[X] My Assistant

[djellison]

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?

[djellison]

The new HD-HERO cameras really do open up a LOT of posibilitied. I'm astonished that the ones they flew yesterday to watch the Shuttle launch were totally un-protected. Full HD video or sequential stills - and the results are genuinely stunning. Their very large FOV, great image quality...they make a LOT of posibilities available.

If and when we narrow down on some sort of manifest - perhaps the way to get it done is to get people to buy pieces of it that contribute to the project, but then they get them afterwards in the event of a successful flight

Gliders scare me.... BUT...if it could be done WELL...... we could actually command it to try and fly back toward the launch site and hopefully, safety.