But for Schiff's vision to become a flight program, ideas must be translated into hardware. Elegance is optimization. Its diameter should be just enough to contain the instrument and allow for pumping during spin-up. No more, or the lead bag becomes unwieldy and the heat input excessive. Establishing a unified design, however, takes extreme attention to design detail, especially in the neck region between cold and warm temperatures.
Elegance is assembly - an apparatus readily put together and taken apart.
Assembly, often a challenge in engineering design, is especially so in long-life cryogenic systems, this one above all. Building the dewar with its complex thermal design is hard enough, but once assembled it at least can stay assembled. The problem is the instrument. It must, with equally severe cooling requirements, yield to repeated assembly and disassembly. Difficult, especially since the assembly process must be per formed while the dewar is cold in order to preserve the lead bag magnetic shield.