ANEWBALLOONSAT AIRFRAME DESIGN

摘要

Since starting my dissertation on the effects of BalloonSats on student attitude toward science, I've been giving some thought to the design of the BalloonSat airframe. This is partly because I already have a good BalloonSat flight computer design and would like an airframe design to match. Somehow, just giving students six sheets of Styrofoam and asking them to make an airframe seems crude and undeveloped in comparison. For readers not familiar with CubeSats, they are small satellites that follow a simple design standard. CubeSats are 10 centimeter cubes containing a flight computer, sensors, batteries, and solar cells. All the components are stacked together like the shields of an Arduino. Then, solar panels are clipped to the outside faces of the stack. Many