Jun 14, 2004
Pumping down
Well, I've been pumping down for a couple days now. They hooked up all the vacuum hoses to the neon dewar and starting pumping the air out. They did it real slow, taking about six hours to get down to a pressure of 1 Torr. Atmospheric pressure is 760 Torr, so it's not a bad vacuum. They do this because the filters are very delicate, and pumping down too fast could break them. Then they just keep pumping to get as much water vapor out as they can. Scott warned me this will take a while – like a month!
But they did the first leak check today. It was pretty elaborate as they checked various parts of the dewar. They had to make a few minor adjustments, but everything looks OK.
