Unistellar Industries

Moment of Inertia

reskin — Tue, 21 Feb 2012 13:09:53 +0000

The original base frame was made of 2×4′s sandwiched between 3/4″ plywood. I hired a structural engineer to estimate the uniform load capacity for the 7′ length of a sistered 2×4 beam and it was only rated for about 500lbs. Since then I have gone back to the drawing board and determined the relative strengths based on Moment of Inertia:

2×4: 5.36
4×4: 12.505
2×6: 20.8 (almost 4x as strong as 2×4)
2×8: 52.73 (almost 10x as strong as 2×4)
2×10: ~115 (more than 20x as strong as 2×4)

Thrust Levers

reskin — Fri, 17 Feb 2012 17:43:12 +0000

After seeing Aliens for the hundredth time this morning (thanks in part to my son) it dawned on me that they don’t have a conventional power quadrant (thrust levers).

I drew on my professional experience flying jet aircraft – manual manipulation of the engine output is dwindling. There are basically 5 modes (detents) on a modern day thrust lever (FADEC):

Takeoff / Go-Around (TO/GA)
Flex/Max Continuous Thrust (FLX/MCT)
Climb (CL)
Forward Idle
Max Reverse

Is it possible to map this control to the flight stick? Because of the VTOL nature of the Dropship don’t we need some kind of fine control? Like in hover – to climb or descend?

I can envision a “auto-hover” which will reduce the pilot workload but what about landing on a grid reference? Using pitch trim in VTOL mode? Not sure what else it would do.

Port Astern Monitor

reskin — Tue, 07 Feb 2012 04:16:16 +0000

Got it 50% mounted this evening. One of the bolts has no access and the other was off by an eighth of an inch!

Acrylic Sheets and Gantt Charts

reskin — Tue, 07 Feb 2012 00:46:00 +0000

The project is getting a little complicated – I am always waiting on a bolt or nut and I stare sometimes for what feels like half an hour before I figure out what I can actually do in a given session. I remember my project managers used Microsoft Project (MSPROJ) years ago and the Gantt chart it produced seemed like it would do the trick. I found a free version online that can import/export MSPROJ files called GanttProject. Here is an example of the current items and their dependencies.

While we are on the subject I started looking around for acrylic sheets. My first inclination was to get a large sheet from Home Depot and then cut it. Somehow I landed on Professional Plastics where they will cut to size and deliver for the same price or less. I am currently working up an order for the 1/8″ thick inner window panes for the six (6) monitors.

Cutting Metal

reskin — Fri, 03 Feb 2012 21:46:48 +0000

After cleaning all the saw dust up I felt confident to do some metal works (grinding). My son thought I looked pretty funny!

Beam splitter

reskin — Sat, 28 Jan 2012 18:05:18 +0000

I received my order from http://telepromptermirror.com today for the HUD!

Left Structural Members Done

reskin — Sat, 28 Jan 2012 04:48:54 +0000

Finally got the left wall structural members cut and installed (they bear the weight of the monitors and provide something to tie the wall frame to).

I already cut a piece for the right side basically mirroring the left side but it isn’t installed yet.

I changed the orientation of the top center monitor to landscape at some point and I had to move done overhead structural members around… The idea was to widen the interior slightly to match newer blueprints that came my way!

Interior Frame Continued

reskin — Sun, 22 Jan 2012 18:38:30 +0000

Forward port monitor framing is complete and I was able to knock out half of the rear port monitor freaking using a piece that was waste from my last post.

Wasted Wood

reskin — Fri, 20 Jan 2012 04:25:52 +0000

Trying to measure the lengths for these multi-angle cuts has wasted time and two 2×4′s. I think I have the hang of it now and after I restock my supplies I will be moving swiftly along with the interior support beams for the side windows/monitors (pink) and the interior wall framing to follow that.

Venus?

reskin — Sat, 14 Jan 2012 17:01:42 +0000

One of the marketing angles we are pursuing is education. Our initial reaction was to provide a Mars experience in the simulator since that is the most prospective place for future colonization. One drawback is that we are lacking technology to render the planet from orbit which would require additional LOE.

Venus is the only other planet anywhere near the habitable distance from the sun. We have been having talks this week to consider Venus.

Imagine yourself 3000 feet under water inside an oven on self-clean and you can appreciate the picture above.

Because if the density at the ground level and the calm surface wind landing will be a cinch. The thick cloud cover is compatible with our rendering engine. There is plenty of atomic hydrogen, oxygen and nitrogen if you have immense power sources.

But why are we there? Is it feasible to have surface, subterranean, tethered or buoyant structures of any purpose?