QUESTION
How heavy is the telescope and how did you get it in the KAO?

ANSWER from Mark Elston, KAO Engineer on October 17, 1995:
The telescope weighs 6000 pounds.  Quite heavy, but hardly a burden
for a C-141 Starlifter.

Your question about how we got is very interesting.  The telescope is
not really a single *thing*.  It is really made up of lots of parts
that are assembled together inside the aircraft.

What makes the question so interesting is that this year we had to
perform a complete reassembly of the telscope assembly.  Every 5 years
the C-141 has to go back to the Lockheed plant for a periodic
maintenance.  This year NASA decided to perform a local maintenance
effort on the telescope itself.  So we disassembled the telescope and
removed it from the aircraft.  It was the first time in the 20 year
history of the KAO that the entire telescope had been out of the
aircraft.

The reassembly took about 3 months.  Imagine a 3 dimensional picture
puzzle with several thousand parts (some very large others very
small).  It was quite an effort and a very short schedule but we got
it done (and we were very proud of all those who worked on it).

Mark