This Picture Doesn’t Look Like Much (179/366)

(180/366)

Possibly because it was taken with my crappy camera phone in a poorly lit room. But aside from being a hunk of stainless steel with some poorly written text in it, it’s actually a balance mass with our wedding date. What’s a balance mass? I understand these sorts of things don’t often end up on a baking blog, but this is part of my other life. The part of my life where I build satellites.

A balance mass is a hunk of metal that we put on the spacecraft to well, balance it out. When we lift it up, we want it to hang straight. When it spins, we want it to spin nicely like a top when you first start spinning it, not like a top as it’s about to fall. One of my jobs is to balance the spacecraft before flight. We spin it on a table and measure the unbalance. We compensate for that unbalance by installing weights in the appropriate places like that one up there.

Did I lose you yet? Are you asleep?

So the bottom line is, that balance mass is currently installed on one of our spacecraft. Meaning that balance mass is going to space. Pretty cool, no? That little label will be up there far before we get married, but hopefully our marriage will last far longer than it will.

In other news, this morning I got trapped in an elevator. The door would not shut all the way so the elevator wouldn’t go down. When I tried to open the door, the door would only open ajar. Only when I stuck my hand in the little space to hopefully pull the door open, did the door decide to shut correctly. On my hand. Luckily I managed to slide my fingers out, allowing the door to shut correctly, which meant the elevator was finally able to move and I was able to get out (mostly) intact.

Then I got to work and discovered I had a hole in my pants. What a day.

But, that thing’s going to space!