ABSTRACT

On October 14, 2012 a man jumped from a space capsule at 128,000 feet to earth and lived to talk about it! Come join us to hear first-hand from Bill Dodson, a member of the team of engineers who made this possible!

Bill's talk will be on the design issues and learning curve involved with designing and testing the Red Bull Stratos system, culminating with a 128,100 foot record altitude jump and the first person to go supersonic (Mach 1.24) in free fall. As with any cutting edge program, finding the right materials for the application were a big issue, particularly when the environment includes vacuum and temperature extremes, and no qualified COTS equipment exists.

BIO

Bill has an FAA A&P license in '75 at Northrop Tech, and a BS Aero from Cal Poly SLO in '81. He wanted to do aerodynamics exclusively, but when AeroVironment had an opening for a structural analyst, he became one and has pretty much been doing structures and flutter since, for the likes of Scaled Composites, Ferranti, XCOR, and the AFFTC at Edwards. He deviated into the movie and automotive design industry for a few years to learn CNC, CAM & machining, worked on Batmobiles, among other cars.

He has built model airplanes since age 10, flying hang gliders since '74, and sailplanes since '85. The Stratos gondola will be his second vehicle in the Smithsonian's Air and Space museum, and is the 4th world record setting program he worked on (others include speed for a man powered aircraft, solar powered aircraft/propeller altitude record, and altitude for a given weight category - Proteus). He is particularly proud of a 24 minute flight with a 1/2 gram rubber powered model, and will make a try at the "40 minute club" soon. He has flown 123 miles in a hang glider, and over 400 in a sailplane, and have a goal of breaking 620 miles (1000 Km)

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