What’s Happening at JPA

The ABC News10 story aired and is on line:

http://www.news10.net/news/story.aspx?storyid=71305&catid=2

Dale did an awesome job on the story!!

Dale Schornack at News10 the Sacramento ABC station has done a news piece on JPA and the Toshiba chair commercial. The piece will air on the 11pm newscast on channel 10 in the greater Sacramento and central valley area. These sometimes get picked up nationally. If you see it let me know.

You will also be able to watch it on their website after it airs:  www.news10.net

They’ve running previews for it on the 11pm news cast all this week.  There should be some good “making of” video that hasn’t been seen before.

Here’s two drawings looking into the future of ATO development.

This is a Block 4 Mach Glider with a quad engine. This is a 30 foot test bed vehicle. The second drawing shows the Mach Glider being launched from the Tandem HL.

Here’s a picture page of the Away 39-40-41-42 missions.

This project was both very technically complicated and a blast! We even snuck PongSats on board.

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Here a “Making of” video that Toshiba put together.
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It took about 5 years of work, but we finally did it! We were just awarded the patent for Airship To Orbit.

On Monday the commercial we shot for Toshiba will air across Europe and Japan.  Monday I’ll post a link here so folks in other places can watch it.   Here’s a screen shot to hold you over.

A few weeks ago I had a chance to speak at a balloon workshop at NCAR (National Center for Atmospheric Research) in Boulder Colorado.

http://www.boulder.swri.edu/LCANS09/Home.html

It was small workshop, only about 30 folks. All the big players with the multimillion dollar balloon projects were there. I was pretty floored by the whole thing. With few exception innovation in dead in big balloon research. Sure, the balloons are a little bigger, the telescopes are a little more sophisticated, but there’s nothing going on that someone working balloon 50 years ago wouldn’t need more than an hour to be up to speed on. The workshop was called “Bridging the Gap to Space”. Sadly it was good and brilliant people locked in the the us vs. them with the space folks trying to figure out the best way to beg for more funding.

I don’t think they knew what to make of me….

It’s was a beautiful facility. Day one was sunny, day three a big stow storm shut it all down.

You won’t expect a parachute to be completely unfurled and taunt at 98,000 feet, however…