JP Aerospace Blog

We’ve been hoppin here. We were in final preparations for a rush two vehicle mission when the folks we’re flying it for bumped it up to a four vehicle mission. Don’t Panic….

We just pushed through the full up tests on Away 39, 40, 41 and 42 last night and the team is coming back for more today.

Away 42 is dedicated to Douglas Adams.

The team will roll in about two hours from now.  It’s a systems integration day. I’m just wander about getting the shop ready for the day, task lists need to be written on the board, systems laid out, tables and equipment changed around from yesterdays task and make ready for todays.  We’ve moved the three new vehicles into the electronics room. The back shop just gets too hot when it’s 105 degrees outside. A little tight, but cooler.

High Racks are the core of our development at 100,000 feet. We’re literally conducted hundreds of Airship to Orbital experiment on them. Folks that have flown with us have conducted thousands. These vehicle have really pushed back the boundary of near space development and research. Here are the next pair coming to life.

Carbon and foam decks

Leveling Fins

Mounting fins

High Racks!

We put everything we learned from the 5.5 psi test into the large Ascender rib airbeam. We pressured it up and it promptly burst at 3.2 psi. 0.2 psi more and we could have put this test series behind us.

It’s hard to tell if the failure was due to a structural problem or if the big rib we’ve burst, patched, stepped on and generally worn the heck out over the last year finally just gave up.

The higher pressure failures have tended to be at the sharp corners where the loads are focused. We cut out the old blown out corner and made it a seperate panel. This adds the number of panels we need to cutout and making the pattern more complex, but it lets us eliminate the corner seam. More testing tomorrow….

Inserting the airbeam inner liner.

Always more sewing...

The team hit the ground running Saturday. Some mission are planned years in advance. Others come in out of the blue. An unexpected opportunity has presented itself and it looks like we have two high rack flights due in short order. We are using the Away 38 system set for one vehicle and replicating it for the other. Here’s what we got done:

Two High Rack frames were assembled.

Parts were cutout for the parachute deployment basket.

We assembled a complete downlink tracking system. This has an upgrade (i.e. new cable harnesses had to be built). We were able to qualify new Trimble GPS units on the last flight. This lets us retire our old Motorola units. They served us well, but they’re over ten years old and getting a bit touchy. Also they are a quite power hogs compared to the new units.

Sewed more loops for the Ascender rib pressure test this coming Wednesday.

A new main controller insulated housing got made and the one from Away 38 patched.

Anthony and a High Rack frame.

Failure sometimes can be healthy for the soul, but it is always good for your tech.

We have spent the last month gluing reinforcement strips around the Ascender airbeam rib. We could never get the rib above 3.2 psi without bursting. We needed to get it to 3.4 psi. This gives us a 100 percent safety margin over the 1.7 psi operating pressure. We tested the glued seams on a straight airbeam and we were able to reach 3.5 psi. Expectation were high for big rib test.

The team had the rib up to 2.4 psi then BLAM! (it really was incredibly loud) 2.4!!!????!!!! What was that all about. Discouragement all around. A three foot section of the rib was completely shredded, we were done for the night.

The next day out of shear frustration we cleared the day and decided to fix this problem. We had been chasing this a bit too long. Airbeams are normally made with heavy, very strong materials. Our requirement is to make it work with ultra lightweight nylons and thin film plastics so just turning to canvas was out. The result was light ribbon loop around the beam, bit NOT attached in anyway to the beam. Ribbon banding, or ribs on the rib. The first set of ribbon loops would make a sound like a shotgun when failing. The second general of loops held. By the end of the day we completely blew pass the 3.4 goal and hit 5.5 psi. We could have gone higher but didn’t want to risk damaging the end caps if it blew. The ribbon banding is only slightly heaver than the glued seam reinforcement.

The next day, Saturday we put the beam through it’s paces. We conducted load tests with the beam spanning a five foot gap. We spend the day putting loads from 5 to 38 pound on the beam at pressures from 1 to 4 psi. Now it’s on to repair the big rib.

All is well, so far...

Blam!

Slow reaction time...

5.5 psi !!!!!

Under load

Measuring defelection

Banded Beam