So what are they carrying? Batteries and some servos, or some of your great tracking gear? Just wondering what to expect to see on their tracking page tomorrow morning.
Moment of truth for LOHAN's servos: Our US allies are poised for final test flight
The matter of whether our Vulture 2 spaceplane's servos will freeze at altitude will be resolved on Saturday by our US allies at Edge Research Lab, when they send a complete spaceplane autopilot/battery/servo rig stratowards. Low Orbit Helium Assisted Navigator (LOHAN) regulars will be aware we've been fretting about our …
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Friday 24th October 2014 21:17 GMT Triple-J
Good luck!
Hope all goes well. Apropos of Spaceport America, though, there was a successful launch yesterday and one payload on the rocket was yeast for Ninkasi Brewery (Oregon-based, excellent brewery). They'll be making a space beer, though technically it's a sub-orbital beer (maybe Sub-Orbit-Ale?)
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Friday 24th October 2014 21:23 GMT imanidiot
Enclosure insulation
How is the rig insulated from the outside environment in this test flight? Will the heat transfer from the rig to the environment be comparable to the actual LOHAN flight? (Too much insulation now might give a false positive result. Too little could give a false negative)
Lets just hope we don't get any of that -->
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Friday 24th October 2014 23:24 GMT imanidiot
Re: Enclosure insulation
"heat" at altitude is a bit weird. Because of the rarified atmosphere heat transfer starts to rely much more on radiance and much less on convection. Meaning that the air outside the craft could be at -100C and electronics inside the enclosure still melting down from overheating.
Apart from that, even if they make it to 40 km it'll still be a nippy -25C outside the craft.
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Friday 24th October 2014 21:31 GMT Sporkinum
Roswell
That google guy set a new parachute altitude record from Roswell NM. Hopefully you can get the LOHAN as high as he went. BTW, nothing really cool to see in Roswell, or at least there wasn't when I was in the area 25 years ago. Close to Alamogordo is Carslbad Caverns, which is great, and up the road from Roswell, around the sleepy town of Portales is where the original Clovis Man was found.
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Sunday 26th October 2014 16:32 GMT Alan Brown
environmental chamber....
"There are doubts the Energizer Ultimate Lithium batteries, which power the whole shebang, will deliver sufficient juice as the temperature drops."
This would be an afternoon wheeze in a suitable environmental chamber.
If you asked nicely I'm sure one of the UK's university space science labs would oblige (partial pressure, plus bright sunlight, plus low temperature atmosphere....), but otherwise it's something which can be knocked up with a suitable vacuum pump, spotlights and liquid nitrogen cooling loop.
Biting the hand that feeds IT
