For the obvious reasons, I invariably get too busy to blog exactly when things get interesting...
Stress test week is now officially over. Overall, things went pretty much according to plan, except for the pulley glitch, which prevented us from completing the helicopter test flight. (and of course, this is WHY we test). The upshot of stress test week is therefore as follows:
- The tether system has to be re-flown before we do the games. It is clear we have the basic principle right, but we need to do it perfectly before we can go live. In particular, we need to re-visit the pulley that failed, and either beef it up sufficiently, or put in something along the lines of a fairleads.
- By virtue of going through the procedures once, everyone’s gotten smarter and there are a number of improvements we’d like to add now – and these too need to be tested before the games.
- Kansas City Space Pirates completed the tests. LaserMotive is likely to complete them this coming week. We need to give USST a fair shot, and we’ll use that opportunity to give the rest of the teams another shot at completing their systems.
Juggling the schedules of Dryden, TRUMPF’s team, Aris helicopters and Spaceward personnel, it’s a wonder we could even come up with a schedule that accommodates all the requirements:
- The helicopter re-fly will happen on the week of the original games, on Thursday 7/16 (with Friday as contingency)
- Laser testing round II will occur on the week after that – TRUMPF will fly in on Monday, set up to lase on Tuesday morning through Wednesday (with Thursday as contingency)
- The games will be held on the week of August 3rd – most likley running Wednesday thru Friday, with teams arriving either Monday morning or at the end of the previous week (still to be determined)
And, we’ll still be done just in time for the Space Elevator conference!