The book about all of this will be going to press any moment now. The publisher Apogee Books, got some feed back and decided to change the subtitle. It’s now “Floating to Space, The Airship To Orbit Program”. It should hit the book stores in May.
Apogee still has the old title shown on the website, but with that one excpetion the cover looks the same.
The past few days we’ve been building up telemetry systems. These will handle command and control for Away 35,36 and 37. In addition they also provide backup GPS position data.
Plug and play has yet to reach space technology. Every “plug” is a custom cable, and “play” is trying to get all these systems to talk to each other. A little hair pulling and I’m sure all will be well….
The new antennas have arrived. Obi-Wan’s line leaped into my brain when I saw the huge shipping boxes. We named them Death Star One and Two.
The blog was hacked big time. About 20 pages of hidden links to pharmacy companies were embedded in the background and headers. We’ll be making changes and doing upgrades over the next few days. You may notice some changes as we work through it all.
We had a huge build session Saturday. The Away mission high racks make a big leap forward.
Among the things accomplished:
Three GPS tracking Telemetry systems were completed and tested.
Three housing for the backup mini beacons were make and the mini beacon installed.
Main structure backup lines were installed on all three high racks.
The last of the ground stake loops were sewn on to the new launch bag.
A balloon release controller board was soldered together and a hosing make for it.
We even repaired a broken truss pole on Tandem and stopped to eat pizza and watch ourselves on National Geographic.. Way to go team!
Now that the fame and celebrity of National Geographic has worn off it’s time to get back to work. The three high racks under construction now structurally complete. We added the outrigger camera diamonds to each last night. The next step is to add the backup rigging lines. This is a line that runs along the carbon poles. If a pole breaks in flight the line keeps the vehicle together.
Yesterday I ran a cable planning marathon. The new radio has one connector standard, the antenna has a completely different one. The worse part was that an amp that goes between them has a different connector type on each end. Now we’re not talking just male of female. I mean completely different connector styles and standard. On three of the connectors the manufacturers used opposite designation from each other for the same connector. I ended up calling each manufacturer (nine) and getting a photo of each one. After much wrangling I talked two companies into putting different connectors on there equipment. That combined with an adapted and one custom cable and the system has a layout. Now we’ll see what actually comes out of the boxes when they arrive….
Making Data Cables
Working on High Racks
Inspecting Balloon Bags
Team JPA will be appearing on the National Geographic Channel. Our moment of fame will be Tuesday 1st April 2008 at 8pm est.
We are in an episode of “Naked Earth” called “Our Atmosphere”. The show isn’t about us but does have scenes of us working balloons and an interview about the atmosphere.
Everyone put your VCR’s in record mode!
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