honeycutt would have said.

It's an audio dynamic. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Orally. I don't know. say, but yeah. Yeah.

You mentioned that you worked on a secret thing that you couldn't tell us about. I'm curious to know some operations here. Have you ever been allowed to see a secret thing, or do you have to, like, go set up your equipment while the payload is shrouded, and then you leave the room, and then someone pulls the thing off, and then you flick it on from outside, so you can't see it. How does this work? Well, they usually just leave a shrouded, actually.

They'll just leave the black bag over it the whole time. I'll never know. Mysterious. Yeah. Usually the reflective gold mylar. Interesting. Interesting. So, this is a job that I could work at then.

Foreign net. Yeah. Foreign national. You can't see the satellite anyway. Yeah, I've seen a few of them when I had clearances at Lockheed, but nothing since I've been outside of Lockheed. Hmm. That's interesting. Are those declassified? Can you tell us about it? I'd probably, yeah, that's, no, all right, fine. Darn.

I'm trying to get some deeds here, Jake. I'm trying to find out of it, but Zuma. Did you guys test Zuma? Someone's got to ask it. We're on a quest for this podcast to violate ITAR, so we're going to see. We've taken to photos of the SLS umbilicals for sure, yeah? Yeah. Oh, wow.

Huh. Do you ever get a, sorry, I have a lot of dumb questions. That's fine. Mine was dumb too, so you can go ahead. Yeah, at this point, do you ever get a payload that you're going to test and you just look at it and you go, that shit's about the break? Like, do you, is there a sense that you have that like, I think this thing's about to have some problems in here? Or is it, or enough of the issues kind of tucked away from what you'd be able to suss out? Only one, I think of, we didn't. where it had a very thin membrane i forget why it had it but it was three and a half foot and um after

the first test they said there was an issue and had to replace it so um that was the only one i can think of other than that i mean there are things that don't actually break that exceed levels and that's where they have to write up the justifications but um yeah that was the one test where we had to wait for them to repair it. They usually look really, really well constructed and honestly very beautiful because you're literally like two feet away from this giant, like, so intricate box. There's lots of, usually it's very reflective.

You can see all the caps on polymite tape everywhere. All the excels are mounted. It's really impressive standing next to a satellite and being like, that's very expensive and a real work of art, honestly. And I'm going to try and break it. The speakers I put together in my workshop. Yes. I love that, though.

That's my favorite part is the juxtaposition of like this exquisite thing. Let's hit it with a bunch of sound. And we'll just see like, does this billion dollar satellite hold up? So because you also, I read that you also were involved with James Webb Space Telescope testing somewhere along the line. Yeah. I don't know if either of you two were on that one. But I'd be curious to hear like that. in particular that payload with the

probably the phase where you were testing it was when it was going through its troubles. You know, was that, is that testing occur? When did that occur based on what was the situation, Jake, with the loose bolts?

Wasn't that a shake test? Not a sound test? I think it was. But I'm just curious if you blasted it with sound pre-your post, we found out that the nuts were not very tight in this spacecraft. The government programs are all self-insured and they're basically over-designed so they don't ever do a shake test, which is always surprised me. So we never had a facility where these government programs were building things that had a shaker tall enough to take any of them. So they're all done with acoustics. That was built on one side of a huge high bay, a couple hundred feet, 100 foot tall, built back in the 60s.

and from that clean room over across the hall and down 30 feet they built a mylar tunnel and so they they had to keep it clean because it's optics right and that high bay wasn't a clean room so they actually built up mylar tunnel and they pushed the whole thing through and over into the acoustic chamber but yeah it was only tested with acoustics so did you blast these bolts loose is that yeah did you get the credit for shaking the bolts this Oh, shit, Jake. You bet. We got the bolt shakers on the phone here.

Yes. You made a visibly loose nuts joke in the chat before this stream started, Jake. I did. Yeah. Come true. All right. Story time. Let's hear about it.

All right. I'm trying to remember some of the details of this. They were shaken loose, but were they like, did they go everywhere or were they still contained within? Because these were the bolts in the sun shield layers, if I remember correctly. Sounds right. Yeah, they would be something that they would measure with accelerometers, and they would see a shift. I wasn't so much involved with that one, but I have done them on shakers where I can tell you how involved the problem is based on the spacecraft response. I mean, I had one of them where the whole thing shifted, and they thought, oh, it's just this problem over here.

And I said, no, no, no, it's all the way up and down to spacecraft. It's something at the bottom. And they found that the panels on the side where they mount all their electronics are basically the main structure for tipping over. So two of those bolts weren't tarped down all the way. So, you know, it took a few hours to investigate it and look at all the data and figure it out. But, yeah, that was the big one. I mean, they've had batteries loosen up, too, from bolt torques. but usually by the time they get shaking them on a shaker

most of that stuff's found out because it's violent. When you go 5 to 100 hertz, that stuff, I mean, you're seeing 20 Gs up on the top of the satellite and stuff, and it's moving. And then you get up into 60 hertz and the reflectors and the solar rays start singing. There's one story at Hughes years ago

that they left a piece of a reflector stuck in the wall that flew off. I don't know if it's true or not, but it was a good story. You don't want to disprove that one, because then you don't have the good story to tell over a beer at some point, right? I had one of them where the pins in the solar ray hold down, fell, and it triggered the shaker system and shut it down the test, and they went out there to see what happened. And that pin was sitting on his head standing up on the table.

It fell down five, six feet and landed on the table and stood up. Yikes. The ball was shaking. It instantly shut down the shaker, but that's kind of surprising since the shaker's moving, you know, quarter inch, half an inch, horizontally. That's a curse program. That was Zuma, Jake. That was the one right there. That was Zuma for sure.

For sure, yeah. Find out. One of these days, we're going to happen upon somebody that knows about it. We will. We'll keep asking. We'll keep asking. I think the burning question that everyone wants to know has anyone ever plugged an electric guitar into this and blasted a power cord.

That's really what people. That's a very common question that we get, actually. That's like probably up in the top five questions on every job site. right behind, hey, can we play some Megadeth, I don't know, Metallica, or whatever. Van Halen eruption stands out for me as what we really need to play. Yeah, for sure. Yeah, yeah.

But I think there's a photo somewhere in our archive of someone holding a guitar in front of it, but I don't know if we've ever, I don't think anyone's ever played through it. I'll have to get back to you on that. I'll take a look. It was Chris Hadfield. They were, uh,

yeah, no kidding. He was visiting. So I've done it. I've done two times. One was in the acoustic facility at Lockhe. We played music through that one. And everybody out in the high bay working on satellites is going,

what is that? Where is that? It didn't go over well with management. And, I did it again at Laurel, where I played five seconds of something. and got my butt chewed for that. Other than that, we've asked frequently,

and no programs have said yes. The customer might think, you'd think the customers would have got to be fun with it, but nope, nobody is. So we won't know the answer then as to whether, like, what's louder, like Ariane 6 or Pantera? Like, that's not, we're never going to have the answer to that question. whatever we want to turn it up to.

I mean, that's not the issue. The amplifiers would probably be a lot happier with music than it is with random noise. Because the thing is, what we're doing is it's constant. And it's not like you have bang, bang, subs here, and then some screaming over there. I mean, that's very dynamic. Whereas this is just the whole time. Wall of sound, yeah. And it's harder than hell on everything.

I mean, you can get much louder. It's like a kick drum the whole. time, basically all instead of just like as a brief spike and, you know, power needed. It's insane. A whole lot of generators for some of these tests that we've done. But, yeah. A lot of power. Yeah, we don't use anybody's power in a house.

We bring our own generators because it's just so much power. And if any of the legs, you know, you start losing equipment if it's eggs. So it's pretty critical. Yeah, geez, I didn't even think about that. That's a lot of energy. Yeah, so you have to bring your own energy, like your own generators, and then you probably have to regulate that really well, like have really strong kind of controls on the amperage and stuff, right?

Yeah, well, we keep it like three quarters of the power. So for the 25 to 30 foot test, we're using a megawatt and pushing 750. A megawatt. It's a megawatts. That's incredible. Yeah. What would we use for the centaur, Alan? Do you recall for the big down in the cave?

I think it was four, like four jennies all tied together. Right. All synced up together. I'm still doing the math on a megawatt here. Hold on. So a megawatt is a thousand kilowatts, right? I'm doing the, yeah. You got it.

Because I have solar panels on my house and I have a seven kilowatt system. So you are, okay, like, yeah, a thousand microwaves, right? That's a lot of power. Yeah, where does that end? Yeah, there's so many logistics involved with this. It's kind of unreal. How long does this take? So if you go, if someone calls you up and they're like, you know, we want you to come test

this thing, what is the end-to-end process? Because you've got to, I assume somebody goes there to the facility to like check out what you're working with, where you could set it up. And then there's a whole process of design that you were talking about, Logan, before you even get to understanding what, you know, where the kind of like test script is that they want to run through. So what is the end-to-end time on this kind of thing? It really depends.

And we, you know, when we approach a new client, we always ask, like, hey, what are you looking for? How, you know, what spec do we need to hit with our speaker system? And also, you know, there's a lot of different factors like, you know, height. Some test articles are just too big to fit into a reverb chamber that's nearby. So they call us up and they're like, oh, we need a 40 foot tower of speakers or even higher possibly in the future. And we've, you know, we've had to, you know, get in contact with structural engineers, all that to really see how can we do this in a safe manner and actually

build like a massive speaker tower. And oftentimes, sorry, I'm getting a little off track, but it, I don't know, there are projects that have taken up to five years to completion, which is, you know, longer than I've been with the company. But there's also quick turnaround ones and in-house components. That's very fast, you know, we'll just receive their stuff and we just power it here, or test it here. but some of these tests can be years in making, for sure.

And need a lot of custom stuff. Do you have an example of what the more complex ones would be? Like I imagine I'm thinking about looking at the pictures and stuff here. Like Orion was probably a complex set of up. That's a pretty big spacecraft. Indeed. That one, I believe this was, so the Orion Service module for Artemis 1, that was before my time. That was probably

finishing guys when we're studying college, I guess. Yeah, we all were. Yeah, right? That one, the company tested, I believe, out in Ohio, and they did it next to a reverb chamber, if I recall. So they could compare. And then, yeah, and then Artemis 2 rolls around,

and we did that down at the Cape, and that's where the photos are all coming from. The service module, which was a 24-foot test, and the crew module, which was only a 16-foot test. We did them a few months apart while they weren't attached or anything like that. So yeah, that's at least for the Artemis program. That's the way we did, the way the company did, I guess, get prepared for that. Alan, do you have anything to add to that story? because I definitely wasn't around at a point of time.

That's just my recollection of the events. Yeah, that's basically what happened. So those big programs, we get stuff in advance. When I got them certified to be testing at LaRalle, they didn't have all the speakers to go to a 24-foot-tall stack. So there was a program to build them, and they had like eight months. And so my experience with contractors and building big facilities, I said, well, we want to have, you know, a meeting every two weeks up until the end,

and we want a meeting every week, I want to have a status. And they managed to build all the speakers and get them up in time. So the other tests, we did the 40-footer, it was a lot more speakers, a lot of building to do. And we get a few years advanced on that to know it's coming. And we have a taller one coming up still. I think that's, we're still talking next year. So, yeah, we're in a, is that one of a secret? Sounds like a secret.

Well, yeah. That's a secret. It's like, it's a, yeah. And another thing is the diameter of the test article actually means we need to surround it with a lot more speakers to have it fully enveloped. So that can also batten height. Like, for example, we're doing a 12 by 12 test, which is, 12, 40-foot speaker towers, which is a monumental amount of speakers.

Probably going to be, we don't know if we have the record for the largest PA system in the world, but we might have said it. There's literally no reason to do that otherwise. So, yeah. Also, Jake is frozen in impressed face, and I'm just keeping him like that. I don't know. He'll have to come back at some point, but for the rest of the time, he's just impressed. and rightly so, because this stuff is...

All right, and he's gone now. We'll see if he comes back. So you're talking about the different envelope sizes, and I get that for like Orion or Service Module or whatever. There's custom configurations for those kind of spacecraft that are significantly one-off. But do you have like standard size setups that you kind of go to all the time for those standard commercially available buses that are, you know,

most satellites flying at a certain space? Beck? Do you keep those around because they happen so much, or do they get, they just are like standard loadouts that you have? There are some standard loadouts, and that goes all the way down to the truck pack. It's the same truck pack every time for some clients.

And, you know, uh, yeah, I'd say like a eight by eight is probably our most common or six by six. Six by six and eights are bread and butter. Um, there, they're, they're stuff that,

the programs, will generally start out giving us a date a year ahead of time and then we start some of them are very diligent then start doing meetings you know every month and then more often as they get closer down sometimes we've had programs and i think we've actually responded in six months but then they have to be a little bit flexible with us on schedule so they don't bump against other tests i mean you know you deal with 10 or 12 tests a year you know you have to have to think scheduled out. And then all the programs slip.

Yeah, I was going to say, you got to, that's like probably a whole other level of coordination to try to figure out. I mean, I guess it's in the cases where these places, you're going to their facility to test, that's, you know, the only real constraint there is like, do we have enough speakers in

inventory to handle that scooting into other schedules? But, yeah, like, do you just apply a standard like space program slippage to whatever you're hearing from the client, or how do you manage that best? Sounds like a good idea, actually. Let's start talking about that. That's how my brain works.

So, you know. That's what I always told the guys at Lockheed. I said, never schedule a vacation after a test. Always before. I don't even care if it's the day before. But don't schedule after, because it'll always screw you up. Yeah, there's a, yeah. We've actually had a time when we had all set up and they said, now we're not going to make it go home. So, yeah, it can be crazy with schedules. And I don't know why it is that way, because all the programs, you know, when I was in it and I knew, you know, managers of programs, you know, the presentation to the customer was always roses. You know, it's going to be two weeks to do this.

And then you talk to this guy and he says, oh, we got eight weeks to get this part. Why do you not tell them? And they're going to feel better learning about it in two weeks than now? You know, I actually had a whole crew 24 hours a day all set up for a test. And they didn't show up for six days. It's like, why do you burn my people out? So at least with the speakers, we set them up. We go to the hotel.

We only run daytime hours, sometimes evenings, you know, to get something done. but, you know, generally it's a much more reasonable schedule, although we've had delays and had free vacations in foreign places. I know at least a couple of people that got stuck in New Zealand for a couple of weeks. Stranded. Yeah, stranded in New Zealand. Yeah, they had to fly home in a different plane entirely, Jake. Yeah, yeah.

You're back, you got dropped off, Starlink. You cursed us. It wasn't Starlight's fault this time. It was a power issue. So I have another acronym you guys can add to your services is backup generators in Mexico. That would be really helpful for me right now. You need a one megawatt system from them. The seven kilowat panels did not bail me out today.

Not doing it. No. You need battery. What did we leave out? I feel like did we miss anything in particular that we should have asked about? Was there a program that comes to mind that you're like, damn, I wish we talked about this crazy thing that happened one time? Yeah, the Europeans tried to roast us one time on a test

saying that our system was putting out something that was going to break their parts. Isn't that the point? Huh? That seems like the point. Oh, no. That's why the argument. So you're watching the levels, as you can. go up and they say when they got up to the level, it was already starting to exceed their

maximums. It was going to break. So everybody went home, analyzed all the data, and we did some demonstrations to show our system worked as it was supposed to, to not put any energy in that frequency band and in the end we won out and they retested the test with a different part and they passed but meanwhile they made us work very very hard to defend our goals it was uh i don't know you're like i'm just bump this bump this up a little bit on the next next run through here just to Shake them a little bit extra. A little extra juice for you guys next time. We flew down all the big brains,

all the scientists, engineers we have on staff for that second time, just to be there to be like, no, it's working. It's working this way because that's how it's supposed to go. Yeah. Yeah, we actually built a part to show the system work properly and had NASA. and I don't know if Europeans make it too.

So we did a whole demo in-house to show them that the system does this thing. And then now we take that panel each time we go to the test and verify that it's doing the same thing. Yes, it's still working. So they accept it now, especially with that extra proof. I mean, it's a short test. That's a believable story, basically. explains a lot. That interaction in particular is like, Jake's like, it seems like four weeks to get some new Starliner software up on the station. Yeah. It's probably that. It's probably that.

It's probably that. Let alone Zuma, Jake. Am I right? Let alone. Let alone. I'll never let it go. Oh, man. Jake, did you learn something? I did. Yeah. Do you feel better about this? This is really cool. I'm really glad you guys reached out because this was a, this is like such a, I don't know, a lot of times like the satellite, you know, payload rocket launching pipeline, that whole like supply chain can be kind of like dry. Like it's a lot of just like how to be good at manufacturing. And this seems like a really like fun part of it of like that last little bit when you're getting into, especially because like the testing phase is such a slog, right? Like it's like that's where all the problems come out.

It's like really, really like tough work. Sometimes just like doing the same thing over and over again. And this seems like a fun part of that. And so I'm really glad you guys can reach out because I don't know. I still just think of this as a big space Marshall stack that we're just blasted satellites with. It'll always be that too. The guys on the crew used to work concerts, right? Big concerts, Brookstein, whoever, Pink Floyd's.

But when they come and set this thing up, it's like, this is big. I mean, it's 10 times any arena they ever said. that up. It's just a lot of speak. 11 yet. Two, 300 speakers. That's the we made it so long into the show. We made it so long before we had an 11 joke. So

so long into the show. We had to sneak it in for the end. You nailed it. Oh, we lost. All right. Well, thanks so much for hanging out. Do you want to plug anywhere in particular that people should check out, check out your work anywhere you want to send them? They should follow

along. I know the website is MSID-FAT, right? But let's see. Did I get it right? MSID-fat.com. Check it out, peeps. That's not even it. There it is. Yeah. Look at that.

Nice. Jake, what we got next week? Anything in particular? Cool. I don't look at the schedule. Yeah, next week we have our good friend John Connoffay is coming back. That's right. So we're going to be talking about, I don't remember we're going to talk about.

we just wanted to talk to John because we like John and who knows where we'll go. It's been a bit. It's been a bit since we had them on. And yeah, things go in weird places when we talk to him. So, and there's no shortage of topics. So God knows what we'll get into. Yeah, yeah. Yeah, for sure. All right, y'all.

So, yeah. Good hanging out. Thank you very much. We'll see you soon. Bye. Thanks, guys. Thanks for having us. Appreciate it.

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