JP Aerospace Blog

I apologies for making this so brief, too many things still on the packing, charging, reserving list. This weekend’s flights serve a whole list of purposes. They are most small tech problems that need solving or systems getting a shake down.

In General:

We’ve been having an intermittent satellite drop out on the last few mission. For these flight there are seven different GPS/telemetry configuration. We will be able to evaluate all the systems with their various patches and fixes side by side. This is critical for the Tandem mission this summer.

Our supplier of the pyrotechnics in out balloon release system has changed there formation due to changing in BATF shipping rules. We weren’t happy about the performance on the last flight. This is critical for the Tandem launch and the primary reason these flight have been moved ahead of the Tandem flight. We using the same gear, but made a config change that should fix the problem, no we just need to flight test it.

We need to start working high altitudes. We’ve been stuck in the 100,000′s for some time now. Two of the vehicles are set up to reach 120,000 feet.

Two of the vehicles are specifically focused on rockoon tech. We’re testing motor heaters, launch control systems and launch detect systems. We will be using rockoons to deploy mini Ascender airships (20 feet long) at 300,000 feet. These mini v shaped airships will be used for the hypersonic flight studies for Airship to Orbit.

In Specific:

Away 43: Light vehicle for high flight, involved in telemetry test. Also do camera work.

Away 44: Rockoon system test bed and carrying 150 PongSat student experiments, carrying two standard and on HD video system.

Away 45: Duplicate of 44 with a slightly different telemetry config.

Away 46: Light vehicle for high flight, involved in telemetry test. Also carrying 100 fps, 128 gig HD video system

Box Jelly: An experimental balloon design. This is just a short hop to 20,000 feet as proof of concept. We think this class of balloon can reach 200,000 feet. Future versions will be used for in situ data gathering of the environment between 140,000 and 200,000 feet. This is critical for Airship to Orbit.

Well, it’s just after midnight and we roll to the desert in the morning. Wish us luck.

Three days before we roll and only 60 items left on the todo list. That’s actually not bad for a five vehicle mission.

I added it up and all together we’re flying eleven computers, seven telemetry systems, four camcorders, seven cameras, five beacons and four satellite uplink units.

On April 5th Dr. David Simon passed away.  For those who work at the edge of space he was a legend. For me personally he represented fully what I can only strive for.  Not only was he a pioneer in the technology, but engineer, scientist cheerleader and actually astronaut flying on the creations he brought about.

This does more justice to the man than I can:

http://stratocat.com.ar/artics/simons-e.htm

The short guy is ready to fly.

I’ll be live on the web on the Spacevidcast show in a couple of hours from now (7pm pst).

http://www.spacevidcast.com/

Hit the website while I’m on and let me know you’re out there!

With five vehicles there is a pile of systems to test. A month ago as each system was completed they were individually bench tested. The next rounds of tests occur after they get mounted on their respective vehicles. That what we did Saturday. It’s called the intergrated systems test. We got though two main controller, four backup tracking units, three balloon release systems, two video camera controllers, two rocket motor heaters and two still cameras.

Still to go are three balloon release systems (one failed and needed work and retesting), five beacons, three still camera controllers, six still cameras and four satellite uplink units. After all the bugs are worked out on the intergrated tests we then move on to the full up tests. This is were we “ground fly” each of the vehicle from the mission control van. On that test we power up the systems with the flight check lists and run full mission durations.  That means your’s truly needs to get busy and finish the checklists…..

“Suborbital space” has been getting a lot of attention these days. Here’s a shot from Away 25 six years ago. Suborbital space JPA style.