Day 8/183: Mechanical Drawings from Ye Olden Times

[nanila]

I dug out this mechanical drawing of one of the Cluster spacecraft the other day, because I needed to know how long the deployed magnetometer boom is. The reason is not so important. Things that are important:

• The drawing has been taken in and out of the folder so many times that the inner set of holes has been destroyed.
  
• Holy tatty edges, Batman.
  
• The version of the document it's part of was issued in June 1993. That's over 26 years ago.
  
• Printing stuff in A3 is so good for detail in drawings.
  
• How is it that my old work colleague, Patrick, never spilled his tea on this? Truly a mystery for the ages.

Comments

[quoththeravyn]

Oh. My. Goodness. And yeah, antique design documents are amazing.

On the occasion of my retirement, the instrument team went into their bonded stores and extracted a flight candidate CCD chip to give me as a gift. I still need to get a frame shop to build a shadow-box kind of a frame for it. The PI said, with a chuckle, that the most valuable thing was probably the aluminum mounting bracket it was attached to. It turns out that particular chip had failed its smoke test (it went pffsszzt! when they turned it on). I have its log book entry here someplace.

[nanila]

Can I suggest that you consider putting it in one of those old-fashioned frames with an embedded plaque containing the log book entry text? :D

[quoththeravyn]

That's a great idea. Maybe the facsimiles of the log pages as wallpaper on the back of the shadow box, with the item itself in front.

[hamsterwoman]

That does look awfully pristine for a 26 year old drawing, despite the tatty edges! Also, REALLY COOL!

[nanila]

It is well preserved, especially considering that it's probably one of the most handled drawings in that folder.

[davidgillon]

Ooh, lovely quality of reproduction.

[nanila]

Even the tiiiiiny font is very crisp!

[st_aurafina]

Oh, I love it! I would frame it and put it on the wall as a historical document, because it is.

[nineveh_uk]

Yes! It could look wonderful in a frame.

[nanila]

One day, in 2025 (i.e. after all the spacecraft have re-entered the Earth's atmosphere)!

[nanila]

It's still in active use (because the mission is still operational). But once the spacecraft have all re-entered, definitely!

[cmcmck]

Almost looks like a radial aero engine! :o)

[nanila]

It does have a lovely symmetry. :)

[silveradept]

Archival material of good quality seems like such a rarity to find, so I'm glad the document has held up well where the data is, even if it's starting to fray a touch at the edges.

[nanila]

It occurred to me that the printer paper must have been reasonably high grade, particularly because this drawing is among the most referred-to in that folder.

[silveradept]

That, hopefully, was someone's forethought in getting out on the good stuff and not just a happy accident.

[hilarita]

That's fantastic! and it looks lovely. All of our documentation exists only as electrons. No nice printouts. Also, since we were designing software, no beautiful mechanical drawings for us. Just UML diagrams.

[nanila]

UML diagrams can be beautiful too!