JP Aerospace Blog

Here’s one of our little intrepid phone carrying astronaut heading for the black.

Propeller assembly is pretty tricky. It takes three folks about an hour then everybody needs a break afterwards. The team has gotten three blade assembled. One more and we have a set of two for Tandem.

We also conducted a instrument calibration test for the quad engine’s load sensor, did maintenance and re tuned the ground tracking antenna and even managing to figure out what was wrong with the equipment generator in the mission control van.

Our partner company Sand Brick Technologies, LLC is now on facebook!

Stop by and “like us”!

The team was down in Byron Ca. on Sunday for the open house of the Patriots foundation. The Patriots are on jet aerobatic team. We were there showing off PongSats and MiniCubes for their new education foundation. Our own Ed is not only one of the pilots but is also the director of the Patriots Foundation’s aerospace academy.

Patriots Foundation

Patriots Jet Team

Now begins the work of filling flaws, filling the millions of microscopic pin holes and finishing.

Trust me, helliptical, hollow molded parts are tricky!

You can’t have Star Wars without monsters. Our epic space battle from the Away 66 mission provided one.

Our hero thought he was getting the upper hand but didn’t realize the threat was from above.

The creatures tendrils reached out for the starship.

Even locking the s-foils down didn’t break the X-Wing free from the monster’s malevolent latex clutches.

It was all day with two elements Saturday. We’ve started on our forth generation Hall MHD unit. All these units are one off’s for they ended up being hand made.  Paul and Kevin spent yesterday cutting out the twenty copper parts for the electrodes. We also joined the halves of the first new propeller. It looks so cool in its raw carbon form I almost want to just leave it that way.

We’ve made enough for two sets of propellers and one backup blade. They’ve all been rough trimmed and one pair is ready for assembly.

Kevin is pulling an airship propeller blade half out of the mold.

MoonandBack Interview with John Powell, part 5 – Helium, Hydrogen and Flying

In this test we moved the motor back to full engage the visible plasma.  The results looked spectualular but the performance completely tanked. This actually is very good news. It means that the electrodes need to be out of the corrosive flow.

MoonandBack Interview with John Powell, part 3 – Rockets from Balloons

MoonandBack Interview with John Powell, part 4 – Airship to Orbit and Dark Sky Station

It’s JPA in the news week! Here’s Anthony Gregory talking about PongSats and MiniCubes at the Space Access Conference in Arizona.

They’re doing this in segments.

Moon and Back interview with John Powell

Moon and Back

I can never watch my own interviews…