Pretty dead room.. :)

[impala454]

So I went by to check out our Anechoic Chamber Test Facility today (it's in the building I'm working on my payload in). Figured you HTGuide types would enjoy seeing a few pics. The chamber is something like 30'x60'x30' or so, and covered completely in acoustic cones. It's mainly used for testing various antennas and such, although it'd be a heck of a dead room for HT! :P

[aud19]

Cool!

Though if I recall, you don't actually want a "dead" room or the music/sound will sound "flat".

You want an appropriate mix of reflective, absorptive and diffusive surfaces.

Still, maybe you can yank a few panels off the walls and ship them up here for me :

[impala454]

Oh yeah it's the inside of the speaker you want to be dead... so it's like a giant speaker :P

[madmac]

Cool!

Though if I recall, you don't actually want a "dead" room or the music/sound will sound "flat".

You want an appropriate mix of reflective, absorptive and diffusive surfaces.

Still, maybe you can yank a few panels off the walls and ship them up here for me :

Agreed!. I can't stand a dead room. It's even worse if you are a musician. I play acoustic guitar and cannot play in a dead room. Hate it!!. For sound, you want exactly what you described above in my opinion. :T

[wkhanna]

That's too cool, Chuck!
What mission are you working on?

[impala454]

I'm split time on two separate projects right now.

One is called HDEV (High Definition Earth Viewing) and we're building a payload that will get mounted to the ISS in an Earth facing direction. The goal is to test out four COTS cameras for future EVA use. If it works out well though a secondary benefit is they may pipe the video stream to the NASA website and you'll have a 24x7 live HD video feed from the station There should be some amazing video coming from this thing. It's schedule to fly on SpaceX 3, some time in 2013 (though we'll be done with it in about a month).

The other project is called SAFER (Simplified Aid For EVA Rescue). They've had them for a long time but they want to build a new group of them for the station. In the process we're making a few hardware/software updates to the design. Here's a good wiki on it: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Simplif...for_EVA_Rescue

And another project that I'll probably start on soon (the HDEV project is almost complete) is OCO (Orbiting Carbon Observatory). It's a JPL project that lost funding, and was to be a satellite, but now it will be a station payload instead and we've been contracted to make the modifications so it will talk to the station properly. Here's a bit more on that: http://oco.jpl.nasa.gov/

Fun stuff

[JeremyG]

Pretty cool stuff, Chuck!!! :T

[Chris D]

Very interesting, Chuck. I agree, that I've experienced an anechoic chamber myself, and it's very uncomfortable. But neat principles to work with and experience.

What was your thoughts about being inside the chamber?

[Lex]

Anechoic chambers, are uncomfortable for humans, we need things to bounce sound off of for our equilibrium in our ears, without it, you become quite out of balance they say.