In response to a question below, here is what’s inside the orbital Ascender. Specifically it’s not a single balloon but a array of lifting cells.
This drawing is from the book “Floating to Space, The Airship to Orbit Program”. If you don’t have a copy get yourself to the front page of the JPA site, click on the picture of the book in the upper left corner and buy one!
The second image shows the things you only see in the slow motion replay. It’s a frame from the moment of ignition. Next time I won’t be putting the expensive HD camera there!
I just did test firing number 15 of the mini MHD generator. This thing is really starting to work. The out put on test 15 was 50% higher than 14 and 14 was pretty good. This was another big change in the electrodes. Same shape as in test 14 but with a lot more surface area.
I’m going to try and get another run in tonight. Check back in about an hour to see how it went.
Our other company Sand Brick Technologies got a great article at GizMag blog.
Sell sandbags, build spaceships.
Drew spent the all day Saturday decking out the interior of the crew module mock up. He made great progress on the lighting and the monitor placement. We’re experimenting with “wrap around” monitors on the interior. The idea is to give you complete panorama view without the heavy windows. Each monitor can also be re-tasked for any of dozens of exterior cameras. We do still intend to have two small windows for a reality check.
We fired test 14 of the Mini MHD generator yesterday. The results have back and forth but this one was a solid leap ahead. It shows a 30% increase in base voltage over test 13.
The Electrodes
We’re started making the new landing gear for the chase plane.
See: http://jpaerospace.com/blog/?p=1581
The gear is a laminated and tapered maple bar (the wood not the donut). Making it is the easy part, the install will be tricky. We may need to pull the engine and flip the fuselage over.
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