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Here’s the latest from the most recent LaunchPSU team (a Junior/Senior-level design course ME406 at PSU Dept. Mechanical Engineering. The class also benefits greatly from ‘extra-PSU’ professionals on the team!)…

At 5:30 on 5/30 we launched a 3000g Latex balloon carrying a 7lb payload from our campus in downtown Portland, Oregon, 2007. As usual, the mission was not without adventure. Here are the stats…

This was our first H₂ launch so we had to take many precautions on the ground during the fill procedure, and it worked out well. We launched from the 7^th story roof of a campus parking garage. Because of the ‘city launch’ we had to obtain special approval from the FAA (both PDX and SEA). This turned out to be important because we first traveled east over the airport (PDX) and then west back over downtown before landing on (or just off) the freeway at the confluence of I-405 and I-5. See the flight attached map for the balloon track. Unbelievable. See the movie too. Most people hearing of our mission said “you’re probably going land on a freeway?” We did, just 2.4 miles from the launch location. The balloon reached 113,790ft elevation and carried a high resolution panoramic 3-camera platform taking images every 8 seconds. We are still processing those images only two (‘unstitched’) of which are attached to give you an idea. Also onboard were an additional digital camera, and temperature, pressure and GPS tracking equipment. For tracking in the city we learned that one hardly needs tracking equipment on the ground since findu.com is so effective (for this flight for example, see  www.db0anf.de/hamweb/aprsdb/showdata.php which is updated promptly during the flights).

There were several firsts in this project for us, but we always seem to learn the same old, but vital, lesson…that after design and component fabrication, we must work hard to demonstrate complete system performance by test. Maybe someday I will learn how to teach this concept. But maybe it is just for all of us to experience. The example for this launch, our cameras lost synch with our controller after the first 140 images (ea), at about 40,000ft elevation. We learned after the fact that a full system test would have uncovered the flaw. So we certainly did not see it all and missed an absolutely beautiful day > 110,000ft. Bummer. But we still got good images over Portland which was our central objective, and it just means we will have to fly again. We must…we just have to…we get to. I’ll buy the Hydrogen.

keep going up there if you can, it’s beautiful.