What’s Happening at JPA

The last of the inner lining went on last night. The shell is complete.  Now the work of figuring out where all the equipment goes begins. The mock up has already given us one good feedback on the design. The hatch needs to be six inches higher on the wall.

JPA rockets make an appearance at the Yelpbot Odyssey 2010.

The both the fiberglass prototype ML rocket and the carbon ML block 3 rocket partied into the night with robots and other Yelpers.

We’ve been working on the inner skin for the last two days. It’s 75% done. Today we should be able to get the last of it on. That will let the shell assemble have a least a full day to dry before Saturday. We plan to spend about two months playing with the configuration. Once we’ve decided the size is right we’ll start construction of a 1/2 scale model for pressure testing.

The “lid” and outer skin went on to the crew module mock up Saturday. We experimented with several adhesive combinations on test segments and on the walls themselves. The paper covering is really stffening up the walls and adding to the strength, but they are coming out pretty wrinkly.

We welcomed our new intern Ethan on Saturday. I was only away for 30 minutes. I was in my office with Ethan and his teacher doing paperwork. I knew I shouldn’t have left them alone with the crew module. When I got back it was too late. Our crew module was no more, replaced by….. The Disco Room. sigh….

The crew module mock up has sides! At least foam core does.

Toshiba featured JP Aerospace’s work on the ‘Space Chair’ commercial at there booth at SPIE Photonics West. Photonics West is a huge trade show held this week in San Francisco. It featured what seemed like every laser and advanced optics company in the world.

Tuesday night at 7pm pacific time I’ll be on David Livingston’s radio program, “The Space Show”. You can tune in on the web at:

http://www.thespaceshow.com/

Click on “Listen Live”.

Call in and say “HI”.

We’ve started building the shell for the crew module mock up. The shell is make of one inch foam to be skinned with kraft paper. To get the foam to bend how we want we drilled it full of holes. The side walls are make from six large sheets. We calculated that we drilled just over 1,400 holes on Saturday.

For the past year I’ve been posting new videos on YouTube instead of of putting a downloadable file on our video page. It’s just a lot easier to add new videos and folks find it easier to watch them as well. I’ve changed the link to our video page to the YouTube page with all the JPA video. There 43 in all. Check it out. There may be some oldies you haven’t see in a while or one’s you’ve missed.

JP Aerospace YouTube Channel

Here are two really old ones I just recently posted to YouTube.

[wp_youtube]fqY3922wEwE[/wp_youtube]

[wp_youtube]K5AKXf5oJa8[/wp_youtube]

We were on last April and didn’t even know it. They came out and filmed an interview for the Daily Planet show about a year ago, but we thought nothing came of it. They actually did a very nice piece.

http://watch.discoverychannel.ca/clip162251#clip162251