Perish the Thought!

And now, for something totally different... the chemical engineer is posting (instead of the three network engineers).

A lot has happened since the last post. Now we're working some on the mechanical engineering parts of the project: putting together the payload and connecting it to the balloon. A week ago Sunday, we made a trip to Lowe's to buy some of the nuts and bolts (literally) of the project. (When we figure out exactly what pieces end up as a part of the final project, we'll list them here.) We met at Dale's to work on building the payload.

We got a medical-grade styrofoam cooler, which came in a box like this one that Erin is modeling for us.

Dale and Alli drilled some holes into the cooler to push through two threaded metal rods, which were cut from a single 3-foot span. Unfortunately, the threads got crushed from being held in a vise to be cut, so we ended up breaking the rods and stopped for the day.