Ping Pong Balls in Space
Kirt's Cogitations™ #106

RF Cafe University "Factoids," "Kirt's Cogitations," and "Tech Topics Smorgasbord" are all manifestations of my ranting on various subjects relevant (usually) to the overall RF Cafe theme. All may be accessed on these pages:

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Ping Pong Balls in Space

JP Aerospace, "America's OTHER Space Program," as it likes to be known, uses it West Texas Space Port in Fort Stockton to launch ping pong ball payloads to the edge of space. Supported by big industry and mom & pop operations, JPA offers the spaceflight service free of charge to school kids in order to promote aerospace exploration and science. A variety of helium-filled balloons and sounding rockets have carried as many as 300 ping pong ball microexperiments in a single PongSat mission. The JPA team, consisting of about 50 volunteers, has been at it for over 20 years. "Shaking up old notions is core to what we're all about. That's how we fly paper rockets to Mach three or space flights for thousands instead of billions of dollars," says founder John Powell.

Johanson Technology Prototyping Kit - RF Cafe

RF Cafe began life in 1996 as "RF Tools" in an AOL screen name web space totaling 2 MB. Its primary purpose was to provide me with ready access to commonly needed formulas and reference material while performing my work as an RF system and circuit design engineer. The World Wide Web (Internet) was largely an unknown entity at the time and bandwidth was a scarce commodity. Dial-up modems blazed along at 14.4 kbps while tying up your telephone line, and a lady's voice announced "You've Got Mail" when a new message arrived...