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

[Mikolaj Habryn]

If someone can point him at this thread, or let him know about Sunday,
that'd be excellent.

(links to/summaries of his talk would be even better, for those of us
who won't make 5mof tonight)

m.

On Thu, Dec 17, 2009 at 5:23 PM, Ani Niow <v at oneletterwonder.com> wrote:
> I hear there's someone from the Space Tourism Society giving a talk about
> similar things tonight at 5MoF. Also hear that he is wanting to involve
> Noisebridge with some projects of his.
>
> Sounds like some cross pollination could be made.
>
>
> -Ani
>
> On 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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>