For the obvious reasons, I invariably get too busy to blog exactly when things get interesting...
KCSP's Ryan monitoring the climber tracking system
KCSP's tracking system showing nice performance (The green laser sits right at the center of the Red beacon)
KCSP's optical system, showing the path of the green practice low-power laser
For calibration, the beam exits through this opening, traveling horizontally. During the games, the beam will exit through a similar aperture in the roof of the trailer.
The pirates are back in force this year, no longer relying on helio beaming – this year it is lasers, and only lasers…
This series of images shows the transmitting end of the system – the beam director. During the games, the beam director is fed 8 kWatts of photonic power delivered by fiber optic from TRUMPF’s laser truck. During practice, the fiber optic is replaced by a green low-power laser designator, so the system is eye-safe.
KCSP’s robotic mirror senses the position of the Red beacons attached to the climber, and aims the laser beam into them. This tracking method (called TTL, or through-the-lens) has the advantage that if atmospheric disturbances affect the beam going out, they also affect the image of the beacon coming in, and so the effect cancels out.
The image of the target is produced by the beam-monitoring camera, which is a safety feature designed to show us where the system is aiming, just so we have a sanity check on the state of the tracking system – we’d like to know if it is oscillating, or dead, or maybe just lost, so we can shut off the beam. Ideally, throught the climb, the image on the screen will always have the climber sitting steadily at its center, even though the background sky will be moving.
To the unaided eye, btw, the competition lasers are invisible (they are in the Infra-Red part of the spectrum) but the tracking cameras will pick them up just fine.
An interesting feature of the optics box are the blue air tubes (with the orange nozzles) which serve to keep the optics cool – with 8 kWatts of power going through them, even high-quality optics get warm, and the change in temperature can cause them to reduce the quality of the beam. The whole box is also pressurized with clean air, so dust is kept out – dust particles can both damage the lens mechanically, or become local heating spots that will damage it thermally once the beam is turned on.
The Kansas City Space Pirates are:
- Rich Brull
- Ravi Durgavathi
- Terry Fredrick
- Chad Hampy
- Duane Johnson
- Martin Lades
- Dan Leafblad
- Warren Moore
- Frank Smith
- Ryan Smith
- Don Stowers
- Brian Turner – Captain