[757labs] HackerSpaces in Space 2011

[Steve Nelson]

I just bought a high quality respirator. It's in the solar project drawer in
the back workshop. There is a second one, that's pretty old, but better than
nothing. Anyway, if anyone does try this... wear it. be safe.

It would be fun to find out how much electricity it takes to produce enough
hydrogen to lift the balloon. It has to cost next to nothing. Think about
it... a kwh is like 6 cents. Say converting it to DC will lose 50% then it
loses another 50% from splitting the water. That's 24 cents per kwh. If we
could measure how much hydrogen is produced from running this for 1 hour (or
10 minutes, the time doesn't matter) we could calculate out the total cost.

Do we have a DC generator in the lab?


Steve

On Wed, Oct 19, 2011 at 10:53 AM, Michael Ross <757labs at oneross.com> wrote:

> How to separate hydrogen from oxygen from electrolysis?
>
> Wait, just found an instructable on that:
> http://www.instructables.com/id/Separate-Hydrogen-and-Oxygen-from-Water-Through-El/ (thank
> you gmail delayed send)
>
>
> On Wed, Oct 19, 2011 at 9:39 AM, Steve Nelson <snelson at webapper.com>wrote:
>
>> I'm sure one of you already knows how to store hydrogen in a tank in a
>> professional manner.
>>
>> But what if attached a vacuum pump to Ethan's scuba and sucked out all the
>> air from it, and sealed the tank. It would create a vacuum inside the tank.
>> Then we bubble off some hydrogen from water, open the valve on the tank and
>> the vacuum would suck the hydrogen into the tank.
>>
>> Would that work?
>>
>>
>> Steve
>>
>>
>> On Wed, Oct 19, 2011 at 9:29 AM, Steve Nelson <snelson at webapper.com>wrote:
>>
>>> The scoring seems to really be weighted toward the documentation side.
>>> Probably because they're trying to make a kit that kids could build from. We
>>> should figure out what it will take to score 100 points on the
>>> documentation. That is something we can very easily control.
>>>
>>> How much cheaper is hydrogen to buy than helium? You know... we could
>>> make our own hydrogen. I don't know how you compress it and make it safe,
>>> but all it takes to make it is stick an anode and cathode in a bowl of
>>> water. Hydrogen and oxygen will bubble off.
>>>
>>> I have no idea how much electricity it would take... but electricity is
>>> crazy cheap.
>>>
>>> Steve
>>>
>>> On Wed, Oct 19, 2011 at 1:11 AM, <telmnstr at 757.org> wrote:
>>>
>>>> * Magnetometer - tell the direction
>>>>> * GPS/altimeter -tell altitude
>>>>> *Wiki page - to state what we did (needs to be replicated in kits if we
>>>>> win)
>>>>> * cam
>>>>> * test
>>>>> * under 4 lb and under 300 umm
>>>>> miss anything
>>>>>
>>>>
>>>> Remember, every dollar above $150 counts against you, and $250 is the
>>>> maximum.
>>>>
>>>> Last year, I think the helium and balloon alone ran $100+. And only
>>>> counted the helium we used, the actual cost was over $100 for the gas alone.
>>>>
>>>> We looked at offloading some of it into an aluminum 80cuft scuba tank I
>>>> had. I randomly had an adaptor for filling a specific scuba tank with pure
>>>> o2 from a large tank which looked like it would do the trick, but wisely the
>>>> "K valve" fitting was sized differently. Most likely it's a cautionary thing
>>>> where it's sized different for each gas so they can't be mixed up. So we
>>>> weren't able to safely save any of the excess purchased helium. This time
>>>> around I think balloon gas would be advisable.
>>>>
>>>> I'm really for dropping off at the needed height, and playing the game
>>>> to win.
>>>>
>>>> Remember, it's a challenge to meet the goals of the contest. Those are
>>>> the goals.
>>>>
>>>> HacDC followed up their contest entry with launches that carried the
>>>> cool experamentative payloads with things like high definition video
>>>> cameras.
>>>>
>>>> Another idea might be more of a schedule for the pictures to conserve
>>>> battery power.
>>>>
>>>> Battery was a large cost as well. Last one took 4x lithium batteries.
>>>>
>>>>
>>>>
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>>>> If we knew what we were doing it wouldn't be research.
>>>>
>>>
>>>
>>
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>> If we knew what we were doing it wouldn't be research.
>>
>
>
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