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More on High-Altitude Balloonists
An anonymous reader writes "The Guardian reports on an attempt at the record for the highest balloon flight. 'A bag of helium the size of the Empire State building to challenge Nasa record.'" We had an article about them a few months ago.
"So a few days ago"
b allooning/html/default.stm
read at http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/shared/spl/hi/sci_nat/03/
how long you could speak in a high-pitched voice from that one! And they waste it to fly around, pfff..
Of course it runs NetBSD. BTC: 1NT7QvbetmANwaMzhpVL6
With one of these balloons. They appear safe enough, and they have adequate lift capability. They are a bit slow on the takeoff, but... safety first right.
Food not Bombs is a nice platitude but it breaks down when you notice that the Bombees are usually well fed
their lives will depend on exquisitely accurate weather forecasts
They're doomed.
sh'aped as King Kong.
Please.
...to pack a pellet gun and a brown-bag lunch. After the balloon comes down (after crossing LAX's approach path, of course), the lawn chair used for the flight will be up for auction on eBay.
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Worth noting that the ballon is so large that once airborne it will be visible over a radius of some 600 miles. Its being launched on the south coats of cornwall so most of England, Ireland and Wales and Northern France will be able to see it.
I bet the bastards launch at night though....
-- "Can't sleep, clowns will eat me!"
Their claims are full of hot air.
Someone was gonna say it. You know it.
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what payloads such a baloon can lift.
Shouldn't it be possible to lift a rocket to that height and starting from there?
The real high-altitude balloon record-holder, surprisingly, was not mentioned in this article.
There's a Mercedes gap too. I want one and can't afford one, but it's not government's job to do anything about it.
other than the fact that they are going to be moving at 1000 ft/s, and the fact that they are going to be exposed to temperatures WELL below what any human should desire, nevermind their strange choice to rely heavily on accurate weather reports, why would you think this is crazy?
The interesting thing, too me at least, is seeing
the curvature of the earth. When I was a functionally
check flight weapon systems officer for the F-4E some
years ago, I used to see the curvature of the Earth at
50,000 feet. And now, we didn't use pressure suits...
"The two adventurers need cloudless skies, high pressure, gentle winds and a 72-hour forecast in which they can be confident." ..and they're flying from SW England?!!!
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Don't forget the second-hand Russian spacesuits, which if they should even slightly fail, would mean their blood would boil and they will explode within 1/2 second.
'He was a dreamer, a thinker, a speculative philosopher... or, as his wife would have it, an idiot.' - Douglas Adams
At about 44,000ft, you need to be wearing a pressure suit, because if not the blood will start to heat and actually boil.
It's my understanding that the blood wouldn't actually heat, it would boil because of the lack of pressure. Am I wrong?
"We have done some pretty vivid demonstrations of putting half a pint of water in a decompression chamber and decompressing it to 100,000ft and the water boils and explodes in less than half a second, just disappears. It's scary stuff,"
And this is just scary??
I really hope their pressured suite are going to keep them safe from this....or we will see a really bad picture at their return....
Is anyone beside me asking himself if this adventure is just worth the risk?
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As the balloon rises the atmosphere gets less dense, hence it rises slower. This is why the balloon is so large to enable _some_ lift at 25 miles. This is still not high enought for satellites which are in the 00s of miles altitude.
So it can't replace the shuttle or rockets.
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You know, that shit called humor... the stuff that doesnt have reality applied to it--- Geez, pull the coal out of your ass its a diamond by now.
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as an assist for a conventional rocket?
I wrote a letter to Aerostar, the largest commercial hotair balloon manufacturer in the States, about their largest model, the Aero 245 asking about maximum payload and altitude and I never heard back.
But I did find that they were only around 75 grand a piece. What I was wondering was if you took like five of those to say 40,000 feet towing a rocket and then launched from there, wouldn't you be able to get a lot more bang for your buck than from say a similar operation using a customized jet airliner that costs millions to modify and operate?
I mean this high altitude stunt stuff is cool and all, but I'm very curious as to why balloons can't be a practical element in launching satellites and such.
They're ascending at 1000ft/min with a balloon the size of the Empire State Building, which is as thin as a freezer bag. So one bird strike and they're done right?
For a mere second I thought this was going to be about Richard Branson and had the sudden urge to shoot him down.... Where's a rail gun when you one?
If what you are reading sounds funny, or sarcastic, lame, or stupid
it is because it is supposed to be. just laugh
I wonder if that is high enough to justify the "solar system" logo on the story... I know 25 miles is high, but this isn't exactly space-faring craft.
Oohh, I have an idea: a Hindenberg logo, applicable for ballooning stories and stories that will surely have a disasterous outcome. In the case of this story, we may have a double-qualifier!
No, but if you knew anything at all about chemistry or physics, you'd realize that as the pressure decreases, a liquid can boil even if the temperature stays the same.
That being said, I don't think the water in your blood will actually vaporize at that altitude. However, nitrogen will start to come out of solution and form bubbles in your bloodstream.
they climb into their Russian spacesuits, strap themselves into their cockpit chairs, slowly inflate the biggest balloon ever made, and float towards the heavens
New Mexico (CNN):
Late this evening, a tumbleweed farmer reported what appeared to be a crashed alien spacecraft, complete with a cockpit populated by a pair of extraterrestrial pilots squawking at each other [about using a cell phone around massive amounts of helium] before the farmer shot them with his shotgun. The silverish spacecraft and pilot bodies were quickly carted off by Area 51 personnel.
the cool thing about the 1961 NASA mission was that when they reached 130,000 fet the pilot jumped out, and began free falling past the speed of sound before opening the parachute.
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One, the question was about heat, not boiling.
Two, the tempurature isn't staying the same since it's around -60F at that altitude.
Three, I'd say the original poster knows a fair bit more than you about chemistry and physics, you arrogant fuck.
We had an article about them a few months ago. So now you're reporting on another publication reporting on a story that you covered months ago.
The XPrize competitor da Vinci Project intends to use this idea. I don't know how feasable their proposal is.
The technique is called
rockoon
and is often used for altitude records.
However, its utility for getting into orbit is somewhat less, as all a rockoon gets you is above some of the air resistance - to get to orbit requires speed, not just alititude.
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The contenders for the 2003 darwin awards are...
Want Ad
-------
Wanted 2 open minded people willing to create scientific history by piloting the world's largest craft to record setting heights. See beautiful scenery of the Earth and heavens not seen by most people.
Fine print
----------
The high-tech craft is really a giant thin walled helium balloon with a small gondola
Inaccurate weather forecast may kill you
Oxygen will be forced into your lungs
Your blood may boil
Your blood may vaporize
You must withstand the terror of impending death for at least 12 hours
Spacesuit made in Russia.
Solid 'low-residue' foods must be consumed before flight
If everything is not perfect, death arrives within 30 seconds.
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Arthur C. Clarke said that a human being could live in vacuum for a minute or so. Such an event was dramatized in "2001: A Space Odyssey," and during its first run in New York they handed out little leaflets with a few paragraphs by Clarke insisting that this depiction was correct.
Was Arthur C. Clarke wrong?
"How to Do Nothing," kids activities, back in print!
Bear in mind that their skin and all those other solid bits actually does contribute a bit to maintaining the pressure of e.g. their blood.
This has been borne out by experiments with primates and a few decompression accidents with humans.
Yes, decompression would still kill them, but mostly just as a consequence of asphyxiation (albeit accompanied by very painful swelling). They certainly won't explode.
While they still might look a bit grotesque, there needn't be any worries about having to crack the suits and ladle the corpses into buckets afterwards or anything like that.
DNA just wants to be free...
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nasa say that this would not happen and that you can survive for upto a half a minute without ill effects. "You do not explode and your blood does not boil because of the containing effect of your skin and circulatory system. You do not instantly freeze because, although the space environment is typically very cold, heat does not transfer away from a body quickly."
"1000 ft/s"
The article said 1000 ft/min.
Icarus.
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After checking out their site for a while, I have come to the conclusion that this project is relying on a lot of luck. I work for NASA's Balloon Program Office, and we fly balloons of this size and bigger. For one, this project has their balloon being made by a manufacturer that doesnt make balloons. Balloons of this size are a QA nightmare. Having miles of load tape and polyethylene, they are very hard to manufacture and test. Polyethylene is the same stuff they make sandwich baggies out of, very delicate.
I really have no clue why they wouldn't order their balloon from the same place most people interested in this sort of thing do, Raven Industries. Maybe they didnt have the dough. We don't fly people on our balloons, just huge science payloads in the range of 5-7000 pounds. I wish these guys the best, but I really beleive they are insane.
StickMan
www.rageagainst.net
A bag of helium the size of the Empire State building
Teddy Kennedy is working for NASA now?
If your bitterest enemies are people who hack the heads off civilians, then I would say you're doing something right.
The website for the attempt is at QinetiQ 1
Its worthwhile noting that they will launch from the back of a trimaran warship research vessel, and will be observed from the highest flying powered, tethered UAV ever.
So it will demonstrate a whole slew of new technologies, real Slashdot stuff.
Why bother floating a balloon to 20,000 feet when they have mountains that reach 28,000 feet and are on the equator?
Both the platform and the rockets could be put into position by the use of balloons, although hydrogen rather than helium would probably be used as it has a higher specific impulse.
Higher specific impulse? Helium is inert and hence doesn't have a specific impulse. Perhaps you meant using helium as a lifting gas? If you did then you don't use rocket terms like specific impulse. Bouyancy may be what you had in mind.
As for nitrogen forming bubbles (aka 'the bends'): divers take (at least) 1 minute per 15 metres ascent, and a minute for the last 6 metres - where the proportional change (from 1.6 bar to 1) is greatest. So there shouldn't be too much of a problem given how long it will take them to get to that altitude (132,000 feet at 1000 feet per minute => more than 2 hours>
As to the original quotes from the article, they say that half a pint of water in the decompression chamber explodes in half a second. Wow! These guys aren't rocket scientists, fortunately. Any sudden change will be instantly lethal, of course. In this case, as with diving, it is imperative to plan well, including back-up systems, to go a step at a time, to gain experience, and to practice. They seem to be doing some of that, but not all. Shame that they have probably already contributed to the human gene pool.
They might as well continue to the moon and bring some cheese back home.
I have a life. I really do. I've just chosen to ignore it.
...they have quality Russian-made pressure suits. ;)
-Looking for a job as a materials chemist or multivariat
its 1000ft per /minute/. which is reasonably sedate. (eg article quotes WWII chutes having 1800ft/min descent rates.)
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Amongst myself and my friends, "Event Horizon" is the yardstick by which we measure bad movies. We went in expecting a sci-fi film, but too soon realized it was a horror/ unwitting comedy.
"We need something to latch onto.."
"Hey! There's the communications module!"
*kerunch*
I can understand filling the detaching 'tunnel' with exploding bolts. But actual explosives? And who was the idiot who said, "And hey, wouldn't it be handy if they were portable, and had their own timers?"
*shudders*
Mission to Mars is right up there too, but I like to think a lot of that plot is cleared up if you imagine NASA people sitting in a board room saying,
"Hey, the last ones we sent all died. I don't want to lose another good crew in that big tomb"
"Yeah. What if we sent Jimbo's team?"
"Who? Oh them. Yeah, we can lose them, let's do it."
Kind of like "Astronauts Like Us" who never met up with the real crew.
-Zipwow
I don't know which is more depressing, that 2/3 didn't care enough to vote, or that 1/2 of those that did are crazy.
> Don't forget the second-hand Russian spacesuits,
Why do you think the spacesuits are second-hand? Because they're Russian I suppose. However, a careful examination of the Guardian article (I like to call it reading, but I wouldn't dream of accusing you of not having read past the second paragraph), reveals this
"This summer, wearing the new Russian spacesuits tested yesterday, they will try again."
(I've helpfully highlighted the word "new" in the hope that it will penetrate the polarising filter on the anti-Russian spectacles some people still seem to be wearing.)
What would a cell phone do around helium? Are you thinking of hydrogen (the unstable, non-noble gas), or am I uninformed?
-Zipwow
I don't know which is more depressing, that 2/3 didn't care enough to vote, or that 1/2 of those that did are crazy.
Wow, that's a heck of a good point about the mountains. My first response was that making the base there would be a pain, but then I thought..
A platform hanging in the air by BALLOONS?
Yeah. Building on a mountaintop shouldn't be so rough. You'd want to be sure you didn't pick an active volcano though. Boom!
Actually, that's a bizarre thought. Can we maybe harness volcanic pressure to launch things into space? Sounds nuts, but its gotta be right up there with a launching platform suspended by balloons.
I keep thinking of this comic by Phil Foglio called "Girl Genius", its kind of a steampunk sort of thing. Science is kind of like magic, and some people have a sort of magic that lets them make all sorts of strange things. This generally results in them losing their grip on reality.
http://www.studiofoglio.com/girlgenius.html
-Zipwow
I don't know which is more depressing, that 2/3 didn't care enough to vote, or that 1/2 of those that did are crazy.
If anything goes wrong, if the suits fail, death would take about half a second.
This subject was discussed in science and science fiction decades ago. And I don't mean the slow motion exploding bodies in Total Recall. Last I heard, human skin is gas tight and really needs only the type of support an elastic suit provides to prevent major injury from vacuum. Also, suffocation takes minutes, not fractions of a second.
"Once you get past about 33,000ft, you are unable to breathe unaided. Even if you are breathing oxygen, it has to be forced in under pressure.
Boy, this really makes me feel good about those flimsy oxygen masks in 737s flying at 39K feet.
"At about 44,000ft, you need to be wearing a pressure suit, because if not the blood will start to heat and actually boil. At anything over 40,000ft, you are in big trouble if a suit fails," says Brian Jones, veteran of a round-the-world balloon flight, an altitude record holder, and mission controller to the flight of Qinetiq 1.
Good thing they retired the Concorde. IIRC it flys at upto 56K feet.
"It's the height of ridiculousness to say for those 9 lines you get hundreds of millions."
you can survive for upto a half a minute
So Ford Prefect was right all along ;)
Yes.
And throw away all that helium on every launch? Or did you also have some plan to retrieve and resue it? Send a compressor and some empty tanks up and pump down the balloons?
"It's the height of ridiculousness to say for those 9 lines you get hundreds of millions."
"The experiment of exposing an unpressurized hand to near vacuum for a significant time while the pilot went about his business occurred in real life on Aug. 16, 1960. Joe Kittinger, during his ascent to 102,800 ft (19.5 miles) in an open gondola, lost pressurization of his right hand. He decided to continue the mission, and the hand became painful and useless as you would expect. However, once back to lower altitudes following his record-breaking parachute jump, the hand returned to normal."
I suppose, barring a complete depressurization of their suits, these guys should be fine.
I speak bad english, and have only a basic knowledge of physics. That said, here is my thoughts:
We all know that when you go up you store energy. It's basic physics. So, what if you can get a baloon big enough to lift some kind of craft. Let it go really up (Almost no air there, so wind resistance is a much smaller issue), then drop it. After falling for a while it should have tremendous speed (or kinetic energy), level it up and use rockets to get it to go even higher than the balloon. Since the escape velocity is the biggest issue to getting into orbit, this should be a way to shorten that gap significantly.
Would someone with some knowledge of aerodynamic tell me why this isnt possible? Im quite certain there is a big reason why this isnt being done today
Everybody has a purpose in life, maybe mine is to lurk in slashdot.
Excuse me, I would like to see how correct you would be at forecasting the weather by appling your partial differential equations solving skills and see if you can solve multvariate equations with a slew of unknowns using wide resolution spacing and generalized approximations of how the atmosphere works....
...And do this BILLIONS of times per second.
Numerical Weather Prediction has come a long way in the last 15 years, so stop complaining. Change to another forecaster if you don't like the one who "seems" wrong now....
You would probably find it funny to rape people or set houses on fire.
Luckily you are on the troll list of the ATL right now and your account will stay at -1 forever.