Thank you for White Star

[stea...@gmail.com]

Hello all,
I want to thank you all for the contributions you all have made to make White Star possible. It's been incredibly difficult, and it was even harder to say 'cut it', on launch day, to so many of our science experiments that weren't ready. I in the end, though, I think we made the right decision to fly - we earned a flight, and our work deserved a chance to stand on it's own.

I was very careful that we didn't sacrifice safety through any decisions I approved, and sometimes really had to call on many years of balloon launches to make decisions that had no time for research and discussion. It was all executed flawlessly and tirelessly by the mission control and launch teams. I'm proud of all of us.

While we didn't accomplish all of our science goals, what we have done will further the state of amateur ballooning as we had hoped. There is still work to be done to publish the info in a useable manner, but Brad and I will work on that slowly this summer, and welcome collaboration.

Some of the highlights:
Iridium sat modem Arduino shield - proven circuit
Iridium sat modem AVR/Arduino code - proven
Iridium email attachment processing
Hybrid latex-zp flight performance - excellent smooth transition to float with no overshoot
Lithium battery welding
Many safety procedure recommendations
Automatic Hysplit data processing
PubNub tracking data distribution


I think that we had adequate safety plans to fly in the airways. However, those plans turned out to be too much work for amateurs to have time for. After the immense difficulties in finding enough people make the complicated White Star safety system work, I have to recommend to future balloonists:
Do not float in congested attitudes around 25,000ft to 40,000ft unless you are carrying ADS-B.

Thanks,
Dan