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

[Juramike]

The twin balloon idea is pretty good. Launching two simultaneously from slightly different locations will give some really cool information:

If they stay together, you could pull off a stereo image. (Launcing them a few kilometers apart should give a stereo good baseline at altitude.)

If they drift apart, your tracking data gives great information on weather patterns.

With two balloons, you'll also get an idea of the consistency of ascent rate under nearly identitical conditions. And all the telemetry data will be doubled, so you get double information on performance that you can use to cross-check.

Two attempst also increase the chances of mission success, should one fail (or land on someone's roof).

Plus you'll have the fun of two recovery teams chasing around the countryside....

If they're cheap, send two! (which is pretty much my sentiment regarding all missions)

-Mike