We started assembling two new high rack vehicles Saturday. We may have a commercial gig to fly in couple of weeks. We won’t know till a few days before if it’s a go or not. There’s no way we could build and test a vehicle in the one day before travel that we would have. So we decided to build up the high racks just in case. If they are not used for this job we’ll save them for the next. We almost need to change our motto to “JP Aerospace, TV Commercials at the Edge of Space”.
Due to the deeper cold we’re seeing at high altitude we’ve been upping the insulation on some systems. On the last missions we flew with an half inch extra foam wrap around the primary position telemetry system. It was a significant improvement.
The commercial gig will rearrange our schedule a bit. If it’s a go we can test the modification to the balloon release system at the same time. If it checks out then Tandem will be the next mission. If we don’t do the commercial gig then we have two other high racks being prepped to test the release system as well and another test on the rocket launch control system.