Designing and building a new plasma diagnostic for NIF can take a very long time.

So there was a lot of iteration how you build the entrance window to make sure it withstands anything that could come from the target.

I remember that took a lot of work.

They run large-scale simulations and can estimate what's emanating from that explosion, and then design mitigation strategies for those, and then gets tested on one or two shots, and you take pictures of the debris shields after the shot and make sure they behaved as expected.

The whole process, I'd say, took probably two years, maybe three years.

And once the experiment ends, the lessons continue, passed on to the next generation.

I personally really enjoy this interaction, mentoring young scientists, and I enjoy watching them succeed and making progress in their career, helping them to write papers and possibly getting hired or getting postdoc positions, not only at the lab, but also otherwise.

One of my first postdocs that I mentored was part of developing that X-ray Thompson scattering platform.