High tech machine shop

NASA has a really high tech and clean machine shop. It connects closely with the applied physics lab. People from the shuttle program or other programs come to applied physics and ask them to invent new machines to solve problems. Then the applied physics scientists send the design to the shop to be made. We weren't allowed to take any pictures in applied physics, but we could take pictures at the shop area. The shop sponsors a lego robotics team, which I'm sure does very well. Anyway, there were only a few people working in applied physics. The gentleman in charge has 20 patents. Once he was assigned to get water out of the shuttle tiles, which adds 20,000 lbs to the shuttle when it rains because they're very porous. Heat lamps didn't work, so they came to him for help. He created a vacuum that sucks that water out through a hole in each tile. Another time he invented a laser distance measuring device that is now commercially available to help them line up the rockets correctly. He experimented with rail guns and showed us how they work. Previously shuttle windows were inspected by hand. He came up with the idea to fill the windows with water (inside layer only) and shine a light through. The faults show up as spots of light. He also created a machine that finds window cracks, without removing the window. They use infrared cameras and some german lens technology to look for flaws. One time he built a heat ray, focusing the heat from heaters on parabolic dishes to warm ice at the top of the space shuttle while it was sitting on the launch pad. Ice was formed because the liquid hydrogen rocket fuel is kept at -250 degrees. Other NASA employees nicknamed his device the "death ray" and management decided to install heaters instead of using his device. Sometimes woodpeckers would damage the external tank. The military looked at using microwave guns, but since Kennedy Space Center is actually a large wildlife preserve, they couldn't cook the birds. They looked at air guns, scarecrows made from balloons, and all kinds of crazy options to keep the birds away. Some people just sat and watched for birds -- that was their job. He also did laser testing with space shuttle tiles to try to weld small cracks.