Training
We would like to know how the training programme for the brave Playmonaut is going.
The fitness of the pilot is essential when the balloon goes up.
Fans of the Low Orbit Helium Assisted Navigator (LOHAN) spaceplane project should mark Saturday 13 July in their diaries, because that's when our elite team will once again assemble in Blighty's Baikonur* for the second test flight of the Special Project Electronic Altitude Release System (SPEARS) board. Click here for a …
In addition to the Pi-on-high stuff mentioned, are you gonna have the live feed from the launch again (and the one from the car as you lot go chasing about the Home Counties trying to recover the thing)?
It was quite a fun Saturday morning last time watching you lot rush around and joining in the community chat for the "unofficial" running commentary. Although if so this time don't forget that taking the phone which is providing the uplink away from the camera will result in frozen pictures and irritated audience of commentards ;)
But in any case traditional pints to be raised, and best of luck to our Playmoclone bravely stepping into the still-damp shoes of his predecessor.
Could it be useful to be able to destruct the balloon when it flies outside of the desired area, on command from the ground (if you have an upstream radio channel), or automatically by analysing the GPS data? Would have saved the payload on the last test flight.
Hi Eugene,
The loss of the payload last time was due to some dodgy weather data, we have a plan to verify the data prior to the launch this time (a smaller balloon going up a hour or so before).
Autonomous flight termination is possible and yes we have code to geofence an area and take appropriate action should we leave that area.
Due to the radio laws in the UK remote termination of the flight is possible but quite complex and a bit hit and miss, I doubt we have the time to implement this. You can use a Rockblock to do this but we lost the one they gave us :/
Cheers,
Anthony