[ATM] wire spider ready!

[Roman Toledo <rtoledo2002@yahoo.com>]

>From: "Mel Bartels" <mbartels@bbastrodesigns.com>


> I wonder what the weight difference is bewteen aircraft cable and
> aluminum tubes ?  I seems to me the tubes would be lighter?


>The goal is to get this 'rest of the mount' to weigh much less than
the
>primary, somewhere close to 1/2 of the primary weight.

>Remember that telescopes functionally (well, actually any structure) 
>can be
>decomposed into compression and tension members.  The tension members 
>are
>eligible for wires and the compression members need only enough 
>dimension
>(weight, thickness of tube walls) to avoid collapse.

>Mel Bartels

     Your last sentence reminds me of when I was a teenager and fell in
love with Fuller's Geodesic domes, I built several of them, read all
the books I could find, the last one I built in Florida stood a couple
of hurricanes until my dad sold the house.  It was 10' diameter .  I
almost ended up building one to live in, but the wife and kids just put
a end to that crazy idea.

    Last year while doing a garage cleaning I found a my very first
model I made it was 3' diameter, made from 1/2" wood and cut pipes for
struts and wire to tie it all up, my son was standing on it and could
take his weight.

    Back to the topic, I'm thinking (if I have the patience) of making
it out of ALL aluminum, tig weld it all up, and use 1/4" aluminum
square tubing.  Thing is I can't handle my downgrade from 10" to my 3".


    Friday night was extremely clear, I finally found M13 (I think seen
it only 3 times) with that 3", it was faint and fuzzy as all heck, but
it was beatiful!

Roman Toledo

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