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?"

Comments

So, what are _they_ doing?

[n-baxley]

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.

biggest balloon ever?

[adminispheroid]

After claiming that it'll be the biggest balloon ever, they never give a size. Unless you count "400 times the size of a typical hot-air balloon and as tall as the Empire State Building; or seven times the height of Nelson's Column."

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.

Advertising in the new millenium

[dingo]

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. :)