I think you've earned your bank holiday beers thanks to "The grease and Teflon are more slippery than a lard-rubbed Spanish politico wallowing in a tub of eels".
Teflon slips smoothly over LOHAN's mighty rod
Our audacious Low Orbit Helium Assisted Navigator (LOHAN) project is advancing rapidly on multiple fronts, and as well as mission control boards and fantastical flying trusses, we've been able to dedicate some time to the icy issue of the controversial Vulture 2 launch rod. Click here for a bigger version of the LOHAN graphic …
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Friday 24th August 2012 10:27 GMT David_H
Units or you nits?
"It's merely for illustrative purposes, and is therefore neither to scale, nor an accurate reflection of the final design of the Vulture 2 and its exact position under the truss."
"LOHAN regulars will note we've reduced the size of the aluminium plate behind the spaceplane..."
No we won't! See first quotation.
Good luck!
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Friday 24th August 2012 12:27 GMT Ru
Why an unsupported rod?
I'd have thought something like these (sorry; couldn't find a noncommercial link at short notice) supported rails would have formed a more stable, solid platform. Making a suitably robust bearing sleeve to stop the plane jamming or falling off doesn't seem like a massive difficult task. Hell, you could have two rails and a lightweight launch carriage (to prevent racking).
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Friday 24th August 2012 12:52 GMT Lester Haines
Re: Re: Why an unsupported rod?
Here's why: it's the simplest solution, which is the way we like our solutions. I can't honestly see any problem here, or why we'd need rails/guides/whatever. A 10mm titanium rod around 1.5-2m long is not going to buckle/wobble/break, even at -60 degs C.
As LOHAN regulars know, we do take readers' advice on board, but someone has to make the final decision, otherwise we'd be debating every minute detail of the mission until the cows come home.
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Friday 24th August 2012 12:30 GMT Anonymous Coward
LOHAN could be doing too much swinging....
Even with foam and teflon, LOHAN's wings could get damaged with all that swinging going on. Especially at -20 the foam probably won't be that soft.
Maybe the teflon could be brought down on either side to just a few mm above the wings, so that there's less room to swing. Still enough room to get a bit of swinging going, so nothing gets stuck, but not so much that any damage can be done.
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Friday 24th August 2012 20:02 GMT Entropy_K1d
Solid body rotation when the motor fires
Slippery indeed. I'm worried that because the thrust vector of the motor doesn't point through the center of mass of the complete truss/vehicle, when the motor ignites, even though there is minimal friction between the teflon and the rod, the resulting moment will cause the complete truss/vehicle assembly to rotate. Of course LOHAN won't be on the rod for very long, but there will still likely be enough rotation to mean LOHAN potentially goes straight up into the balloon.
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Saturday 25th August 2012 20:22 GMT Andus McCoatover
Re: Solid body rotation when the motor fires
Think that was the reasoning for the (IMHO) very smart decision to add a vane to the truss' tail. I think that'll give it enough stability to ensure that, when the LOHAN finally farts, the truss will be stable enough for enough time that it'll be irrelevant.
(Given the very reduced air pressure up there, I'd have gone for a couple of those Holy Bricks in previous pics. for stability, but the lads at SPB know what they're doing)
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Monday 27th August 2012 04:00 GMT Mike Manes
Icing paranoia
Out of 180 high altitude balloon flights, the only times when we've encountered icing problems is when flying through low-altitude clouds, where the dew point was just a tad above freezing. And except for the one where we launched in pouring rain (a rarity in Colorado!), the only icing we observed during ascent was frost on the camera viewport glazing. This is because the latent heat in the materials kept the temp high enough to get us thru those risky regions, In the rainy case, our mechanical burst-sensing release mechanism did indeed freeze up and brought the shards back home. So rather than deal with the risks of excessive viscosity of lubricants, I'd recommend simply not ascending through clouds. Which I presume excludes launching from the plains in Spain :=P.
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