Unistellar Industries, LLC

Blog

  • Color Scheme

    From left to right: Ship exterior, interior structural members (rails) and floor, floor accent, interior paneling (HDF). A matte black will be used for some of the avionics, the light gray for the rest.

    110111-concrete_propaganda[1]

    dropship-ir7 dropship-ir8

  • Interior Paneling Template

    The cardboard modelling of the interior paneling couldn’t be going better.  Next step is to transfer the stencil to HDF.

    2013-02-13 22.05.14

  • Work Schedule

    Booked through the end of April.  Big milestone to move outside onto the platform is rapidly approaching and is currently estimated for 3/7.

    2-12-2013 8-23-30 AM

    Finished the front interior framing and started modelling the starboard interior framing using cardboard.

  • Visibility on Venus

    Took the mg/m³ values and tried to figure out how they affected visibility.  I came up with a solid source that stated 0.1 mg/m³ was 7.5 km in dry air (Venus has 0% RH).

    mgm3tokmrelationship

    The plot looks linear but if we extrapolate to 0.001 mg/m³ it would be 750 km in a layer that is purportedly “haze” which is, by definition, 5 km or less. They I ran across this graph that used the Extinction Coefficient instead of density.

    1-s2.0-S0032063310002394-gr13

    Which led me to Koschmieder’s Relationship: If k(e) is σ then V = 3/σ or 3 km at 60 km… seems a little high!  Is that because water droplets are so much larger?  If k(e) is in km then there is no further conversion, right?

  • Interior Framing

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    View of bow framing from inside
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    View of bow framing from outside starboard
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    View of finished interior port framing
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    View of bow framing from outside port
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    Before I cut the masonite I am practicing with cardboard

  • Stationary Orbit Above Venus Clouds

    I performed an interesting exercise over lunch today.  Calculating the geostationary orbit above a floating mine in the clouds of Venus at 50 km AGL.  I used this tool online.

    2-6-2013 1-11-41 PM

    Satellite at altitude 142900.264 km

    630942.04 seconds in a sidereal day, 60.27m/s (216.96km/h) base velocity

    actual g: 8.869399842321876m/s2

    324835411994007.75=GM (μ), 0.01 g (orbit)

    Orbital velocity: 1476.75 m/s (5316.32 km/h)

    Orbital length 633750 seconds (176 hr 2 min 30 sec)

    Max visible latitude: 88 degrees.9260.2km coverage radius
    0.48s/0.5s min/max one-way radio transit time.

    That is considerably lower than the SOI for Venus (616,000 km) and Venus has no moons… much better than I can say for geostationary orbit above a ground position (1,536,647 km) with it’s super slow retrograde rotation (243 days).  But still, that is pretty far away!

    I will leave you with a cloud density profile that I found online.

    1-s2.0-S0032063306001553-gr4[1]

  • Concept Art

    My brother-in-law had some time to sketch ideas for the Dropship (more and more of a departure from the UD-4L just like the interior is) and some concepts for the Venusian Mines.

  • Paragalactic

    An insurance company that covers liability and property for the amusement ride industry recommended that the Engineering and Manufacturing operations (now Unistellar Industries, LLC) be kept separate from the company actually offering the rides to patrons. The new company is called Paragalactic and will eventually become an LLC probably in Q3 of 2014.

    p1 copy

    As Paragalactic will own or lease the simulator attraction, the advertising, scheduling, transportation, and service will be provided by Paragalactic.

    Unistellar Industries, LLC will have to prove ASTM compliance and develop maintenance and inspection recommendations for the product. Paragalactic would then be responsible for complying with those maintenance and inspection recommendations and creating other safety-related objectives like corrals, rails, stairs, DOT compliance, etc.

  • Starboard Interior Wall Frame

    Seems like a simple idea but using the cardboard from the boxes that the last TV came in, I was able to approximate the curves of the wall panels and used a completely different technique on the starboard interior wall framing than the port side. It was so successful, in fact, that I have some reworking to do on the port side to match.

  • 2012 Annual Report

    Here is a cute little recap about the blog performance in 2012 from Jetpack/Wordpress.