We have used several groups on consultants in designing the TSU 2m telescope. Principal consultants in early stages of the design of the mount were a group of professors and associated graduate students at the Center for Manufacturing Research at Tennessee Tech University (one of our fellow Centers of Excellence). They have expertise in machine design, vibration analysis, and servo control systems. Their primary assignments were 1) to do a dynamical analysis of the secondary-mirror support system, 2) to develop alternative proposals for the azimuth bearing, 3) to provide backup capability in finite-element analysis to that available at TSU, 4) to find machine shops to manufacture the mechanical parts of the mount, 5) to develop proposals for the drive/servo control system, 6) to develop alternative proposals for the telescope drives, and 7) possibly to prepare shop drawings for manufacture of the mount. TTU put a considerable amount of work in on tasks 1, 2, 6 and 7 above, with some help through tasks 3, 4, and 5. They investigated using hydraulic drive motors, which did not seem feasible, developed proposals for air bearings to support both the azimuth and altitude axes, and discovered a source for a different way of coupling the drive motors to the telescope. They found one capable machine shop that could have built the major parts of the telescope and found sources of actuators for the guiding head.

Other consulting has been provided by James Wert & Associates (metallurgist) who contributed a very useful analysis of the drive-surface problem, Dan Schroeder, who advided us about telescope optics in early stages of the project, and Sam Barden, who advised about fiber optics, blackening the interiors of spectrographs, and spectrograph design. Louis J. Boyd, the Dirctor of Fairborn Observatory, who maintains our automatic telescopes and has built most of them, is giving advice on making the telescope easier to maintain, is managing site development for the telescope, and is integrating it into Fairborn Observatory. Andre Hedrick and Don Epand are providing consulting on the telescope control system. Mike Williamson began working on the project as an instrumental consultant/programmer in November, 1999 and has taken over development of the basic control system. Harland Epps has designed the camera for the spectrograph for us and is assisting in its procurement.

We have also benefitted from help given us from certain NASA engineers with actual experience in designing and building telescopes and optical systems. Scott Smith, Roy Young, Ron Eng, and Tom Kester (Marshall) have been especially helpful for advice about adjusting the mirrors, and Peter Maymon (Goddard) has helped us assess the optical system of the echelle spectrograph. In addition, Smith arranged for another group at Marshall to measure the vibrational characteristics of our telescope mount to verify the FEA calculations we did.