Author: Administrator

After all the repair we thought a shakedown was in order.

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Neither rain, nor snow, nor freezing cold shop…  or some thing like that. In spite of the icicles on our chins we built, glued and made noise today. We are going to experiment with several different material designs for the next round of MHD tests. We made segmented plates and baked epoxy onto porcelain for the next round. We finished off the three fan units in the crew module mock up. We got to hear first hand how fan noise is a critical problem in life support systems, even with very quite fans. All the repair are complete with the chase plane so we pulled her outside to see if we could fired her up. With a few pull the engine roared to life.  She feels like shes wants to fly.

Drew baking and Anthony cutting.

The top intake fan in the mock up.

Another step complete for the chase plane.

Before and After

I was trying to avoid this one. We need to build our own supersonic high altitude wind tunnel. I was hoping to do the next wave of research in the live environment, test runs using rockoons with the test articles on the nose.  However the number of iteration we need to do is just driving the timeline too long.  To keep in the schedule we’ll need to be able to run the bulk of the tests at the shop. We’ll then followup with the rockoon flights.

The wind tunnel needs to run at mach 3 for up to five seconds at a pressure equal to 200,000 feet. The test segment needs to be non conductive. The test section needs to be about 2 inches across. There are tunnels out there that fit the requirement but rental cost is too high.

The rough estimate is about $3500. We won’t be able to start building it until Tandem flies. There just isn’t room for it till then. That’s ok. It will take some time to get the design complete and raise the funds. I expect construction to start in October with the first runs to take place next winter.

For the past three days I’ve had my other hat on. We built this 4000 bag wall to protect a house that sits two hundred feet from the creek.  The creek had risen two feet over the bank in the storms over Christmas.

At 100,000 pounds this is the heaviest thing I’ve ever made.

Check out our sand bag site here.

Sunday we installed a blower system in the crew module mock up. Not only are the blowers acting as a mock up for the life support system but also as a actual life support system. With the hatch on there’s not a lots of air getting in there.

The MHD generators are still in the process of being refurbished.  I hope to be getting some flame and noise out of them by the middle of next week.

2010 was good year of progress for Airship to Orbit. Here are a few highlights:

2010 Review in Pictures

On the last day of this year we reassembled the Pup propeller after trimming the length. All the bolts got torqued down to the required 110 inch/pounds, then it was on to the proposal writing (we’re in the middle of two).

I’m putting together a “2010 Review in Pictures”. I hope to have it up sometime tomorrow afternoon. We’re not slowing down in 2011. Our first build session of the new year is Sunday, (we’re taking Saturday off for New Years eve recovery). We’ll be working on the crew module and MHD units.

Have a happy and safe evening all!

Onward and upward!

We have flown the PSL Rocket five times before.  Here’s some pics from those tests. At the time we were painting all our rockets black so they would show up on the bright white desert floor. The long white boxes are the launch platforms for when the rocket was launched as a rockoon.

All these flights were before the turn of the century.  Now doesn’t that seem like a long time ago?

New name for an old vehicle.  This was the back up vehicle for the rocket we launch from balloon and flew to 72,233 feet back in 1999. This is the rocket we’ll be using to carry PongSats to space. It will carry 20 PongSats to 65 miles when launched from 100,000 feet. Publicly we called this rocket the Spaceflight Rocket. Internally we called it the “M” Rocket because it runs on an “M” motor (7000N).  Now it’s the PongSat Launcher, and that’s what it does. It will be carried aloft by the Tandem airship, a Dark Sky Station or straight balloons depending on the mission requirements.

This is also our entry into the suborbital reusable launch vehicle arena.

We’re cleaning up all the old molds and tooling and putting her back into production.