Well, as of this afternoon, most of the major components for Project DEBO are ordered and either shipping or waiting to ship. Next week should be busy with payload construction and testing. Today saw an order go out for balloons, recovery parachute and the temperature and pressure sensors. Thanks to Dale at orionspyramid, Mark at Rocketchutes.com and the gang at Sparkfun for making spending money sooooo easy. (I'll post something of a technical breakdown for the geek crowd over the weekend.)
Shea had to work through some balloon ascent/parachute descent simulations last night to pin down which balloons and parachute we would order. Once we had that, it was all eCommerce. I think, the only major component still to be ordered is a GPS unit rated to work above 18km. Both units I have here will fail above that. Since we hope to make it to 25-30km, I don't want to lose tracking information for what could be a crucial part of the flight. We'll need some incidentals beyond that (and Helium, can't forget Helium...) but we should have everything needed to put the payload together and start testing.
When you have two scientists for parents, be careful when you say 'I wonder if I could...'.
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