High Altitude Ballooning

[Kyle Yankanich]

Hey everyone,
 Just curious to see who is interested in doing some high-altitude balloon stuff. I personally have much of the equipment required, minus the balloon and helium (because who really keeps that stuff laying around), and would love to put something into near-space, and get some amazing photos out of it as well. I'd like to see what kind of designs you guys come up with, and see if we can get this off the ground (Ba-dum-tsh).

-Kyle

[Dave]

I'm down. I've never done anything with balloons but I have tons of stuff from high-power rocketry that we could reuse if we wanted.

[andrew sooy]

i would be game lets do this

On Wed, Oct 24, 2012 at 10:26 AM, Dave <dgs...@gmail.com> wrote:

I'm down. I've never done anything with balloons but I have tons of stuff from high-power rocketry that we could reuse if we wanted.

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[Randy]

I have always wondered...  How much rocket would be required to continue out after it is lifted to the max height from a balloon like that.  Or, if possible is that height enough to use gravity to help slingshot..  I know, sounds stupid, but sometime out of the box thinking..

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From: Kyle Yankanich <kyleya...@gmail.com>
To: hive76-d...@googlegroups.com
Sent: Wednesday, October 24, 2012 10:14 AM
Subject: [Hive 76 Discussion] High Altitude Ballooning

Hey everyone,
 Just curious to see who is interested in doing some high-altitude balloon stuff. I personally have much of the equipment required, minus the balloon and helium (because who really keeps that stuff laying around), and would love to put something into near-space, and get some amazing photos out of it as well. I'd like to see what kind of designs you guys come up with, and see if we can get this off the ground (Ba-dum-tsh).

-Kyle

[Sean McBeth]

Well, you can get a balloon at least into the low stratosphere, but that is only about 1/10th of the way to the thermosphere where the ISS orbits.

[Kyle Yankanich]

I'm really curious about that at well. From what I understand, Ballooning can get you up to 40km from the earth's surface, where there's only 1% atmosphere, but gravity is still at 98% (31.7729 fps^2).

-- Kyle Yankanich

On Wed, Oct 24, 2012 at 11:01 AM, Randy <wuch...@yahoo.com> wrote:

[David Andraka]

Did anybody catch the Redbull Stratos jump?  A little ambitious for us but still inspirational.

I've had dreams of attaching a cellphone with a camera to a rocket or any high altitude craft to catch a glimpse of black sky....  if we could maintain consistent cellular transmission it maybe possible to live stream the whole thing.

[Sean McBeth]

Yeah, Felix Baumgartner is a crazy man.

[Sean McBeth]

Might be able to maintain a cell connection with a parabolic reflector hanging from the underside of the balloon.

[Kyle Yankanich]

Actually, I doubt you even need the reflector. UHF and VHF frequencies cna be very-very low-power if line of sight is maintained.
APRS is actually used alot in this circumstance, which is a form of Ham Radio packet communication. They recommend using a .5-.1watt radio, so you don't hit get repeated across VAST distances at that altitude.

-- Kyle Yankanich

[Rich Hart]

Hey Kyle,

I've done a ton of research on high-altitude ballooning.  Lets talk next open-house!

Rich

[Kyle Yankanich]

Sounds good to me Rich. doing a quick stock, I think I have most of the stuff we need to actually do this, minus the expertise, help, and balloon.

-- Kyle Yankanich

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[Joshua D. Johnson]

I've seen cheap surplus weather balloons on ebay.

[Dave]

How big a balloon do you think you'd need for what you have in mind? I think I have like an 8' diameter balloon.

[Kyle Yankanich]

Dave, it appears that legally speaking we can have a 6lb payload, with up to two (2) separate payloads. That is to say, 12 total lbs of lift So, it's totally possible to use it for a smaller payload, or with multiple balloons, it all depends on how you guys want to take this. I'd personally like to put as many cameras into space as is feasible for us. However, that means more gas, larger balloons, more cost.

So, Dave, I guess if we can use that depends on if it's 8 foot inflated, or an 8 foot burst. A balloon that bursts at ~8 ft, is about 4 feet inflated on the ground, which is 10 oz of lift. I believe a 8ft balloon on the ground can lift ~2lbs.

BTW, here's the US FAR Regulations for unmanned balloons
http://www.eoss.org/pubs/far_annotated.htm

-- Kyle Yankanich

On Mon, Oct 29, 2012 at 3:19 PM, Dave <dgs...@gmail.com> wrote:

How big a balloon do you think you'd need for what you have in mind? I think I have like an 8' diameter balloon.

[David Andraka]

It sounds like the plan is to do a single launch, what are your thoughts on multiple launches on the same day?  The next thought is what could we accomplish with multiple launches?

[andrew sooy]

is there a limit on to how many launches you can do because i would like to to send up other sensors as well to take readings.  

[Kyle Yankanich]

I don't believe there is a limit on how many launches you can do, I've hear dof clubs launching 5-10 balloons in a single day. Your problem then is tracking them all, and having equipment for all of them. Would be better to integrate as much as possible. Also, you can put multiple systems on one "launch line".  Here's the issue with doing too much: You need a bigger balloon, and won't get the altitude you want. Take this balloon, which is nice and hefty sized: http://amzn.com/B00513FWQI  . It's 30 feet in diameter, which means it can lift ~11 lbs. However, with 11 lbs of weight on it, it will get an altitude of  29,000 meters - MAXIMUM. It will only lift at 1.2meters/second, which make sit an almost 7 hour flight.
Same balloon, loaded with only 4 lbs? Will go  to 34,000 meters.
Same balloon loaded with only 2 lbs? 36,000 meters.

I say we decide on a balloon / desired altitude first, and then try to build to that / better than that instituting the sensors/devices we want as we go.

I vouch for the 1200gram, 30ft diameter balloon, going approx 30km up. This is doable, with a launch rate of 3meters/second, and 2.5 hour fly-time and a 4000 gram (~8.8lbs) build envelope.. This will get us plenty of altitude, plenty of equipment in the air, and a short enough flight-time to make it possible that it lands close to launch, and can be tracked in real-time.


Calculations made with : http://www.cusf.co.uk/calc/


-- Kyle Yankanich

[Jordan Miller]

you peeps will want to check out stephen murphy's talk from open hardware summit on open sourcing space payloads:
http://summit.oshwa.org/open-sourcing-the-final-frontier/

http://www.ustream.tv/channel/ohs2012

jordan

[Kyle Yankanich]

Why doesn't OHS have the talk broken down individually yet? On the link Jordan sent, 47 minutes in. The talk before his is neat as well.

Cubesat is a neat project, and a neat way to see standardization for small payloads. I looked at the Ardusat, and thought it was neat, but here's my question with it - why do you need to do any on-board processing with it? Why not just relay the data to the ground and process it here. It's not like you can control anything on the Ardusat. Why would I want my code on it, instead of just getting a raw feed of the data?


-- Kyle Yankanich

[Kyle Yankanich]

Hey Folks,
 time to get the bandwagon rolling on a group project. I've asked around and some people seem excited about the idea of doing a High Altitude Balloon. It's a good way to get multiple people working on one project, not to mention a field day with the launch and recovery of the payload. It looks like Hive has tried to do something like this in the past: http://wiki.hive76.org/Hackerspaces_In_Space
Did we actually launch? How did we place in the contest?


Either way, I started a new Wiki page, just for us to squabble over the idea of doing a launch, and ideas to implement. May I recommend for a first launch going simple, and working our way up from there.

Go edit, add, and e-mail some ideas.
http://wiki.hive76.org/High_Altitude_Ballooning

-- Kyle Yankanich

[Martin Kreibe]

I love this idea! I haven't come out much, but i hope to resolve that tonight...

Martin Kreibe

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[andrew sooy]

This is going to be a great project.

[Barbara Ellis]

Is something Braden and Peirce could watch or help out with? We've been following the discussion, but I wasn't sure.

Thanks,

Barbara

Barbara Ellis

[Steve Bate]

Here's an article about HAB and using satellite communications (Iridium) for telemetry and tracking...

http://www.theregister.co.uk/2012/11/28/iridium_pi/

Steve