High Altitude Balloon Ideas (2.0) |
High Altitude Balloon Ideas (2.0) |
Feb 25 2011, 08:32 PM
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#1
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Founder Group: Chairman Posts: 14434 Joined: 8-February 04 Member No.: 1 |
So - now I live in the USA, I've been researching what's possible over here regarding balloon flights.
Firstly - the laws for ham-radio are much more relaxed, so instead of having to use bespoke 10mW transmitters for tracking... you can use an off the shelf 10W APRS tracking device ( http://www.byonics.com/microtrak/mtaio.php ) . You don't need to contact the FAA if it's below a certain mass. There's a lot more country to land it in, rather than the north sea. So - I'd very much like to start thinking about what unique project we, as a bunch of spacey people, could use a high altitude balloon flight for. Here's some of the things that have been done recently in the field of amateur high altitude balloon flights : If you want to be blown away - a cinematography group used the HD-Hero action cameras to record some genuinely breathtaking footage - http://www.youtube.com/user/kevinmacko - They also used a ShadowBox - a sort of data-logger-of-awesome - http://shadowboxlive.com/ You can now get fairly cheap back-up tracking using the SPOT locators http://www.findmespot.com/en/ There's now an almost off the shelf APRS tracking system including data - http://www.rpc-electronics.com/rtrak-hab.php These guys have pulled off a number of flights including panoramas being shot as they went - http://sites.google.com/site/ucsdnearspaceballoon/ SO - what, if anything, might we do that's new, unique, interesting, given the options that have opened up in the last couple of years? |
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Feb 27 2011, 12:21 PM
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#2
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Member Group: Members Posts: 593 Joined: 20-April 05 Member No.: 279 |
1/ I like the idea of returning home, or, indeed, to any safe/designated landing areas that your payload might find itself near.
There are issues here - any "proper" glider would find itself in a ~1% air density environment at the point of release. Something scaled to work down here will simply plummet from up there. Cheaper and simpler would be to stick with a parachute, but one with some element of a glide ratio. 3:1 is easily attained, 5:1 more difficult (best paraglider canopies are around 11:1) but either of the former should be plenty from an altitude of 30km or so. One big benefit in a controlled/gliding recovery is that the payload could be made much more stable after release - making it a better camera platform - and it would be possible to program in 360s at stages/altitudes during the descent to give full panoramas if required. 2/ Everybody uses weather balloons, good for 30km. But we know we could balloon to 50km. I think, as a goal, that's more an altitude suitable to UMSF's ambitions! 3/ As to alternative payloads - the artistic-eco-guerilla in me rather fancies a couple of thousand sycamore seeds, released at height. 4/ The somewhat saner, rationalist side of me thinks that demonstrations of the ambient temperature and pressure are essential - but would it be possible to demonstrate the lower gravity at balloon altitude? Andy |
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