Author: Administrator

Next one down the line. The Ellipse airship is getting close to final assembly we’ve starting nailing down the specs for Ellipse II. Ellipse I is a low altitude test article. Ellipse II will be released from one our high platforms.

We’ve completed initial inflation tests of the Ellipse airships inner air beam structure. We then did a low pressure test fit inside the vehicle.

Next up will be a full pressure air beam test inside the airship. Then it’s on to making the helium cells.

Yesterday we did the load test on keel attachment point test section for the sub. We loaded it to 2.4X the required load and even smacked repeatedly with a mallet under over load just to be sure. Nothing like a month long build for a 3 hour test…

We had changing the mass of the submarines keel weight. The hull came in underweight and we changed the size of the internal flooded area. This means the keel attachment exceeds the original design load. It calcs well within the range, but we need to be sure. So we built a new hull test section to test it.

Artists concept of the Block 3 Dark Sky Station.

The team got a lot done today. We completed the submarine hull test section, tested-reworked-tested again the valves, sensors & attachment ports for the Ellipse airship air beams, & did submergence tests on the subs external electronic boxes along with a dozen other little things.

We’ve been experimenting on a new variant of fractional distillation. The initial result look promising.

The gang lifted the sub today & changed out the carts underneath for solid blocks of wood. We getting ready to “weight up” the sub. We’re adding 800lbs to reach dive weight. We didn’t want to do this till near completion. The hull is easier to handle without it, but it’s time.