Daily Archives: November 3, 2009

Re-installing rotor blades on a helicopter

The helicopter used for the Space Elevator Games, a McDonnell Douglas MD530FF, was trucked in from its base in Washington.  The rotor blades were taken off for transport and consequently had to be re-installed when it got to NASA-Dryden.

This occurred on Monday morning and I filmed part of it.  During filming, I misspoke and said that the mechanics were reassembling ‘the rotor’ – of course I meant the rotor blades.

[youtube]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SaDPB6hcWC4[/youtube]

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Piece of cake…

Dry run; so far, so good

Some wind issues cropped up during the first helicopter flight necessitating a ‘re-thinking’ of some of the flight procedures.  Once those were ironed out, the helicopter ascended again and we were able to see a battery-powered climb (using the KC Space Pirates) climber all the way to the top, and with a successful descent and recovery.

The helicopter was getting a bit low on fuel, so it is being refueled and will then bring the cable aloft again.  LaserMotive is next up to do a battery powered climb and then USST.

If you go to http://www.ustream.tv/channel/Space-elevator2, you can watch the action live.  You can also log into the chat (if you have a Twitter account) and ask questions – I’ll be moderating this.  I also have a mike and will try some commentary too.

Finally, you can get up-to-the minute status comments at www.twitter.com/segames.

I don’t want to jinx anything, but all is looking very good!

Status – doing a dry run…

I’m sorry for the lack of posts in the past couple of days.  Lots of work trying to get the official site of the Space Elevator Games updated, plus getting uStream to work with us, plus getting the media center ready, etc…

The status right now (9:20am, Pacific time), is that they’re getting ready to do a ‘dry run’.  There was an all-hands meeting this morning where all the procedures were gone over.  A few holes were found, but nothing major.  The crew and teams are out on the lakebed getting ready to try everything out so that when the competition starts (tomorrow), hopefully most of the bugs will be out of the system.

If you go to the official site of the Games, and click on the Live Coverage button at the top, you’ll see the Twitter feeds, more photos from the Games and, hopefully, Live TV via uStream.

Right now, the official Games site is tuned different uStream channel so if you want to watch the Dry Run activities today, go to URL http://www.ustream.tv/channel/space-elevator2.  At the moment there is video only, but we should have commentary going out on it to today (certainly by tomorrow).

A couple of blog photos for you.  The first is moonrise over the desert – the picture doesn’t capture how beautiful it was.  The vehicles / trailers in the foreground, under the moon, is the operations center out on the lakebed.

The second photo is of Doug Uttecht, our helicopter pilot.  A lot is riding on his competence and from everything we’ve seen, the confidence in him is well placed.

The Games are still scheduled to start tomorrow morning at 7:00am, Pacific time.  Stay tuned!