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.

Just imagine

how long you could speak in a high-pitched voice from that one! And they waste it to fly around, pfff..

uh oh!

their lives will depend on exquisitely accurate weather forecasts

They're doomed.

Re:uh oh!

their lives will depend on exquisitely accurate weather forecasts

"Above the clouds, we predict a sunny day and a cool night. Same as yesterday. And tomorrow for that matter."

Please let the helium bag be...

sh'aped as King Kong.

Please.

Just remind them...

...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.

Visible

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....

Re:Visible

saw a program on this on the TV the other night
The flight is going to take 9 hours and they are going to launch in the morning to be home in time for tea

Having Read the Article

Their claims are full of hot air.

Someone was gonna say it. You know it.

I wonder

what payloads such a baloon can lift.
Shouldn't it be possible to lift a rocket to that height and starting from there?

Other High-Altitude Baloons

The real high-altitude balloon record-holder [slashdot.org], surprisingly, was not mentioned in this article.

the curvature of the earth

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...

Optimists...

"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?!!!

Boiling Blood

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?

Re:Boiling Blood

Yeah, people don't just explode in vacuum. I think the notion comes from bad movies ... the only realistic scene depicting humans in vacuum that I can remember was in 2001, where that Dave guy gets back into the spaceship. He even correctly uses the escaping air to propel himself into the ship. Pretty cool if you think about it.

Just Scary?

"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?

Not _quite_ that scary

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.

While this is cool, how about using balloons

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.

dangerous?

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?

Shoot him down...

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?

This just in from Roswell...

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.

cool thing

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.

Re:cool thing

"However, by diving or "standing up" in free fall, any experienced skydiver can learn to reach speeds of over 160-180MPH. Speeds of over 200MPH require significant practice to achieve. The record free fall speed, done without any special equipment, is 321MPH. Obviously, it is desirable to slow back down to 110MPH before parachute opening."

- http://hypertextbook.com/facts/JianHuang.shtml [hypertextbook.com]

How did he get enough speed to break the sound barrier? He would have needed a jet to speed his descent or something like that.

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Darwin Awards

The contenders for the 2003 darwin awards are...

Mission Want Ad

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.

We are an equal opportunity employer. All are encouraged to apply. Principles only. Do not bring lawyers.

Save Helium

Stratosphere or Space. Penny wise or Pound-foolish.
http://www.wired.com/wired/archive /8.08/helium.htm l

Reminds me of something

Reading this article summary (HAH, you think i'd actually RTFA?)reminded me of one of my favorite greek myths.

Icarus.

These guys are crazy.

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 [nasa.gov], 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. [ravenind.com] 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.

Intriguing development

A bag of helium the size of the Empire State building

Teddy Kennedy is working for NASA now?

Website for Details

The website for the attempt is at QinetiQ 1 [qinetiq1.com]

Its worthwhile noting that they will launch from the back of a trimaran warship research vessel [qinetiq.com], and will be observed from the highest flying powered, tethered UAV ever [qinetiq.com].

So it will demonstrate a whole slew of new technologies, real Slashdot stuff.

Cheese

They might as well continue to the moon and bring some cheese back home.

I Don't Think So

Excuse me, BUT...

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.

Beware

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

Re:We can replace the space shuttle

Going a long way straight up is not the same as going in to orbit!

Re:Simply...

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 [slashdot.org] weather reports, why would you think this is crazy?

Stop modding up arts students....

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.

Re:We can replace the space shuttle

Well, a dirigible is cheaper than a 747, and that is another proposal for staging, I actually did think about the possibilities as a stage for launching, but it seemed so ridiculous given the fragility of mylar compared to aluminum.

Re:High

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!

Re:Blood heats in partial pressure?

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.

XPrize idea

The XPrize competitor da Vinci Project [davinciproject.com] intends to use this idea. I don't know how feasable their proposal is.

Re:Blood heats in partial pressure?

nasa [nasa.gov] 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."

Re:We can replace the space shuttle

It is much more than a conceptual idea. The US military did balloon-assisted launches in the 1950's, and recently amateur radio operators as well as amateur rocket folk have done it as well. For one link see here [kluft.com].

You aren't going to get big payloads into space this way as the heavy balloons can carry on the order of several tons. I'm not sure if, in the end, this would be any cheaper or easier than launching a Pegasus from an airplane.

One thing certainly would be neat is if they used hygrogen in the balloon, that would make quite an impressive fireball then the rocket is ignited.

Errmm...

What they have proposed is to put a large platform at about 20000 ft,

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.

Re:We can replace the space shuttle

A balloon rises because it's lighter than the air it displaces.

As it rises... it expands... but it ultimately hits a point of equilibrium. The mass of the balloon and its filling is a fixed, finite quantity. So is the degree to which it can expand, which in turn sets a fixed threshold on lowest-possible density. Therefore, there must be a point where the baloon just isn't going to rise any more. An absolute limiting altitude. The practical service ceiling of the balloon will be lower still than the absolute ceiling, because as you approach the ceiling your ascent decelerates slowly to zero all but asymptotically -- some point on that deceleration curve is all the waiting you can bear. And, for any balloon that current technology can build, it's long before any useful orbital altitude.

Now, what is possible, and I believe one startup is looking at this as a satellite launch technology, is to take the payload and booster part way up with a balloon. That reduces rocket-burn times, etc., but the cost is one that sensible people in aerospace only pay grudgingly: complexity. Occam's Razor is an important tool in aero engineering.

It might be a good thing to fly such a balloon-rocket hybrid with expendable payloads a few times before calling it man-rated, eh?