[Noisebridge-discuss] spacebridge? hackers(in)space?

[Christie Dudley]

Yeah!  As I was saying when we last spoke, I think this is a really cool
idea.  I'm still waiting to hear back from my space people (they say maybe
by early January.  I must confess that the longer I wait, the more
discouraged I get, but I'm still hopeful.)  I'm terribly busy right now, but
I'd definitely be interested in looking at this.

Christie
---
Why I take the road less traveled?  Oh, that's easy.  I'm claustrophobic.


On Wed, Dec 16, 2009 at 9:45 PM, Brian Molnar <brian.molnar at gmail.com>wrote:

> I have been *VERY* interested in doing this for some time now, so if you
> want some help, I'm definitely down. Plus I'm very willing to contribute
> financially.
>
> - Molnar
>
>
> On Wed, Dec 16, 2009 at 9:14 PM, Mikolaj Habryn <dichro at rcpt.to> wrote:
>
>> There's been lots of articles of late about school kids sending
>> weather balloons with cameras up to 100,000 feet for peanuts and
>> getting amazing pictures. These projects kinda lack ambition -
>> although I'll confess to being grudgingly impressed nonetheless.
>>
>> By contrast, these guys are my heros -
>> http://www.members.shaw.ca/sonde/ - they carry a glider up with a
>> home-built autopilot that navigates back to where they're waiting for
>> it (sometimes upside-down). Their stories are the reason that I have a
>> 2.6m r/c glider in my cube at work (that I'm too scared of to actually
>> fly).
>>
>> Also, a friend pointed out on the weekend that http://jpaerospace.com/
>> have somewhat stolen my thunder, but, dammit, I still think there's
>> some fun to be had here.
>>
>> Things I'm keen to work on:
>>
>> Buoyancy control for high-altitude balloons - most of these guys send
>> balloons up until they burst and then recover payload under a
>> parachute. It shouldn't be too hard to build something that can hold
>> altitude by moving gas between envelope and rigid container (a full
>> day-night cycle might be hard, but you never know - at lower altitudes
>> you could potentially condense water vapor and electrolyze to
>> replenish hydrogen supplies). Talking to the blimpduino guys at maker
>> faire a year or two back, they were also interested in the idea of
>> having a buoyancy control system at the smaller scale, but didn't
>> think it could be done in their weight budget. I think they're wrong,
>> and I even had the parts to prove it at one stage.
>>
>> 1kg of batteries has enough energy to accelerate a 10g weight to
>> orbital velocity.  I had a napkin once that claimed that a reasonably
>> efficient motor could achieve that by spinning a reasonable length
>> tether at reasonable g forces, but I think I got the numbers wrong at
>> the time :P OTOH, yesterday I saw a tech talk by the quick launch guys
>> (giant hydrogen cannons ftw) where they mentioned trivially
>> g-hardening consumer electronics to 3200g, so maybe there's still a
>> way of doing it with a reasonable length of practical tether - not
>> that I know *what* tether, how it will behave when the outer section
>> of it is travelling at transonic speeds, drag losses at 100k feet, and
>> what kind of interesting payload you can fit into 10 grams, but these
>> are implementation details.
>>
>> Um. I had other ideas, but can't think of them right at the moment.
>> Anyone else have related projects or want to play? I intend to grab
>> some weather balloons from ebay, a cylinder of hydrogen and maybe some
>> ardupilots and carefully skirt various FAA regulations in the next
>> couple of months.
>>
>> m.
>>
>> PS: and Black Rock City Spaceport - 'coz fuck steampunk.
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>
>
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