[time-nuts] Opera coordinator has resigned

[Javier Serrano]

On Sat, Mar 31, 2012 at 6:23 PM, J. Forster <jfor at quikus.com> wrote:
> Frankly, I'm a bit surprised at the connector problem. Much of High Energy
> instrumentation uses LEMO connectors, which have a definite "click" when
> mated. They are not like BNCs which can be mated, without locking.

It was an optical bayonet-type connector, not an electrical one.
Changes in optical power induced by the loose connection resulted in
big changes in delay through the mechanism of charging and discharging
the capacitance associated with the photodiode. At least that is my
crude understanding of the matter,

> I rest my case. You simply cannot inspect in quality.

It's hard to disagree with this statement. Who doesn't like quality? I
was trying to go a bit more concrete and suggest that redundant
systems, especially based on alternative technologies, can help catch
errors which may have gone undetected using other means, like
inspection and other sanity checks. In fact, if you have experience
with space electronics I think I don't have to convince you of the
benefits of redundancy, as well as of the fact that the probability of
making mistakes is never 0. If you think about it, this whole issue
was solved thanks to redundancy: there was another experiment in the
same lab which detected cosmic muons, and it was through the
correlation of the muon detections between the two experiments that
the slip between time bases was discovered. I think redundancy is a
good complement, not necessarily a substitute, to other quality
assurance methods.

Cheers,

Javier