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Largest Balloon Ever
bitpusherdotorg writes "The UK's Colin Prescot and Andy Elson are in the midst of preparations for their upcoming attempt at setting a new world balloon altitude record in July. The pilots will make their ascent in the largest helium balloon ever constructed, on an open flight deck (!) with nothing but a pair of tailor made Russian spacesuits to keep them breathing. Why pay 20 million for a shuttle when you can just balloon it?"
What I'd really like to see is one of these guys try and break Joe Kittinger's parachute jump record (102,500 feet). The film of him jumping off that balloon was wild.
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...it's a doozy...
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Other than having balls enough to do it, or a lack of brains, are these "baloonauts" really doing anything? Could they just as easily place put a monkey on the baloon, or a corpse for that matter? Maybe I'm mistaken, but it seems that if anyone should get credit for the new record it should be the engineers. But, of course, we never get credit for anything.
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Lets hope they equip these guys with a parachute... just incase.... POP!
-- If you try to fail and succeed, which have you done? - Uli's moose
40 million cubic foot balloons are the biggest common size used at the National Scientific Balloon Facility in the US, and I believe they're about 130 meters tall when they reach altitude. I don't know how that compares to Nelson's "Column," as they so delicately put it, but that's probably smaller than the Empire State Building.
However, 40 km altitude is no record, the 40 millions can (and do) take a pretty hefty package to 43 km. I guess they're talking about a balloon carrying people. Why anybody would want to do that is beyond me.
I guess this article would give the impression that ballooning is the realm of crazies and crackpots, but high altitude ballooning is a very handy technology. Much science that is done from satellites can be done from balloons for a tiny fraction of the cost.
AAAAaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaa aaaaaaaaaaaaaa aaaaaaaaa aaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaa aaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaHHHHHHHHHHHHHHhhhhhhh hh hhhhhhhhhhhhhhh hhhhhhhhhhhh hhhhhhhhh hhhhhhhh hhhhhhhhh!
(well it would be 1 word without the lameness filter)
"What thou shalt not, I shalt did!" -Bart Simpson
Looking at the photo acompanying the article something occured to me. The advertising on the suits what a great idea. I mean could you imagine if in the sixties you had the fore sight to have your corporate logo plastered on Neil Armstrongs arse. The most watched footage ever. I wonder if they will try something like that for a mars mission. NASA could probably fund the whole thing by having microsoft plastered on everything...but what am I talking about...any rocket with microsoft software would probably fail spectacularly. :)
The Borg assimilated my race & all I got was this lousy T-shirt
This sounds similar to this australian attempt: check this article and this (better) article.
Summary: 2 guys in spacesuits taking a giant helium balloon to 40km. In the vacum of space, they'll descend at 1600-1800 kph (994-1118 mph), becoming the first man to break the sound barrier unaided (that's cool!). Plenty of video taken for marketing opportunities.
The funny thing is that both of these ballons claim to be going to the "edge of space" at 40km, but the traditional definition (and the one used for the X-prize) is 100km. By that standard, I guess I have beach-front property!
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Somehow, I would imagine a drop through some of the atmosphere at least might get a little bumpy thus that would account for the word breaks. Also, you should make it a little longer, three lines is a drop of just a few thousand feet!
Worst... Balloon... Ever!
Opinions stated are mine and do not reflect those of the Illuminati