Over the past year the story has consistently been the same: people curious about technology show up to see what LVL1 is about. They come in as strangers, but never leave that way. New folks are especially encouraged to attend! There is a huge amount of collective knowledge to share. There are lots of projects to scratch your geek; which could use some extra hands. LVL1 has created a space for these interactions to happen, but even more importantly we’ve created an open community. We’re using the Grand Tuesday 1 year anniversary to celebrate this fact.

There will be snacks and homebrew beer. And like every Tuesday, we’ll have an open build session and lots of geeking out.

All are welcome!

We’ve officially started the LVL1 White Star Trans-Atlantic Balloon Service with one goal: To send a small robotic balloon across the Atlantic Ocean and land somewhere over there on dry land.  No amateur balloon has ever done this.  The farthest amateur flight so far sank just 200 miles short of Ireland – tantalizingly close, but no cigar.

We will be attempting multiple flights to reach this goal, spaced randomly from December of this year to April of next year.  We’ll be doing a short, but high, flight test on October 9th.  This test is to exercise the launch team and raise funds for the 4 to 5 Trans-Atlantic flights we predict will be necessary to refine the system and make it across.  These jet-stream sailing balloons are actually quite complex, and require a few expensive parts.  Still though, each flight of the White Star will be cheaper than most airline seats across the pond!

Come along to our first launch Saturday, Oct 9 at 10am and see the first White Star Balloon take off, dubbed HighBall-1.  Location TBD.  All in LVL1 and the public are invited to participate or spectate as desired.  There will be lots to do, and lots to see over the next few months.    Check our website for more details: WhiteStarBalloon.com and follow WhiteStarBalloon on Twitter and FaceBook for updates.

Now for those technical details that we all love!
To give you an idea of where money would be going, every SpeedBall trans-atlantic flight will cost around $600-700 each:  $100 helium, $300 balloon, $100 telemetry system, $50 GPS, $~100 remaining payload electronics and hardware.

These balloons are small in comparison to anything else that has ever crossed the ocean, but they aren’t small when you’re next to them.  They will be 30-50 feet tall, and be lifting a whopping 12 lbs of payload – a bowling ball’s weight!  We promise not to send a bowling ball to Europe with our name engraved on it though.  Most of that weight will be ballast to drop when the balloon starts to descend from jet-stream cruising altitude (35,000ft).  Software onboard will control the ballast based on GPS and barometric altitude measurements.

We’ll be up there with the jetplanes, so we need to be extra careful that they don’t bump into us.  There will be a constant stream of position reports from us to the 5 North Atlantic Air Traffic Control Centers, in the same format they receive reports from the jet planes.  If we stop hearing position reports from the balloon, that can be dangerous for the jets.  To prevent the balloon from becoming lost, we’ll be sending the balloon a heartbeat ping every few minutes.  If we stop hearing the balloon, we’ll stop sending the heartbeats.   When it misses our heartbeat for more than a few beats, the balloon will rupture and come fluttering gently down from the sky.  Now that’s sexy safety!

More tech info will be discovered upon visiting http://wiki.whitestarballoon.com !

The dust is still settling and the space is still coming together, but please join us for our first open house meeting. Check out the space and see some of our member’s projects. Socialize with fellow tech-minded makers and hackers. Celebrate the end results of a 9 month sprint that took us from an idea to an actual space for Louisville to call it’s own!

Facebook Event

As always; makers, hackers and curious bystanders are welcome to come check us out.

The last round of space voting missed the “Go” vote on Hope Mills by only 1 vote! Could this next round tip the balance? A recent push for Okinawa Health Spa has made it a contender for the top spot. Could this challenger be a LVL1 game changer?! Come to the meeting tonight to find out!

Also, Brian has T-shirts!

We are ready to find a space, but we need help doing so. It is time to commit to being a paying part of this hackerspace. It is also time to talk to those real estate contacts and find a great space. Read this post again.

http://groups.google.com/group/lvl1/browse_thread/thread/a5136f930098ff51

It is just around the corner from BBC. Here is a map.