Ballooning into Space

flyboy writes: "Two ballooners are going to attempt to get to 132,000 feet in a helium balloon named QinetiQ1. They are going to do this wearing spacesuits and sit in what looks like armchairs in an open gondola. From that altitude the sky is black and you look down on whole countries in one go. It looks like they might actually do it as well, since they have some serious backing, they are sponsored and supported by the former DERA, who have lots of experience in all things aeronautic."

Comments

Whatever happened to the guy in the lawn chair?

[xmark]

Sounds like a lot of hot air to me.

Re:Whatever happened to the guy in the lawn chair?

[Calle Ballz]

He died.

http://www.snopes2.com/spoons/noose/balloon.htm

Ballooning, will it never end?

[DavidBrown]

I wonder how much taxpayer dollars the Coast Guard will spend to fish these guys out of the sea?

It seems like a really cool thing to do here, but I sure hope that QuinetiQ plans for the inevitiable failure. Frankly, the government should rethink its policy and seek reimbursement from thrillseekers.

Re:Ballooning, will it never end?

[sql*kitten]

I wonder how much taxpayer dollars the Coast Guard will spend to fish these guys out of the sea?

It seems like a really cool thing to do here, but I sure hope that QuinetiQ plans for the inevitiable failure. Frankly, the government should rethink its policy and seek reimbursement from thrillseekers.

Apart from the fact that Quinetiq are a British corporation, and operate under the authority of the British government, and are a great deal more effective than NASA are for the US government.

Re:Ballooning, will it never end?

[Tassach]

Ya know, everything in the world DOESN'T have to have scientific value. It's not like this is some government-funded project -- it's a private effort. If some insanely rich guys want to blow a wad of their own money doing somthing silly, what does it matter to you?

Re:Ballooning, will it never end?

[RestiffBard]

ah I have to disagree here. these guys aren't thrill-seekers to my mind. Instead they aer expanders of frontiers. And i say that if nasa isn't going to open up the frontier to the rest of us the way the west was opened up in the 1800s then we should open it ourselves. also the coast guard responds to rescues of private sailing vessels at sea. these are small ships. thats not thrill seeking? I live in a port community and some of the vessels I've seen leave our waters leave a lot to be desired in terms of seaworthiness. the coast guard can pick them up so why shouldn't they pick up some folks that are trying to make life on earth fun? personally I hope they succeed and have a helluva lot of fun doing it. I just hope they take pictures for the rest of us.

Sounds like fun...

[Djere]

It will be interesting to see how they get around the issues of buoyancy in thinner atmosphere and keep the balloon from exploding in a reduced-pressure environment. I'd take a parachute up along with my spacesuit, if I were one of those fellows...

Boy. Parachuting down from 30 miles up would be a hell of a trip. :)

-djere

Re:Sounds like fun...

[psych031337]

Boy. Parachuting down from 30 miles up would be a hell of a trip. :)

But then again, if you do it... WHERE is the next step up? WHAT can you possibly do to get another adrenaline release that does not make you feel like yawning ?

I just posted two links to the Kittinger story. This guy jumped from 18,5 miles straight. You might want to check them out, go to this article.

Re:Sounds like fun...

[the_2nd_coming]

skin diving off the great barrior reef with chum straped to you.

The big question is ...

[SirSlud]

... what is sex like at 132,000 feet under a baloon, in space suits?!

(And what would you call /that/ club? Etc, etc .. )

132,000 feet?

[ekrout]

Hmm, that's around 25 miles away from the surface of the Earth. And they plan on surviving the flight and coming back down to this ever-increasing hell-hole of a planet because...? If I were them, I'd strap a live webcam to myself and see how close I could get to the Sun before my port80 got FUBAR.

;-)

Balloons AGAIN?

[OzJimbob]

Does anyone else out there think they should give up on the whole balloons idea? How many expensive, embarrasing failures have we seen in the last few years?

Re:Balloons AGAIN?

[sql*kitten]

How many expensive, embarrasing failures have we seen in the last few years?

I dunno, how many expensive, embarassing rocket ideas have there been? If this can get you most of the way to near-earth orbit cheaply, then other propulsion to take over from there once the hard part of getting out of most of the atmosphere's been done, then balloons are great. But the only way to find that out is by trying it...

Qool

[Rosco P. Coltrane]

It's quite qlear the quest for qonquering the qlear blue sqies in balloons is a qonstant qraving qaraqteristiq of manqind, and it qannot be squelched by qonsterning ballooning qatastrophes that oqqured in past deqades.

Prolly break more bones than records...

[xmark]

Yeah, it's an Aussie who claims with a straight face that it's a scientific experiment, not a stunt. (Of course, he's already sold the rights to a television producer..."Pay no attention to that man behind the curtain, Dorothy.")

Anyway, here is the story.

It may not be just a joy ride...

[jdrogers]

I wouldn't discount this as a hairbrain idea from some thrill seekers. If you look at the cost of launching any payloads to that altitude, it makes the cost of specialized ballons look a lot better. I'm not sure what the use of getting people up there is, but as stated in the post, there isn't much atmosphere above you and hence not much turbulance, so things like short, month-long telescope missions and other scientific observation could be done much cheaper.

If I can dig up some links I've seen about this, I'll post.

Cheers,
JD

Re:It may not be just a joy ride...

[jdrogers]

Here is at least one of NASA's pages about balloons.

Re:It may not be just a joy ride...

[J05H]

Here is JP Aerospace's take on high altitude balloons, and their future potential uses:

http://www.jpaerospace.com/advanced.html

Desperate to win X-prize.

[Picass0]

Close but no cigar.

Named for failure

[Man of E]

It's good to see they're thinking ahead. If with QinetiQ 1 you don't succeed, you can always build QinetiQ 2, and QinetiQ 3, and so forth. With numbering, failure is wisely considered a part of the program! Just don't tell that to the guys flying up.
As long as the funding keeps flowing in, they can always find someone to strap themselves into the gondola of doom.

Re:Named for failure

[ekrout]

Cool, now I get why they called it "Windows 1.0"! (many many many failures).

Military Experiments

[AnimeFreak]

This sort of reminds me of the experiment where a guy in the US Military went up in a balloon about arround the same height and then parachutted down from that height. In the process, the guy actually lost a glove yet his hand managed to survive along with himself.

Though, I wouldn't even attempt to go that high in anything unless it had wings and an engine (with the exception of the Space Shuttle ;)).

Current record: 113,740 feet, set in 1961

[Animats]

The current record is from a 40-year-old USAF balloon experiment. It ought to be possible to do a bit better today.

There's an ad for suborbital space flights starting December 1, 2001. Price, $98,000. This has to be an old, bogus site; it's supposed to use the Vela "Space Cruiser", which was never built.

Darwin Award

[Maskirovka]

HmmmmmmmMMMmm. This sounds like another darwin award in the making!

Experiments in the Stratosphere

[Velex]

Just don't wind up in the Land of Oz!

Use this as a launch vehicle???

[burtonator]

OK. Just some crazy thinking...

Did you guys see this picture:

http://www.qinetiq1.com/gfx/large_balloon.jpg

That is a HUGE balloon!

Now here is my thinking...

Remember the Hindenburg? (sp?)

What if this actually worked and on the next attempt they fill the balloon with Hydrogen?

If they built a special gandola which was a SMALL spacecraft, they could use the hydrogen from the balloon as fuel and possible exit the earths orbit.

Would this work? I don't have access to any of the math behind this so someone with experience could help.

... and we all know that everyone on Slashdot is a Rocket Scientist!

Re:Use this as a launch vehicle???

[quick_dry_3]

the amount of hydrogen in the ballon is very little when compared to the amount of hydrogen stored in liquid form in a rocket normally. Though you're higher, I can't heplp but feel that you wouldn't have enough fuel - maybe as a tiny supplement, but it still seems like it'd be like a drop in the ocean.

Re:Use this as a launch vehicle???

[squaretorus]

SPECULATION WARNING!!!

OK. No maths behind this either but... Hydrogen under atmospheric pressure is not a great fuel in terms of rocket boosting. So we need to do something to put some pressure into that baloon - but remember, the more pressure the more density the less bouancy so the less lift - so we need to apply the pressure once we're up there.

We also need to apply it quickly - so we dont drop like a stone.

We also need some oxygen to burn with the H2 - not much of that up there... so we need to carry that too. Unless...

Unless we don't bother burning it we just 'untie the balloon' and let the H2 squirt out in a controlled manner...

We'll have 1 atmosphere pressure in the balloon, and 1/10th atmosphere outside so we have 9/10 atmosphere of pressure. So we need to work out the thrust that that can be turned into.

This is useless, but I'll post anyway in the good slashdot tradition!

Only half way to space.

[AJWM]

Nice, but 132000 feet is only 25 miles, just half of what USAF awards astronaut wings for (50 miles, and some X-15 pilots earned them). Even less than half of the 100 km that the International Aeronautical Federation considers the edge of space.

Still, it sounds like a fun ride!

Re:Only half way to space.

[Don Negro]

The best part of the Air Force Astronaut program was that only the Air Force X-15 pilots got the wings. The civilian test pilots didn't.

The Air Force guys felt bad for them, so they organized a party where they presented the civilians with cardboard wings bearing the title 'Asstronaut'.

Don't hold out.... give me some of that stuff

[Nathdot]

Two ballooners are going to attempt to get to 132,000 feet in a helium balloon named QinetiQ1. They are going to do this wearing spacesuits and sit in what looks like armchairs in an open gondola

Why does this story sound eerily like an acid trip?

Stoner 1: "And then we went up really really high in an air balloon called the QinetiQ1"
Stoner 2: "And also we were wearing these really really shiny spacesuits man."
Stoner 1: "And we could see everybody and they were like these really really tiny ants..."
Stoner 2: "And also we could, like, read their thoughts... and see time as really really pretty colors"

I just pray that the "reentry" doesn't find them emerging from a cloud on a couch in front of MTV at 3am in the morning.

Weightless or not?

[rnicey]

I was wondering if at that height they'd be floating about with or without a balloon due to lack of gravity. This is from the site:

It is a popular myth that weightlessness is caused by the lack of gravity in space. In fact, the apparent weightlessness is a consequence of astronauts and their surroundings all moving together without resisting gravity. Satellites and spacecraft are still subject to gravity, but because they are moving fast enough horizontally, gravity pulls their path into a circle or orbit. The balloon itself will float with the wind and will travel at no more than 10-15 mph in an upward or downward direction. So the weight of the pilots will not be affected by the height they reach.

I can just about buy the bit about spacecraft, centrifugal forces or whatnot, but I'm still trying to figure out if they're trying to imply that these balloonists will have sea-level like weight at that height. Anyone?

Anyone know how 'high' you've got to get before you do float about because of a lack of gravity (oh my, what have I asked ;-)

Re:Weightless or not?

[jerde]

Awfully, awfully high. The radius of the earth is, what, 4000 miles.

Force due to gravity varies inversely with the square of the distance.

So what's the difference in gravitational force from being at sea level, 4000 miles from the center of the earth, to 132000 feet, 4025 miles from the center of the earth?

4000^2 / 4025^2 gives me around 98%. So I'd weigh a few pounds less at that altitude.

To weigh only half as much, you'd have to be about 1700 miles above the surface, or about 9 million feet.

Earth big.

Of course, by the time you get 250,000 miles away (like the moon) you'd feel less than 0.03% as much gravity from earth.

And keep in mind that all of this assumes you are STATIONARY in relation to a point on the earth's surface. If you're orbiting, you don't feel gravity.

- Peter

Re:Weightless or not?

[CaptainCarrot]

Y'know, this is high school physics. (Or ought to be; it was when I was a teenager.) You never float about because of a "lack of gravity." Similarly, you don't really need gravity to plant your feet firmly on the ground. What you need is acceleration. The force that supplies this acceleration is irrelevant to the effect. In the neighborhood of a massive body like the Earth, the force of gravity provides it. On orbit, an astronaut floats around not because there's no gravity -- there obviously is; that's why his spacecraft is orbiting instead of flying away -- but because his entire frame of reference, including the floor he would otherwise be standing on, is being accelerated at the same rate towards the center of the Earth. The craft remains in orbit instead of falling because it begins with enough "horizontal" velocity to "miss" the earth by the radius of the orbit, to put it in the simplest possible terms. Orbits decay when something acts on the "horizontal" velocity to decrease it. That's why the best way to achieve re-entry isn't to aim your vehicle at the earth, but to slow it down. Eventually, it slows down enough so that it no longer "misses". Vehicles in low orbits can have their orbits decay from the very small amount of air resistance due to the tenuous upper atmosphere they're within. Lacking air resistance or some other kind of force to slow it down, a vehicle can stay in orbit indefinitely.

Horizontal is in quotes above because it's not quite the right word. More properly, it's a velocity vector normal (or perpendicular) to the acceleration vector. Since the direction of the acceleration vector keeps changing as the position of the vehicle changes, the velocity vector keeps changing too -- as it must; there's an acceleration acting on it. The equations to compute the initial velocity needed to keep a vehicle in orbit at a particular altitude are not complex.

This is exactly the same physics that keeps the Earth orbiting the Sun and the Moon orbiting the Earth, just on a smaller scale.

The writers of Star Trek never understood how this worked. In TOS there were a number of episodes where the engines had been damaged or sabotaged and the orbit was somehow rapidly decaying. Only a moron would have put them into such a low orbit that it needed constant thrust from the engines to maintain it in the first place.

"Weightlessness" is also achievable by falling at the same acceleration imposed by the force of gravity. For the Earth, that's about 9.8 m/sec^2. Astronauts train at weightlessness for brief periods by doing just that -- they get into a specially modified cargo plane, fly up as high as it will go, then pull into a steep dive. They float around inside the plane just as they would on orbit for as long as the dive lasts.

The balloon will never be travelling anywhere near fast enought for any of this to occur.

Re:Weightless or not?

[istartedi]

The writers of Star Trek never understood how this worked. In TOS there were a number of episodes where the engines had been damaged or sabotaged and the orbit was somehow rapidly decaying. Only a moron would have put them into such a low orbit that it needed constant thrust from the engines to maintain it in the first place.

Of course they understood how it worked. They were banking on most of the audience either not understanding how it works, or not caring. After all, decaying orbits are dramatic and ST is drama.

Now, won't Starfleet please listen to our report indicating that the red dye used in some uniforms seems to have a tendancy to attract hostile aliens and deadly anomalies?

Open cockpit = Space Sky diving.

[BrookHarty]

First thing I thought of, the open capsule, they could sky dive down. /. even ran an article on space sky diving.
-
The ships hung in the sky in much the same way that bricks don't. - Douglas Adams

Re:Size matters

[mamba-mamba]

I think you are right, but your analogy isn't really fair. One reason you can't see the Empire State building from the Sears tower is that Earth is in the way. (Earth is roughly spherical, remember?).

The other problem with viewing objects near the surface of Earth is that when you look horizontally, you are looking through relatively dirty air. The problem is much less severe when looking up, because the air rapidly clears and thins as you ascend.

What we need to know is how bright is this thing going to be and what angle does it subtend from 600 miles away? A bright object can subtend a small angle (think supernova) and be visible, and an object which subtends a large angle can be dim, yet still be seen. I believe the moon and sun subtend about 30 minutes of arc, so I imagine anything that subtends, say, half a minute of arc would be considered visible (this is a guess) although if there were poor contrast (i.e., if the object is sky-colored), this wouldn't hold true.

At 600 miles, 0.5 minute of arc is approximately 460 feet. I couldn't read the article so I have no idea how big this baloon is, but I doubt it is 460 feet in any dimension. So to be visible at 600 miles, I think it would have to be bright (e.g., if it were low in the eastern horizon while the sun was setting, it might be quite bright.)

MM
--

not weightless by a longshot

[teflonrabbit]

It depends on the distance to the earth's center of mass. Double the distance from the center of the earth, and you'll quarter your effective weight. Since the radius of the earth is roughly 3960 miles, and these guys are planning on going to about 26 miles up, they're going to weigh 98% of what they do on earth.

Talk about ultra slim-fast. Not much of an effect, really.

Re: Size matters

[Inthewire]

Claimed to be the size of a coupla jetliners at altitude...might meet that 460 foot minimum.

Wired Article

[Josuah]

Terminal Velocity talks about Cheryl Stears (U.S.) and Rodd Millner (Australia) who are both going for a record skydiving attempt from 130,000 feet. It looks like QinetiQ is going for altitude. Millner and Stearns are going for altitude and extreme gravitational acceleration.

How long would it take to get back to the ground?!

[Mustang Matt]

You could literally take a nap while in free fall!

Although I doubt they'd be able to sleep. That's crazy to think they could be falling and just fall to sleep. They need some sort of board to lay on that will keep them from flipping around while falling.

132,000ft and then what?

[psych031337]

This does not really strike me as a major aeronautical achievement.

Col. Kittinger did a 102,800ft rise in a balloon back in the early 60s (Project "Man high"). The thing that makes this ballon trip unforgettable to history (at least for me and at least until somebody pushes the limit) is the fact that he opened up the gondola he was hanging in to throw himself out into the hands of gravity for 18 1/2 miles.

You can read up on it here and here

Re:132,000ft and then what?

[FrankBough]

By the look of those chairs they're sitting in, I think they're actually just researching whether you can still get the soccer on satellite TV at 132,000ft. The world's highest couch potatoes.

I wonder what would happen to their tinnies at 1% atmospheric pressure - that would be some really fizzy beer.

Re:132,000ft and then what?

[Quizme2000]

When he jumped from that high he actually became the first man to break the sound barrier without an aircraft. Though the 18 1/2 mile sky dive record has been broken by a flying squirrel getup. Unless these guys plan on jumping out, who cares? Could be a cool spycraft though.

Re:How long would it take to get back to the groun

[psych031337]

They need some sort of board to lay on that will keep them from flipping around while falling.

This could be done with a small stabilizing chute. It was used in the legendary Kittinger jump (Project Excelsior). This guy was jumping from 19 1/2 miles up, and 16seconds from jump time a small stabilizer chute would automatically open to stop spinning. Tests with Dummys back then have shown that an aerodynamically unstable object like a human can easily hit 200rpm in free fall. 140rpm for a minute are considered fatal.

Oh, and if you are tired, remember it will be short nap - 19 miles are crossed in less than 14 minutes.

The best time and place...

[ColdGold]

The best time and place to do this would be over Australia on November the 18th!

Whatta show with meteorites coming down all over the place.

Darwin

[G-funk]

Darwin award anyone?

Hindenberg 2

[Pedrito]

Now hopefully these guys will avoid painting their balloon with aluminum powder...

QuinetiQ, DERA, balloons and AWACS TNG.

[rasilon]

Look, people, it even says in the story that QuinetiQ used to be DERA. For those who don't know, I'll spell it out, Defense Evaluation and Research Agency. This may be a civillian do, but it is a government project. Why? Replace "132000 feet" with "well beyond the maximum altitude for any current or projected missile system" and it makes more sense. The latest rumour down the grapevine says that this is an AWACS replacement. You lose the turbulence and engine noise that requires lots of fancy signal processing to get around, you lose the cost of the airframe. Current AWACS are low, slow and expensive, a perfect target which is why you can never take them near the front line where they are really needed. Whilst these balloons will need set up in advance, they can cover whole countries at once whilst still being in conventional radio range, unlike satellites.

This chap got to 11,000 ft with toy balloons

[epeus]

Big Toy balloons I grant you, but still fun.

For the real scoop...

[ayjay29]

For the real scoop...

Go to the Sun (UK) newspapar.

The article is here...

Packed with insightful scientific observarions such as:

"Their vast balloon -- 400 times bigger than normal ones -- should be visible from the ground as it ascends."

Re:Size matters

[peter hoffman]

I saw Echo 1a in 1960 although it was only 30.5 meters (100 feet) in diameter with a perigee/apogee of 966/2157 km. It was a ball of aluminized mylar (i.e., a balloon). Coincidentally, 600 miles is 966 km so I saw it from at least 600 miles away as I watched it nearly from horizon to horizon.

this won't work.......

[the_2nd_coming]

and I am sure some one else has explaind why but I am going to throw mine in also.

the helium will not be able to stay dense enough at higher altitudes to be able to give proper lift. there is a practicle limit on ballon travel.

Re:this won't work.......

[ai0524]

Uh?!

Ballons float because they (the ballon, the pilots, the gondola, everything that is tied together) are less dense than the atmosphere at the ground and are the same density as the atmosphere at their ceiling.

Helium does not need to stay "dense" to provide some lift. The less dense it is the better.

Re:this won't work.......

[the_2nd_coming]

well, perhaps I should say it like this, the helium will not stay dense enough to keep the baloon intact :-).......kaboom

Re:this won't work.......

[darkonc]

It's the air outside the balloon that won't be dense enough to support the balloon. At some point the volume of helium needed to provide the lift is going to be so large that the weight of the envelope is going to exceed the boyancy provided by the volume it encloses.

breaking the sound barrier

[egomaniac]

I read about this elsewhere, and that little snippit unfortunately leaves out the interesting bit.

One of the points of this journey is to become the first people to break the sound barrier without a vehicle. Their top speed will be upwards of 900MPH on the way down, due to the vastly reduced air resistance. Seriously, think about creating a sonic boom with just your own body...

Re:breaking the sound barrier

[egomaniac]

Incorrect. From http://www.sciam.com/2001/1101issue/1101scicit6.ht ml:

"They also plan to be the first people to break the sound barrier without a vehicle. (There is still controversy surrounding whether Kittinger actually broke the sound barrier, but at the time even the jumper himself said he didn't.)"

You aren't serious, are you?

[mindstrm]

Do you think they are unaware of these things?

A large enough balloon, and it's no problem.

From what I've seen, HUGE partially-inflated balloones are used.. they can go fro looking more like a giant upsidedown condom to a really huge round balloon.

As for the parachute.. of course you take one. Thing is.. you don't open it for a long, long time. At that altitude, if you opened a chute, it wouldn't help one little bit.. it would fall at the same rate as you.

re-entry.

[mindstrm]

from space is only a problem because you are entering from orbit... it's not the downward motion into the atmosphere that kills you.. it's the sideways motion as you slow down from your near orbital velocity.
IF you were literally simply droping straight down towards the earth.. it wouldn't be too much of an issue.

Even better is the picture of him jumping...

[stefanlasiewski]

This
picture shows Col. Kittinger jumping out of the gondola. This has to be one of the most incredible pictures ever taken...

here's some more ...

Doesn't work without Javascript?

[MikeFM]

Must be a crappy site. It won't even load with Javascript disabled. Well there goes my specialized screen reader that uses wget to fetch pages. ;)