High altitude balloon payload, from Sable-3 discussion Options

[djellison]

http://www.unmannedspaceflight.com/index.p...20&start=20

We began talkin about a UMSF balloon - and who know what might happen if enough people think about something hard enough, thoroughly enough and long enough.

How's about this as a starting point.
http://vpizza.org/~jmeehan/balloon/ with http://www.chem.hawaii.edu/uham/part101.html as an important regulatory start point (I'm going to look up the UK regs for this as well)

http://www.srcf.ucam.org/~cuspaceflight/nova1launch.html is also very impressive - all done in the UK

This http://www.makezine.com/blog/archive/2007/...video_podc.html is particularly impressive - I like the multiple-cameras slant.

Anyway - thought I'd get a thread going - this is an idea I like too much to let it gather dust in a corner - the one thing that I think would be nice to achieve is self-portraiture of some sort - think Beagle 2's WAM etc....perhaps in a corner of the FOV of one of/the imaging system. What sort of limit's should we set ourselves? 1kg 10x10x20cm? (sort of 2U Cubesat-on-a-diet budget)

Doug

[helvick]

I'm definitely on board for this but I'm in the middle of some chaos as I'm moving so my input may be patchy over the next couple of weeks. Putting up shelving, rewiring lights, fitting out kitchens etc is sort of top of my list at the moment.

I think it's a very good idea to put a stake in the ground for mass budget - 1kg sounds about right but obviously it would need to be confirmed against the carrying capacity of the balloon(s). I'm not 100% sure that there is a real need to set strict constraints on physical dimensions but I think going with the 2U cubesat framework is a good starting point and thermal insulation will almost certainly mean the payload will be a very compact box.

I'd love to see a shot of a UMSF logo against a deep black background with the curve of the upper atmosphere just below it - that's definitely got my vote for #1 mission success criterion.