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Another successful high altitude balloon flight with some gorgeous images. Alexei writes:
High altitude ballooning is an emerging hobby, since the price of GPS and communications equipment has gotten quite low. It is an excellent hobby for people fascinated by space flight and telerobotics and has many learning aspects -- from systems design to electronics design to software engineering. There is also an exciting risk factor, namely, that you could lose your precious electronics if something malfunctions. In this project, many of my interest and knowledge areas came together. Also, I have verified that the Earth is indeed round and that space is black.
Helium Balloon Mission to Near-Space - Link
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What? Nobody complaining about wasted helium, frightened birds, how they could've spent the money feeding the homeless... ???
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I wonder... if you had valve on the balloon to release helium at pressure, could you get higher?
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Helium as a lifting gas? If you're worried about depleting Earth's resources of He, then why not take a step up the periodic table until you find hydrogen? These aren't manned balloons, and hydrogen has better lifting properties.
(Always check with your local aerospace licensing regulations first)
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I dunno about the Hydrogen comment - i read somewhere that Hydrogen is only a tiny bit better than Helium at lifting things (i think it was some article on Hydrogen vs Helium in airships)
Either way, this project is awesome! Well done :)
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