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NASA Launches Largest Single-Cell Balloon
hohosforbreakfast writes "According to CNN, NASA launched the largest single-cell, fully-sealed balloon ever from Australia. This thing is supposed to be as large as a football (American) stadium once it's fully inflated, and flies 20 miles high. It'll circumnavigate the globe and then be landed by remote control in Australia. It looks like this flight is a proof-of-concept, but more flights, lasting 100 days each, are planned. Looks like an interesting alternative to satellites for certain observations. The official site is here."
NASA doesn't leave the balloon material in the wild. The balloons as they fall are tracked and recovered. NASA takes immense precautions when it comes to impacting both human life and wildlife. Please note that I'm being very serious about this, and not joking nor quoting some propaganda - having worked on a ballooning project, I know that the mission priorities come second to both human life and environmental impact. This is extremely frustrating sometimes, especially when you hope to get 40 hours at float, but, it's a good policy.
As an example, have you ever seen a scientific balloon up? Not unless you live in a few select areas of the country - ones with immense wide open spaces where a balloon's descent can be controlled accurately (New Mexico is one of them - Fort Sumner, to be specific). The instrument has to be recovered (you want it to fly again, after all) and so you recover both it and the balloon.
There's no danger to wildlife in this case. That factor has already been considered.
The balloon isn't an alternative to commercial satellites - it's an alternative to scientific satellites.
It's cheap and effectively gets you out of the atmosphere. That's all you need for scientific experiments.
Plenty of science has actually already been done on balloons, and plenty of traditional science is migrating to balloons because of the cost advantage. Telescopes, for instance, are excellent candidates for balloon flights, if you can work out a few kinks here and there (pointing). The main disadvantage had been the float time - measured in hours previously. The ULDB will eliminate that disadvantage, and hopefully, ULDBs will start replacing many satellite missions which could have functioned fine on balloons.