NASA and the National Science Foundation have successfully launched and demonstrated a newly designed super pressure balloon prototype that may enable a new era of high-altitude scientific research. The super-pressure balloon ultimately will carry large scientific experiments to the brink of space for 100 days or more.
This seven-million-cubic-foot super-pressure balloon is the largest single-cell, super-pressure, fully-sealed balloon ever flown. When development ends, NASA will have a 22 million-cubic-foot balloon that can carry a one-ton instrument to an altitude of more than 110,000 feet…
Ultra-long duration missions using the super pressure balloon cost considerably less than a satellite and the scientific instruments flown can be retrieved and launched again, making them ideal very-high altitude research platforms.
You can track the balloons online. Which is a real gas. Har!
How about using these for space tourism? Cheaper and MUCH, MUCH safer than the commercial ventures around (Spaceship One…) and you could parachute back a la Joe Kittinger. Or some other, more comfortable, way of returning to earth could be devised.
Just a thought.
Why single cell? Why not 2, or 3? I think relying in a single cell is dangerous.
110,000 feet is about 20 miles. Not exactly the “edge” of space.
But it might make a good bomb platform.
Space Ship One goes 60 miles up.
Sorry, I only do metric 🙂
But I was under the impression these balloons could go much higher.
How far could this carry a Brazilian priest in a lawn chair?
Roswell, NM called. They want their alien back.
#2: A multi-cell balloon that fails in one cell does not keep flying. It’s not like a multi-jet engine passenger plane. It’s not going to come down less quickly, either. If one cell fails, before the thing has fallen a mile or two, the other cells shred.