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43 Comments
- inactive, on 01/09/2009, -0/+7Looks like we need to get Joseph Kittinger out of retirement...
- danimals740, on 01/10/2009, -0/+4I wonder if NASA will send equipment to space with this. Imagine, at an altitude of 5 miles the balloon would detach a rocket, then it would go out to space. I wonder how much fuel they would save. Then again, I know nothing about aerospace or mechanical engineering; the scenario does sound kind of hard.
- Junior612, on 01/10/2009, -0/+3This guy aint no pussy: http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/8/81 ...
- lutey, on 01/10/2009, -0/+3That's the first thing I thought of too, so I looked up the altitude that the space station orbits at. The balloon goes 20 miles, the space station is at 236 miles! And the bigger problem is that the space station is going at Mach 23 to stay in that orbit. So launching from a balloon 20 miles up going around mach 0 doesn't seem to help too much.
- inactive, on 01/10/2009, -0/+3Most badass video EVER.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=90Y0_iJrRl0&fea ...
And the record for biggest balls goes to...! - tusseyd, on 01/10/2009, -0/+3Imagine this hooked up to my lawn chair. Now we're talking.
- inactive, on 01/10/2009, -0/+3You need a gas lighter than vacuum for that
0_o - emecks, on 01/09/2009, -0/+3how long until the moon balloon? :p
- inactive, on 01/10/2009, -0/+3I like how he has tape patching up the leaky spots in his suit and holding something in place on the back there.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=81gn2oLeC_U - inactive, on 01/10/2009, -0/+2Well we could shoot them up there with a giant rail gun if somebody ever gets around to building one. Looks like humans are to busy wasting the worlds resources in pointless wars at the moment.
- inactive, on 01/10/2009, -0/+2as thick as food wrap? go science!
- ironicsans, on 01/10/2009, -0/+2Not too SHABby.
- AHammer16, on 01/10/2009, -0/+2Super pressure? would that make it less boyant and more likley to burst at high altitudes/ low atmo. pressures?
I wish these articles were more detailed and had much more info. - punkcat, on 01/10/2009, -0/+2just need a really long hook from the space nation now to nab it.
- inactive, on 01/10/2009, -0/+2The CNET article is crap.
Here is the NASA site - it includes video and tracking
http://www.nasa.gov/home/hqnews/2009/jan/HQ_09-003 ... - ThantiK, on 01/14/2009, -0/+2Yes, it's more efficient because of density. The ground is more dense than air. You can test this effect yourself with remote control helicopters. Get one hovering and place a cardboard surface underneith and lift it up to the undercarriage, the helicopter will lift. That's because instead of vortexing the air around the propellers, the air hits ground - and for every action there is an equal an opposite reaction...the difference being that the reaction is changed to more effectively propel the toy upwards, instead of the air just freely flowing around in a circle.
- Greengoo, on 01/10/2009, -0/+2Yah, if only we stopped wasting money on war and built a GIANT RAIL GUN
- jhshukla, on 01/10/2009, -0/+2even if you manage that or somehow use anti-gravity, the problem is that it will "rise" away from moon once it gets close enough. then you will have to let go the balloon and all your equipment will come crashing down. parachutes won't help because moon's got no atmosphere.
- acegi, on 01/10/2009, -0/+1hey, make it lighter so we can send one to mars.
- tusseyd, on 01/10/2009, -0/+1Did someone say Roswell?
- Petrarch1603, on 01/10/2009, -1/+2if nasa wants to make a super high balloon, smoke a bunch of weed and blow it into the balloon
- Brinskee, on 01/10/2009, -0/+1Why launch it from Antarctica? There are pretty severe winds up there and it has to be expensive to get that gear there in the first place.
- RoyStalin, on 01/10/2009, -0/+1Our science is getting more like early 20th century black and white movies. Soon we'll be shooting people to the moon out of cannons.
- DrReaper, on 01/10/2009, -0/+1I am afraid of super pressure balloons... one EMP could end america or europe.
- judicar, on 01/10/2009, -0/+1aka ufo
- Greengoo, on 01/10/2009, -0/+1That's no balloon...
- TechMike, on 01/10/2009, -0/+1This is really hard to do. At 5 miles up, the balloon is 10 times as big as on the surface, and the challenge has been finding a material flexible and light enough that's thick enough to be durable. Getting it to stay in one spot is also hard, which is why it had to be done in Antarctica, where the hot air thermals are minimized.
- inactive, on 01/10/2009, -0/+1http://au.youtube.com/watch?v=81gn2oLeC_U&feat ... This one is better.
- wilhoitm, on 01/10/2009, -0/+1Wasn't NASA doing this 40 years ago?
- RobbieF, on 01/10/2009, -0/+1In other news, Rednecks everywhere are frenzied by the apparent massive invasion of UFOs.
- TechMike, on 01/10/2009, -0/+1At 5 miles, there's only one tenth as much air as at sea level, which means there's a lot of pressure on the balloon skin.
- inactive, on 01/10/2009, -0/+1I'm pretty sure that's been done with sounding rockets.
- ThantiK, on 01/10/2009, -0/+1Much of the fuel requirements go into getting whatever is being propelled into motion. A lot of the forward-thrust is generated by thrusting against a solid object (the earth). Thrusting against just air is even less efficient. Even going up 5 miles would only save a very very small fraction of the overall fuel costs required to get into orbit.
A lot of people think the same way you do, unfortunately at this moment in time it's actually still cheaper to lift off from the ground, than lift off from mid-way. - tourettes1992, on 01/10/2009, -1/+2Dugg for being a balloon story
- TechMike, on 01/10/2009, -0/+1ha ha ha ha ha (I got the giggles)
- calcm, on 01/10/2009, -0/+0http://www.nmsu.edu/~ucomm/Releases/2003/March/Bal ...
- grammarpuss, on 01/10/2009, -1/+1One hopes it doesn't hit the Space Needle on the way up.
- einstevo, on 01/29/2009, -0/+0ok i'm really not trying to be condescending here but this is a very common physics misconception that I'd like to help clear up. The dominant effect that causes the rocket to move upwards is the acceleration of gas out the end of the rocket nozzle. There is a pressure difference between inside the motor and the external atmosphere. Multiply this pressure times the area of the rocket nozzle and you'll get the force on a chunk of gas exiting the motor. This force divided by the mass of this chunk of gas will result in an acceleration. As you say, since every force has an equal and opposite reaction, there will be a force in the opposite direction pushing on the rocket motor body, pushing it upwards and away from the ground. This has nothing to do with whether or not the ground is directly below the rocket. In order for the ground to matter, gas would have to bounce upwards off the ground, bounce off the rocket body and transfer some of it's energy to the rocket. This is a very minor effect.
- copypastry, on 01/10/2009, -1/+1this is the one that hit the windmill in england, right?
- omarst, on 01/10/2009, -1/+1***** IT!! its an ovni disguised as a ballon
- Yimyack, on 01/10/2009, -1/+0I hear the flight was piloted by Capt. Cheech & Private Chong...
- TheSecretChief, on 01/10/2009, -1/+0now we make another...only with the face of a gnome!
- einstevo, on 01/10/2009, -1/+0really? thrusting off of the ground is more efficient? can you explain that one? i'm pretty sure that rockets work because of the conservation of momentum between the rocket body and the rapidly expelled gasses, regardless of whether or not the rocket is sitting on a platform...
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