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.

Comments

Just Scary?

[C0deJunkie]

"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?

Stop modding up arts students....

[MosesJones]

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.