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NASA's Space Balloon Smashes Car In Australia
Humunculus writes "Of more worldly issues, NASA's latest multimillion-dollar stratosphere-bound balloon launch has gone horribly wrong and crashed into a car, turning it over and narrowly missing two elderly people who were observing the launch. The payload fared worse, reportedly being smashed into a 'thousand pieces.'"
First splat
The director of the Balloon Launching Centre, Professor Ravi Sood, says no one was hurt. But he says the scientists involved in the NASA-sponsored project are crushed.
It says right there, some NASA scientists were crushed in the accident.
I think the old couple needs to sue, sell chunks of their car on eBay, and retire rich!
RIP America
July 4, 1776 - September 11, 2001
that Australia is upside down
Quite high if you had a car parked next to the launch rig. Which is what happened. If you bothered to click the link.
The lead baloon engineer, known for his cocky attitude and general air of superiority, had his ego severely deflated.
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He said the balloon was then seen lying partially-inflated above a paddock "like a white Uluru".
what's a paddock?
and what is with the reference to an albino version of a star trek character?
i know you australians typically speak german like your neighbors to the north, but if you are going to write a story in the american language, try to more precise
thanks
intellectual property law is philosophically incoherent. it is your moral duty to ignore it or sabotage it
I find this response insulting. Australians do not drink Fosters! It's for export only. Nothing is too bad for the rest of the world.
I know we lost, what I assume is, millions. (Probably $150 per screw) Someone's car got smashed. We almost killed people. We probably set the program back X amount of time. X amount of time is going to cost, what I assume is, millions. But still...
We laugh at Fail Blog so...can't we laugh at this a little? Or maybe at least chuckle?
I'll try anything once. Twice if it tastes good
You mean that link is really clickable?
After watching the video, I can't help but think there was a massive miscalculation of the lift. And ignorance of real launch conditions, consisting of a mild breeze.
Keep Doing Good.
Why did you think a big balloon would stop people?
It seems in the very beginning of the clip that there was not enough upward force on the cable for a proper lift off. The launch release caused the payload to immediately swing like a pendulum and there was not enough launch height for the amount of vertical lift being applied to avoid the payload swinging into the ground.
I'm assuming that the actual near vertical crash was due to some kind of abort procedure initiated as a result of the payload being dragged across the ground because there was an (off screen) catastrophic balloon failure at that point.
Slashdot posts link to articles?
Why didn't someone tell me this earlier?
because you're the kind of fuckin' idiot who hijacks conversations by asking dumb questions that well-meaning but not-so-bright people waste time answering, creating thread after thread of redundant posts (usually modded Insightful for some reason) that any intelligent reader has to sort through before getting to read any actual conversation. like when you ask something that you'd know the answer to if you read the fucking article, or sometimes even the fucking summary, and some big-heart-but-little-brain person answers your question instead of telling you to stop being so damned lazy.
you might have a really high IQ but if you need other people to find, read, and process your information for you, then you're still a moron
freud, schwarzenegger, mozart, schrodinger...
ok, that's respectable
respect to you australians then
but you really should stick with your native german language
intellectual property law is philosophically incoherent. it is your moral duty to ignore it or sabotage it
Is this piece of junk costing NASA millions?
Or is the R&D costing millions and does this thing itself cost a lot less to reproduce?
Just a minor question, of course...
Here be signatures
I remember when NASA could sling shot a satellite 40,000+ miles looping around a planet 32 times, ricochet of an asteroid and drop a golf ball in a cup of coffee in the middle of Denver blindfolded with both hands behind their back.
Now they can't remember to convert metric to imperial (and back again) and can't launch a ballon...
Damn NASA used to be the best and the brightest. I worry if we'll be able to feed ourselves by the end of the year :P
NASA's performance was once the measure of the USA's intellectual success... I'm worried... apparently more money on education doesn't = smarter people...
I mean come on it's not rocke...errr wait...
-=[ Who Is John Galt? ]=-
How do you crash a balloon? I mean, don't you just fill it up with helium and let it go? Then it comes down slowly in a few days, right?
Right?
Wait. What was NASA doing in Australia??
-- If you try to fail and succeed, which have you done? - Uli's moose
Chasing after their balloon.
...it blends !!!!!
Religous speak to God. Insane are spoken to by God. When all shut up, one can finally hear Shostakovich in peace
Was there a little boy in it? Is he OK??
If it isn't broke, tinker with it till it is!
Please assume it was an alien ship this time.
Australia is number exclaimation point? Or rather.. Australia is number Exclaimation Point! ... ?
I think we just explained UFO sightings....
Bryan
I would rather accuse Bloon Tower Defense - Real Life edition
austria before world war ii was known as the empire of austria-hungry
this was solved by the invasion of turkey
turkey is a delicious country, especially on thanksgiving day, which is the day turkey was able to remove the hungry part of the austro-hungryian empire
intellectual property law is philosophically incoherent. it is your moral duty to ignore it or sabotage it
I find this response insulting.
Australians do not drink Fosters!
It's for export only. Nothing is too bad for the rest of the world.
Not everyone has an Australians refined taste for wood alcohol. Most can't tell which car's radiator was used in producing the alcohol or how many hours old it is.
If you don't like the way I drive, stay the hell off the sidewalk.
If you don't like the way I fly, keep your damn car the hell out of the field.
P.S.
He said the balloon was then seen lying partially-inflated above a paddock "like a white Uluru".
What the hell is an Uluru?
I guess it's something that kinda looks like a partially-inflated balloon over a paddock, except it's not white.
Ah... yeah... something like that.
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- - You can't take something off the Internet! That's like trying to take pee out of a swimming pool.
you compare a country to a misspelling of its name and you have the audacity to question my grasp on geography?
put another shrimp on the barbie and go watch the sound of music kid, the part where crocodile dundee teaches julie andrew's eight kids how to sing
learn something before you spout your ignorance, stupid child
intellectual property law is philosophically incoherent. it is your moral duty to ignore it or sabotage it
It may be a bad day for balloon launches, but at least jokes seem to be flying right past some people.
Looking for Funding?
DUSA == Down Under Space Administration And Launched a Doozey...
- Dan.
~ People that think they are better than anyone else for any reason are the cause of all the strife in the world.
Nobody tries to fail, they only fail to try...
try { do() || do_not(); } catch (JediException err) { yoda(err); }
where they speak a dialect of australian
"clever girl..."
intellectual property law is philosophically incoherent. it is your moral duty to ignore it or sabotage it
According to the BBC, the equipment was not damaged.
Comment removed based on user account deletion
Crock Dundee must have been hiding near by.
"TV, a medium as it is neither rare nor well done." Ernie Kovacs
Balloon launches are notoriously unreliable. You would think something this intrinsically simple would be pretty reliable, but a huge fraction of these types of launches go wrong. FAR less reliable than, say, a sounding rocket, which are typically 4-9's.
I don't, however, see how they could have released it when they did. It was clear that the thing would swing in an arc into the ground from where they released it. Particularly with someone dead downwind.
Was it really a NASA balloon? What about the bodies witnesses claimed to see around the crash site? Those were just anthropomorphic dummies, eh? Video of the crash you say? Well, they have video of Apollo landing on the moon too and that didn't happen! *Wonders how long until someone says this in a non-joking manner*
Ha ha!
It's a UFO. Meanwhile, somewhere, Chris Carter's getting his notepad out.
"The payload fared worse, reportedly being smashed into a 'thousand pieces.'" and they all went skipping about, and that was the beginning of fairies. ... Australian fairies. O_o
Insurance fraud!
Any technology distinguishable from magic is insufficiently advanced. - Geek's corollary to Clarke's law
What the hell was Australia doing out in space?
In other news, the White House announced that President Obama has determined to end NASAs dependence on new-fangled technology like balloons, and that they will instead be funding research into the next generation of proven technologies - ballistas and confirmed the existence of the here-to-fore rumoured Project SlingShot.
"With advancements in synthetic materials, we really believe that Project SlingShot has a chance to leapfrog ahead of the timetable we had in place with Project LeapFrog."
NASA: Close encounters of the thud kind.
NASA routinely flies stratospheric balloon craft from a variety of locations in the world, chosen for various reasons. From northern Canada to the Antarctic.
Google "NSBF" or "CSBF" (national scientific ballooning facility).
All that said, these facilities can/do launch payloads manufactured by anybody who can afford a launch - the payload may or may not be built by a University working with money that may or may not have come from NASA originally.
Personally I would assume that this particular payload was NOT NASA funded for the simple reason that none of the various news outlets is willing to name a sponsor. The best I can find anywhere is that the instrument was built and operated by UC Berkeley researchers, but there's a conspicuous absence of any kind of information of what, exactly, was destroyed - what the instrument was called, for example, what it was supposed to measure up there, who the PI was (that would be the obvious person to interview, of course, not some bystander bumpkins) and all those bits of information that would be freely flowing if this was a purely university/research payload.
We're all born with nothing.
If you die in debt, you're ahead.
There are actually very few locations in the world suitable for this kind of launches. It requires special conditions and infrastructure. NASA launches from most of these sites. They share these launch locations with other organizations like CNES (France). Considering the low number of launch sites, it's only normal that NASA launches from as many of them as possible for their studies.
It could have rained also, (with apologies to Mel Brooks).
NASA has plenty of bases/facilities in Australia. Is this really surprising considering Australia is well-placed for this kind of activity and is one of the US' closest allies (and by far the most significant ally in the southern hemisphere)? Actually there's a large NASA facility not more than 30 minutes drive from my house (in Australia) and it's quite an interesting place to visit :) Has a nice big sign at the entrance with several US and Australian flags flying together.
Tidbit: the original footage of Neil Armstrong taking his first steps on the moon were received by an Australian tracking station (jointly operated with NASA) then beamed back live to the US? (Not that there was any particular reason for this other than Australia being in the correct position 'facing' the moon at the time). Sadly the site has been leveled now and only the concrete foundations remain - such a shame considering there wouldn't be a person alive not familiar with the signal received at that place.
Link to the NASA complex near my house: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Canberra_Deep_Space_Communication_Complex
This is not the only one obviously, but it's a fairly important one, since it is in charge of communications with all deep space vehicles (Mars Rovers, Pioneers, Voyagers, New Horizons etc) for the period of the day when the other side of the world is pointing the wrong way ;)
It is rather funny actually how well Fosters is known outside of Australia, whereas it's virtually nowhere to be seen within Australia. That 'export quality' tag on the cans is Australia's biggest in-joke...
we only drink real beer like Coopers. Fosters is for Poms.
Oh no!! it took years to build this small instrument. Now they will have to start it from scratch. http://www.articlesbase.com/health-articles/force-factor-review-amp-free-trial-2113761.html
The thought that scientific ballooning is necessarily easy is naive. The idea is to get cutting edge science at the edge of space for 1/10th to 1/20 the cost, 1/4 to 1/3 the time, and with cutting edge, often off-the-shelf technology rather than the retrograde schlock that is hardened/proven well enough for a stodgy satellite mission. The odds against success include:
1. Ridiculously thin resources. Satellites are launched with the unfathomable overhead. The resources are often the first attempt by academics and engineers, including undergraduate and graduate talent, with little guidance but plenty of smarts.
2. Difficult thermal environment. The thermal environment for a balloon is often more severe than for any satellite. The severe convective environment during ascent, the huge albedo and IR that is smaller for a satellite.
3. Communication limits. There is very limited bandwidth for communication available with a "high speed" vhf link (while it lasts).
4. Structural requirements- the com limitations mean that the gondola must survive a landing at perhaps 12mph vertically in a 30 mph crosswind on rocky terrain, perhaps after being dragged (some have been dragged hundreds of miles due to parachute problems) without ruining the pricey bits and preserving the precious stored data.
All this for a fraction of what a firm that has suckled at the tit of high overhead, government funded enterprise could dream of doing, and in a fraction of the time.
The two missions are not similar at all, and ballooning deserves a great deal of respect. The launch phase is very difficult, requiring timing, skill, and luck. Despite all these problems, the CSBF has something like a 92% success rate. A launch platform firm would cough nervously and excuse themselves from the room if one wanted this level of success.
Best wishes to the Compton team in getting back in the air. I know our upcoming balloon mission will need all th happy thoughts we can get for our upcoming mission in the summer.
In the name of all mathematicians everywhere I answer you: "Yes".