"Dick Dastardly"

He was, after all, the leader of the Vulture Squadron.

What else could it be named?

Paris

How about...

..."Vulture Venturer"?

Name?

Two words: Queen Bee

Title

"The Vulture"

Otherwise "Paris", in honour of our favourite globetrotting heroine.

Name Thoughts

Surely "The Vulture"

But maybe the penguin.

aPlaneFromMars

Name: Big Mod 1

(After the Moderatrix, of course).

Also I suggest you contact that cheese company and ask them for a thin sliver of their finest cheddar to use as nose-ballast.

Keep it made of paper, waterproofed naturally, so that you can enter it into the Guinness Book of Records.

Name has to be

Vulture 1

A name....

How can it be called anything other than the Vulture?

Being a vulture...

...shouldn't it circle rather than glide long distances? Or is that buzzards?

Vulture is too obvious!

I suggest "Aegypius".

Paris

Nothing goes down better

@grease monkey

I fully agree with the fact that balsa would redifine it as a paper aircraft

But you could create struts by folding the paper tightly and wetting it then letting it dry.

I dislike the idea of balso otherwise its just a lightweight glider.

But then again is it likley that you can load equipment onto a paper plane

hmm what about the printable batteries i saw on here a week or so ago.

that would be good for powering a gps unit.

Strip down a old phone and nab the optics for photographing the flight (would prolly be easiest and safer to store locally rather than transmit the data)

You could also use arials for struts (its cheating to a degree but you could get away with it)

Name: Bee line

old phone

For gps, camera etc put a Nokia N95 or similar in the plane. it can track and phot to it's hearts content and when in range transfer the data via 3G. And if it's picked up by ET he can phone home. Make sure the sim has international roaming enabled incase it works

High Altitude Glider

Art Vanden Berg had a shot at this. Have look over here:

members.shaw.ca/sonde

or here:

artvb.oatmeal.dhs.org

Fascinating stuff.

Crew

Can we have a Playmobil crew?

Comments

Name? Either:

Paris (she's good at going down)

or

Vulture Bee

or

Heart of Gold (we need more Douglas Adams references)

Design:

"Mechanism to release aircraft from balloon at preset altitude (relying on balloon burst not a good idea). "

You'll also want to monitor altitude in case of premature descent - you want to release from the balloon if you start going down before the preset altitude.

Let's give a nod to history?

"Sir George Cayley"

Which not only commemorates (<-- hell, just how many 'm's in that damn word?) the early British pioneer of flight, but might also provide some protection in the case of running into any passing low-earth-orbit dragons. I mean, you never know...

&Crew

"Can we have a Playmobil crew?" Yeah!

@"Aegypius"

...or even Sarcogyps, the Red-headed Vulture?

A backronym?

Paper Aeroplane Released Into Space

For the history books......

Problem with history books is they were always defaced when I were a lad. So, while El Reg is forging ahead with the revival of the UK's dreams of space flight, why not beat the future generation to it? Why not call it:

your mom (or yo momma) 'cos nothing goes down longer'

or 'pWnD'

or 'Bungles Finger'

and while we're at it, try to use some paper from a tacky skin mag and have a snapper showing on the wing somehwere, saves time for the kids drawing one on if a photo ever makes it into the curriculum....

Paris...... any why not?

The Vulture has already been done.

If you remember the "cult" seventies fantasy show "Salvage 1", their rocket was called the vulture.

As there are actually 2 craft, the launcher and the payload. I think there should be 2 names.

How about

BOFH 1

and

PFY Voyager

Not Paris

We don't want it to go down THAT fast.

Balsa != Paper

The use of balsa wood won't make it a paper aeroplane any more! A cleverly-designed cardboard frame should be able to provide sufficient strength.

It could be tough to make sure the aircraft continues to fly (rather than just falling out of the sky) all the way down, particulary with air currents. Making it heavier will help (more momentum therefore less affected by changes in the air around it), but then of course it'll need to be bigger overall to produce the extra lift. Or how about adding some control surfaces and an inertial measurement unit linked up to an autopilot?

On-board photo/video is a must!!!

I for one will happily volunteer my time to this worthwhile endeavour!

A good op for SQL injection

I like "Vulture '; truncate table story;" or something in the same vein.

Plane-ly should be....

Since "high-altitude glider" abbreviates to HAG, why not the Vulture HAG?

I don't think we should be so pedantic about the fine points of wood-vs-paper; that is, unless the electronics you're inserting into it are ALSO paper.....? Surely the plastic, metal and glass are a bigger deviation from the ideal than a few balsa and/or basswood spars? Finally, to keep the weight to a minimum, experiment with muscle wires rather than electromechanical servos.

Basswood/balsa composite, by the way, would be a far better choice than balsa alone. Using built-up members with balsa in tension and basswood in compression, and your strength-to-weight ratio should double at least. Use cyanoacralyte superglue for lightweight joins, and saturation with a thinned white or carpenter's glue where stresses are concentrated.

In keeping with the 'paper airplane' theme, the skin of the plane could easily be doped tissue-paper.

iPlane

that is all...

tracking device

am I being thick here, or does GSM / 3g coverage not extend to a sufficient altitude for such a device to be be used for real time data relay to VultureCentral? surely it will have to be satellite / rf data relay?

or maybe we should just link up some x25 cables and have a 'fly by wire' system?

Apple incorporated

iFlyAPaperPlaneIntoSpaceAlthoughItsActuallyMadeFromWoodButDontTellAnyone

or iFAPPISAIAMFWBDTA for short.