PARIS goes to 60,000 feet, without leaving the ground

The Paper Aircraft Released Into Space (PARIS) team took a day trip to QinetiQ in Farnborough yesterday in order to use a hypobaric chamber to test the plane's release mechanism. The chamber is a pleasingly old-school lump of iron which is controlled not with some la-di-dah user interface but with large, red-painted wheels. …

[Anonymous Coward]

Pushing The Envelope...

PARIS joins the Ten Mile High Club. Neat.

[RyokuMas]

Better yet...

... apparently there's going to be a video of it!

I'll get me coat.

[Tim #3]

and even better

This one has a couple of technical chaps involved, so one of them might hold the camera in a nice steady manner.

[Eddy Ito]

Pardon

Perhaps you shouldn't be relying on Boyle's Law (p*V=constant), instead try the combined gas law (p*V/T=constant) and account for temperature. Since temp is not going to be constant between sea level (~295 K) and 60,000 feet (~217 K) you might not climax as early as you'd like, not that I think PARIS would mind. Yes, it'll be cold but you won't have trouble keeping it up, you also might want to use a dry gas to prevent condensation and icing.

[john oates]

Re: Pardon

Hello,

We were worried about condensation, but aren't now. And some form of heating device might be involved to try and keep a constant temperature...

Lester will reveal all later.

cheers

john

[Eddy Ito]

isothermal

A heater is an interesting concept but I still wonder if the isothermal approach is the best. It might be better to try an adiabatic (isentropic) pressure calculation that doesn't consume precious battery power on a nichrome wire.

[VeganVegan]

Returning the favour

Nice to see PARIS getting the air sucked out of her...