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.
Good luck and God bless!
God speed, and successful missions!
Thanks for the info.
Hope all is going well.
Looking forward to the results.
Good luck guys! And keep us updated on the results! (what about Twitter?)
Good luck!
This is exactly what I’ve been itching to see. Thanks for taking a moment out of what must be an insane schedule to keep us out-of-towners updated.
Good luck, all.
Terence