http://www.jpaerospace.com/

can someone please fill me in a bit more, saw the webpage etc but they have seemed to escaped my keen eye! cant say i know too much about these guys! whats the story?
Rob

Today I released their first news and added them to this website:
http://www.xprizenews.org/index.php?cat=42

they where already a few months on the right side bar on our front page.

Beside that, I guess I also wanne have more info about them

I have contacted John and I hope to work with him to get people up to date with what he's trying to achieve with his company.

cheers
i', sure that you will post any updates as soon as you get them, i just downloaded the video. more confused now than when i started looking! have to say though, it is nice to see a player with more than just drawings to promote their ideas! looks like they have a good plan, just wish i knew more about the concepts etc to be able to have an opinion!
Rob

What would you all like to know?

I've been with the team almost 10 years now. Ask away.
I imagine JP will be along shortly too. We were talking about this forum the other night.

If it's ok with you and JP, maybe we should create an official JP Aerospace forum topic or even a whole forum ? (I'm planning to suggest to Armadillo Aerospace also to seperate their topic into a whole new forum)

In about 4 months, this whole website will get a large update, representing the teams, Amarican Space Prize etc a lot more.

Some questions:
Will JP Aerospace compete with the X PRIZE Cups ?
Can you explain how the vehicle to orbit will "reach" orbit and also describe how you're planning to land it back on earth ?
Don't you fear the balloon (if I may call it that way) will get overheated while going back into the atmostphere ?

Also, if you have anny suggestions for this site, please share them with me (xprize@gmail.com).
How more we're able to help you, how more happy we are

I'm willing to drop by to respond whether you make an independent forum or not. It's JP's call, but I'm pretty sure he will like the idea.

Last time I looked at the X Prize Cups, I couldn't quite figure out a way we would qualify. I haven't checked in for awhile, though, so I might be out-of-date by a bit. These airships are big, slow, and probably don't make for exciting TV.

Heating isn't as bad an issue as some might think. Remember that the temperature you reach depends on how fast you convert kinetic energy. A two mile wide object with a low ballistic coefficient will tend to slow down much higher in the atmosphere and take a lot longer to do it. It's the same amount of KE to dissapate, but the duration is likely to be much longer. Heat dissipation is only a danger when high rates are required.

How does it get to orbit? Well... these things are going to be hybrid vehicles. They will wind up as a cross between an airship, airplane, and rocket. The details everyone probably wants to know are probably covered by a trade secret or two right now, so I'm sure readers will groan when I try to dodge talking too much about them. There are a lot of bright people out there, so I'd rather not loose all our best stuff to Boeing until they offer us huge sums of money so I can retire to the South Pacific.

Hello everyone. I have been reading this forum for the last couple of years and found that I would like to comment on this thread.

adiffer wrote:
"I'd rather not loose all our best stuff to Boeing until they offer us huge sums of money so I can retire to the South Pacific."

I kinda thot that a great many companys would be fighting for the dark sky station technology. there are news reports about high altitude balloons that are being used as communications hubs for cell phone and broadband internet use. Out of these systems I would think JPA would have a big jump on the competition.

welcome to the posting members of the forum, you should comment more often, the more active members we have, the more interesting the conversations are

Lots of people are talking about high altitude uses, few are building, and only one that I know of is talking about a long duration station and that's us.

What you're seeing is that one company has painted a long term vision for this technology and the industry. That's us. It's a rare thing in our niche.

Hi there. I've been fascinated by the ATO concept since I heard about it a few years ago. I think that's some real outside the box thinking. If you don't mind, I have a couple things I'd like to ask... If for whatever reason you can't answer them, that's OK.

1.) What happens to the Trans-Atmospheric Ascender if it takes a puncture from a piece of space junk? I have this idea of how I think you would solve this, but I'm not trying to put you on the spot. (Or stick my own neck out;)
2.) What size payloads to orbit are we talking about here?

Hi,

The Transatmospheric Ascender has 20 inner cells. A puncture in any one of the cells will not be a cause to abort a mission. On the 175 foot Ascender(see web site pics) there are six 20 inch diameter Helium vents on the top of the vehicle. Even with all the vents open it will take twenty minutes before the vehicle starts to descend.

The Transatmospheric Ascender is a suborbital, so no orbital payload there. The first orbital will carry a crew of two and only have a small payload carrying ability. The next one on the drawing board will carry a payload of 30,000+ pounds to LEO.

JP
www.jpaerospace.com

I absolutely love the whole airship to orbit concept myself and hope to see you guys succeed with it. One thing I've been wondering about it though is the projected payload costs to orbit. I read once that it was hoped to be something like pennies per pound per mile. So is that counting the amount of miles traveled by the Ascender from the ground launch point to the Dark Sky Station along with the number of miles covered by the orbital airship as well?

I just finished putting up a video section on the JP Aerospace web site. There are clips from the edge of space, from a rocket launch, a new animation and more. We will be adding a new video every week.

It's a mix of different formats. As we get better at the videos we'll add some format and file size options. Please bear with me. All suggests appreciated!

JP

www.jpaerospace.com

fantastic!

Cheers for sharing the videos, i know everyone here appreciates seeing them!

This weeks video on the JP Aerospace web site shows a descent from 94,000 feet.
It's about four minutes of clips from the twenty five minute descent. The vehicle has a parachute but from the camcorder view it looks like a raw fall from the edge of space.
The sound is the best part. Turn up the volume for this one.

It was shot on the Away 17 mission.

JP

http://www.jpaerospace.com