3… 2… 1… lift off!  La Colombe Draft Latte is in stores now – to celebrate, we’re sending their draft latte to space!  The Oat Foundry faithful engineers Jim & Luc drove 12 hours out to Muskegon, Michigan to prep and execute the launch.

Our engineers started by designing and building a rig (revised based on an initial test launch) here at our shop outside of Philadelphia, PA.  After driving the rig and launch supplies (read – giant tank of helium) out to Michigan, the Oat Foundry team launched the rig, GoPro’s securely attached filming the flight.

When it came time to recover the craft, there was just one problem – the GPS locator on the rig had stopped tracking!  Our team scoured the area for hours looking for the craft, alas, in the midst of the snow, we could not track it down.

                                                                                                      – time for contingency –

We had brought enough supplies to launch a second rig assuming failure of any of the GoPro cameras – what we had not accounted for was our GPS tracker failing – and not being able to recover any part of the initial launch.  Luc and Jim stopped by a local hardware store for supplies & tools, and hit up the Best Buy to re-up on GoPro’s and a couple of GPS trackers for redundancy.  In a hotel bathroom in Western Michigan, the guys re-built the rig through the night for a launch the next morning.

The old rig is alive!  Someone had found our old rig stranded in a tree not far from where our predictions had us searching.  The good Samaritan sent our rig back in-tact, footage in tow.