From: eugene@nas.nasa.gov (Eugene N. Miya)
Subject: Family Day at LLNL
Organization: NAS, NASA Ames Research Center, Moffett Field, CA
Date: Fri, 2 Oct 1992 16:47:07 GMT


From eugene@nas.nasa.gov (Eugene N. Miya)

This year marks the 40th of the founding of the Univ. of CA's
Lawrence Livermore National Lab.  (Turns out Ames had a Family Day
on the same weekend. I didn't attend, I had grape harvesting and a
wedding to attend.  I did go to LLNL, however, as a guest of friends
and I have semi-official contact with the Lab.)  Tours of places like
the Blue Cube Family have been written up in places like the CPSR newsletter,
this is a short write up of LLNL.  If you don't think the world is a small
place, we were sitting around at lunch following harvesting grapes, and at
random, we discovered the daughter of one LLNL security employee and a son
whose dad did weapons work at Sandia, at an event which was no where near LLNL;
the wedding had one LLNL employee at it).  The world is an incestious place.

The Lab is an interesting place with an interesting collection of problems.
The major area of the Lab outside isn't highly classified, so clearly no
classified information will be found in this post, but I will confine
my marks to things which were open.  Through ACM/SIGGRAPH, we have arranged
escorted professional tours of the past.  LLNL takes a very active interest
in education and research and they do it at an impressive level.

As noted in the LLNL paper:
	Cameras are forbidden at all times, even on Family Day.
In a day, I saw perhaps less than 1/3 of what was open (maybe 10% of the Lab).

Everyone who works at LLNL carries a film badge.  But this is a cumulative
instrument, so I sought to take a gamma spectrometer in the gate.
Sorry: no personal electonics allowed.  Oh well.

So placing the instrument back, we entered the gate.  Saw momentos of LLNL
people from the Gulf war: Iraqi helmet, a bunker fragment, a UN Inspection
team arm band.  Various service medals to the Lab and Lab people were on the
wall.  A classified museum/library was off limits.  Friends had a crowded
and interesting workstation demo (I hope to see this again in a couple
of weeks for the 40th celebration of computing at LLNL). Outside were
full scale models etc. of LLNL products and design.  You can see some of these
at the Atomic Bomb Museum at Kirtland AFB or the Bradbury Museum at LANL.
The Polaris warhead was one of these.  Most interesting were the 155 rounds.

It took me a moment, but I figured out how they numbered buildings.
Very Cartesian.  Interesting (unless you were in a trailer).  I wonder if
it was Teller who decided this.  What's great about all this space is
that most of it has nothing to do with computing.  It's very empirical
and experimental.  All set up for the care and feeding of the Lab's
physicists (physics, the King of the sciences as one friend who works there
as an Asst. Division chief likes to note) and other scientists.

The Numerically Controlled lathes spun coffee cup coasters for family day.
And numerous poster boards explained the unclassified details of each
groups or division.  Interesting stuff.  So this is where all that famous
aerogel stuff is being done.  Wow!

A nice display was done by the earth sciences on seismic hazards and
verification.  A great Lego(tm) block seismic demo was done by a young
student and his dad.  A horse trailer was converted into a portable seismic
station (Mr. Ed).

Saw the Livermore computer center.  Saw JANUS (this I have played with)
in the Conflicit Sim Center.  Lots of areas had no talking head and just
a set of poster boards: the X-ray laser division was this way.  I could not
understand this.  Saw the Nova Laser, impressive.  Got to walk thru the
structure.

Perhaps the most interesting part of the tour was a walk thru the new
High Explosives Applications Facility.  After the offices and entry way, we
were taken in groups of 20 to a briefing about walking thru this
moderate hazard facility.  They described it use and how the building was
laid out with thick walls and armored blast doors.  Parents keep your child
in check.  The labs don't have doors, but rather mazes since doors imped
egress.  Labs are rated for the amounts of energetic materials (that's what
they called them) allowed inside.  We saw a 4 inch and a 6 in. gun for firing
samples at high velocities.  We saw various explosion chambers.  More mazes
took us to the control room, and at the end of the tour our guide said,
"Ok, who knows which direction is North?"  Without saying anything I just
thumbed my way behind me over my shoulder.  I ended up winning a "prize"
a 4-in plexiglas(tm) sabot from their machine shop.

Numerous other buildings weren't open.  Would have been interesting
to see or know what was done in those.  That's okay.  No need to know.
Anyways, back in a couple weeks to celebrate their involvement in the
earliest days of computing.  Maybe see some of you there.

Rather than toss all the neat unclassified PR literature, I mailed it to
a friend who's a UC prof who studies the history of the nuclear age.
I kept the sabot (a paper weight on the desk).

--eugene miya, NASA Ames Research Center, eugene@orville.nas.nasa.gov
  Acting Associate Editor, Software and Publication Reviews
  Scientific Programming
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