N2EY wrote:
In article ,
(Brian Kelly) writes:
snippage
Lemmee explain it for you: There's a collection of grouchy old farts
including myself with long histories in the real-life engineering
world who also hang out around here and learned a long time ago how to
approach and execute projects like you're now committed to pulling
off. Because that's what we get paid to do. Perhaps wrongly, more
likely not, we don't have a helluva lotta time for approaching
projects like ballooning to 100,000 feet with science fair project
mentalities. Interpret as you will.
The trick is that the volunteer folks don't have the paycheck incentive. Just
the reverse - such a project costs them money! So the motivation has to be
elsewhere.
Then again, I'm not looking for grouchy old farts. If a person is "too
(something)" for the project, then they certainly don't have to help.
There are enough people out there apparently like myself that are too
dumb to know that what we are trying to do can't be done.
It is also a big mistake to take my sales pitch and extrapolate that I
have a science fair mentality. A fair number of engineers have the
"grouchy old fart" problem. That's why they don't do a good job outside
of their respective fields. Ever have a crack engineer explain his
project at a sales pitch?
I don't recall Mike ever saying the first ballon would reach 100,000, nor that
he'd use latex weather ballons, or even helium, or whatever.
The first balloons won't even be free flying. My analysis of other
groups and the problems they have had at times indicates that payload
integration was and is a real problem. The device needs tested properly,
and not just on a bench.
rest snipped
- Mike KB3EIA -