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### Email from Heather Goss (8/25/10)
(DCist, <http://dcist.com/profile/dcist_heather/posts>)
"I'll probably run most of this as a straight interview -- if it helps,
answer lengths of a sentence or two, to a paragraph are usually good,
unless it requires a more detailed answer. Can't wait to hear more!
- Can you tell me a little about HacDC? How did you get involved? What
kinds of other big projects have you done?
The official description of what we are can be found at
<http://hacdc.org/about/>. The shorter version is that HacDC is a
member-supported space dedicated to making things by inventing,
extending and repurposing new and junked stuff. We also research common
interests by forming working groups and building projects, and building
associations with like minded communities of interest, in DC and beyond.
The general public is welcome to all events and is encouraged to join
the hacker space.
I \[Alberto\] came to HacDC via DorkbotDC, the DC chapter of the
international group of *people to doing strange things with
electricity.* Two of our members, Nick Farr and Adam Koeppel were
DorkbotDC regulars and they germinated the idea to form a hacker space
on DC. Parallel to their efforts to raise enough charter members to rent
a space, a joint DorkbotDC and HacDC build-a-thon event was planned at
the Koshland Museum of Science, spearheaded by DorkbotDC regular Mark
Adams. The first friends and members of HacDC came from that community.
HacDC is a relatively young organization but has organized several
workshops aimed at teaching the basic skills necessary to be able to
approach present and past technology with the creative mindset to mutate
it in an innovative or idiosyncratic way. HacDC maintains a wiki with
much of the organization's history (in progress) including ongoing and
past projects: <http://wiki.hacdc.org/>
- Tell me about Hackerspaces in Space. What was the goal? How many
groups were involved?
The Hackerspaces in space contest was initiated by Workshop 88
(http://www.workshop88.com/), a hackerspace in Chicago. According to
their website, 19 groups are involved from as far away as Thailand. The
contest officially ended on August 31st. The rules are here:
<http://www.workshop88.com/space/assets/download2.php> and include rules
on cost, launch and recovery team size. Scoring criteria include
retrieval time, weight of package, and cost. Our working group was code
named the **Spaceblimp Project** because **Near-Space Balloon Project**
didn't have the same ring to it; besides, Spaceblimp has a certain 70s
disaster movie feel to it and this whole thing could have turned out to
be so much pie in the sky. The team included a small core group of very
talented and motivated people who dedicated many, many hours of
planning, design, experimentation/prototyping, fabrication, funding, and
good ol'sweat. It was their commitment and dedication that made this
happen.
- What was your experience building the spaceblimp? Did you have any
interesting challenges to overcome? How long did it take to build the
blimp?
The rules were pretty limiting and we're still not sure where we rank.
We learned that it's quite difficult to get a balloon into near space
cheaply. There are also regional differences in materials/supplies
pricing that give a relative advantage to some groups. We lost one
balloon the week before the successful launch and that was traumatic and
demoralizing. We had to weigh the desire to add redundant systems and
more sensors—both of which would have allowed us to account for more
contingencies—against the need to keep the payload light. As with most
projects, the highly motivated few who drove the process had the most to
lose so they were more nervous than the bystanders on launch day.
- What was launch day like? (I'm curious more about everyone's
feelings/reactions than a blow-by-blow of the day. Also can you give
me the nitty gitty -- time, location, how long did it run.) Did
anything surprising or crazy happen?
The final launch took place on August 21, at Camp Spring, MD. The jet
stream was acting crazy so the balloon deviated from the original
prediction. The team was divided into launch and recovery subgroups.
They both became parts of the chase team once the balloon was aloft. The
stats on the launch can be found on the wiki:
<http://wiki.hacdc.org/index.php/HacDC_Spaceblimp#Documentation>
> "My feeling, at least, was excitement mingled with extreme dread; we'd
> lost the last capsule pretty badly, and if this one didn't make it we
> would completely miss the competition deadline. I really wanted to see
> it all go well, and it's really thrilling to do that countdown and
> release it into the sky," recalls Tom Cohlmia.
The package descended a short distance from a private residence's pool,
just beyond reach from outside the fence. Nobody was home and we were
faced with a dilemma, jump the low fence and grab the package, or wait
until the owners arrive? The decision was made for us as the owners' car
pulled up. Our efforts turned to explaining to them why a group of
people were congregated at the edge of their relatively rural property.
They were amenable and allowed us to retrieve the package and go on our
way. We gathered at a church up the road and converged there with the
rest of the chasers. We cracked the "launch box" open and let it warm up
a bit before pulling the SD card and transferring the images: without a
photograph of the curvature of the planet, we would have nothing except
a fun chase. As the images of blackness the of space appeared on the
laptop, there was a great cheer.
- What were the results of HacDC's launch in particular? Was it
successful? How high did it go? And were you able to recover your
payload? Did any other blimps achieve something spectacular?
> "Ours was a big success! The payload went to 60,000 feet, and then
> parachuted back to the ground. The payload was found in someone's
> backyard, a few feet from their swimming pool. Everything was intact,
> though, and the pictures turned out great. Total time from launch to
> recovery, 1 hr 33 mins, traveling 27 miles as the crow flies."
- What are the applications of the spaceblimp project? (What kinds of
research can be done with blimps, and/or can even the process of
developing new near-spacecraft like this help us in other ways?)
We look forward to launching another balloon without having to worry
about meeting contest criteria. We're talking about adding an
accelerometer, several cameras with faceted mirror array to get many
angles at once, and perhaps including video.
There are a wide range of applications to this kind of technology, all
of which have the potential of engaging communities at the grass roots
level in the observation and analysis of the kind of scientific data
collected from (near)space. Given the controversies over issues like
global warming, land use, environmental disaster (yes, BP and Exxon, we
are looking at you,) having a means for communities to monitor and
record their own world and the changes in it is increasingly important.
This technology greatly democratizes access to most of the value of a
space program (satellites, etc.) without the cost. A relatively small
group can monitor air quality, haze, temperature, radiation, and many
other factors live and near-real time from 60,000 to 120,000 feet for
very little money—without dependence on large government agencies or
commercial organizations.
In addition, the project provides a really exciting platform for a range
of educational opportunities- all of which include the excitement of
seeing the student's own work go into (near)space! We have had both
school-age kids and teachers participate in our activities, and everyone
went away excited about participating, along with being very interested
in perhaps doing their own near-space balloon launch in the future! One
thing is for certain: kids really "get it" about the fun and potential
of high-altitude balloon launches!
"If there's anything else you want to add, please let me know! Also,
please send along any helpful links (I've got the ones to HacDC,
Hackerspace, and the Flickr page), as well as a short bio describing you
and anyone else who responds. Thanks!"
### Some quotes from the number crunching
From an email dated 8/21/10:
> Woot! And because I just can't look at the raw numbers without my
> graphing fingers getting all itchy....
>
> [1](http://www.jerkpile.com/spaceblimp/altitude_time.pdf) is the
> rise/fall profile. Kinda boring. For more fun, have a look at
> [2](http://www.jerkpile.com/spaceblimp/riseSpeed_time.pdf), which is
> calculated by differencing altitude and time, and dividing. Nice
> freefall until the chute opens!
>
> Many graphs just confirm stuff was working. gpsSatellites_time.pdf and
> gpsHeading_time.pdf, for instance.
>
> The two temperature graphs, temp_time.pdf and temp_altitude.pdf give a
> good idea of how cold it is up there (-50C Brrr...) and an test of our
> improved insulation -- we bottomed out at a positively summery 6C.
>
> The neatest (IMO) is
> [3](http://www.jerkpile.com/spaceblimp/windspeed_altitude.pdf) which
> shows the balloon's lateral travel as a function of its altitude,
> which is a good guess at windspeed. There's four points, one each for
> the GPS's speed variable and a calculated speed (from differencing
> location and time) and one each for rising and falling. Overall, a
> decent profile of winds aloft.
>
> All files are hosted up on a bazaar repo at
> [4](http://www.jerkpile.com/spaceblimp/). You can browse it directly.
> blimp2_eeprom_log.txt has a copy of the raw data (thanks Nick), and
> analyseBlimp.R has my R code for all the graphs. (apt-get install
> r-base or just google "R"). — Elliot Williams