The mirrors and camera sat on a stepping motorized gimbal ring and platform that I built, shown on the left. The picture on the right shows one of the 2 "saddlebag" boxes that carried the silver batteries and electronics.
The top of the rack attached to a nylon strap which in turn was attached to the bottom of an open parachute. From the top of the 'chute was another nylon strap to a piece of aluminum that was shaped like a Christmas tree. The "tree" plugged into a rather complicated "latch box" and was held in place by "dogs" with explosive bolts that could be fired from the ground to release the package. The "latch box" was tethered to the balloon by another nylon strap.
On the 13th flight Gus the foreman figured why let the difficult to make "latch box" fly away with the balloon and recover the easy to make "tree", so he reversed the setup. The nylon straps between the package/parachute and the parachute/"latch box" plus the nylon parachute cords were stretched out about 30%. When the explosive bolts were fired, the 29 lb "latch box" on the end of these stretched straps shot down through the parachute and wrapped around the package at 113,000 feet. Can you say freefall.
11-09-2003, 09:08 PM
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