EP#64: Stanford Student Space Initiative with Sasha Maldonado and Paige Brown

Podcast Notes

• Our guests this week are Sasha Maldonado and Paige Brown of the Stanford Student Space Initiative.
• Sasha Maldonado
  • Stanford junior majoring in Electrical Engineering.
  • Now retired avionics lead on the ValBal project, and has been with the project since its inception.
  • Co-presidents of the Student Space Initiative, also known as SSI, , and is working on electronics for an SSI-built satellite payload.
• Paige Brown
  • Stanford freshman majoring in Chemical Engineering
  • The mechanical engineering lead on the ValBal project, and also helps manage flight control logistics.
  • Outside of SSI, she works in an environmental engineering lab on phosphate pollution remediation in storm water through chemical absorption.
• ValBal
  • A novel, low cost high-altitude balloon system that achieves multi-day flight using inexpensive latex balloons by automatically venting lifting gas and dispensing ballast to maintain altitude.
  • Latex balloons typically cost little more than a hundred dollars, but in normal use fly for only a couple hours, rising until reduced atmospheric pressure causes the balloon to stretch beyond its limits.
  • The system, known as ValBal, can fly multi-kilogram payloads for multiple days for approximately $1000, offering a 10-100x improvement in cost and superior altitude control when compared with other scientific balloon systems.
• Project has been featured on Hack-a-day for the longest flight duration of a latex balloon.
• Worthwhile Links
  • Live balloon tracking
  • ValBal launch summary video
  • ValBal technical paper
  • SSI Twitter
  • SSI Facebook
  • SSI website

Special thanks to whixr over at Tymkrs for the intro and outro!