10. It’s on Saturdays todo list.
9. 400-mile horizon sunsets.
8. Space Tourism without the zero-gee toilet.
7. Space Vacuum is the house band!!!!
6. I’m on my way to the rest of the solar system.
5. To build an orbital airship.
4. Building an orbital airship will really freak out Mike Griffin.
3. Have you ever looked down on lightening before?
2. I want to throw a paper airplane 20 miles.
1. I just want to live in the sky.
It was back out to the park to work on the balloon nozzle issue. This test was critical to the launch of the Tandem airship. It was a beautiful day. Even though the solution was not at all what we expected the solution was in hand by the end of the day.
The team has grown by nine folks in the last month. That’s a lot considering we’re a pretty small team to start with. New people are thrown right into the mix building hardware. We’re constantly training and cross training with the old hands so new people don’t really change the pace. Tuesday we used the making of a mount for Away 28 as a lesson in molding carbon.
Finally! I’ve been debugging a serial port on a new controller for days. I’ve made dozens of these things and there’s not at lot to it. This was making me a bit bonkers. It ended up being a sharp point on a bottom on a chip socket that was poking through the insulation of a wire and intermittly applying 12 volts to the attention line. The wire was moved and sharp point clipped, and a few more gray hairs added. I guess that’s what testing is for. This one will fly on Away 36 this summer.
Every corner of the shop was in action on Saturday.
The Tandems main flight controller was brought back on line. It had undergone a major overhaul. Panels for two new parachute were cut out.
We’re ramping up for quite a few flight this year. Over the next month we’ll be replicating equipment for five vehicle. Three of the vehicles will be high racks. Foam was flying as eight decks were cut out.
The last six panels of the new balloon bag were sew together. At 28 feet a piece it was quite a job.
We moving from a wood and wire to a metal and wood version of the crew module. The frames for the couches were assembled. In a few months it will be ready for training and fit studies.
We also did some simulator work and in the middle of it all the Sacramento NSS had a meeting. Definitely a space day!
Don’t bother me I’m debugging.
The sine of the cosine…
The Frame
New Parachutes!
Paul loves triangles…
Just what is he thinking about?
The Tuesday night crew has been revamping the Away 28 vehicle. So far the focus has been on the drum assembly that holds the balloon. They’re making great progress.
Tuesday nights are also the time we work on the simulators. It’s moving forward bit by bit…. (sorry I couldn’t resist).
Andy from the UK sent in his vision of the Tandem HL at 100,000 feet.
Don’t it just make you want to go there?!!!!!
Thank you Andy!
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