Website review: SABLE-3 Balloon Launch
JaakkoJ discovered this in Science/Tech
•71 reviews since Aug 20, 2007
science, aerospace, photography
•sbszoo.com/bear/sable/sable3.htm
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Reviews of this website
JaakkoJ discovered 11 months ago- Very cool!
- ar0cketman rated 5 months ago
- Ever more popular among colleges and radio hams, high altitude ballooning is an inexpensive way to access the edge of space. The photo below was taken at a max. alt. of ≈ 117,597 ft.
- whitneyh rated 6 months ago
- These guys rock!
- Serendipity7 rated 7 months ago
- Baloon Watch..
- kick79 rated 8 months ago
- Cool pcitures of space
- DJShaddy rated 8 months ago
- Amazing what you can do with a digital camera, a tracking device, and a weather balloon!!
- JohnShepler rated 8 months ago
- Holy Cow! Can you believe this home-brew project went to over 100,000 feet!
- greggrthomas rated 8 months ago
- Cool pic
- caddyss rated 9 months ago
- thats awesome but only one thing what happens if it hits a plane on the way down or up.
- neha28 rated 9 months ago
- Awsome!
- Alberichh rated 9 months ago
- Canadian Radio Hams' Hi-Altitude Camera (entitled Southern Alberta Balloon Launch Experiment #3)
Absolutely a thumbs-up just for the photo (evidently too big to photoblog?) from 20 miles up, where the ground is tinted sky-blue by, well, the sky below the camera.
Several Stumble-reviewers have expressed either- concern/curiosity about legalities of air-traffic control, or
- desire/fantasy re undertaking such a project.
As to ATC, these guys (or at least the 4 in the recovery photo) are radio amateurs, so they are used to fitting their technical imaginations into the legal system. The call-sign (VA6TNY-11), "tracker", and "antenna" suggest they managed to budget the weight of a transmitter registered to "Tony VA6TNY", and if so, legalities may have been satisfied by filing a flight plan that included approximate launch time, transmitter frequency, and (unless they transmitted voice-synthesized GPS coordinates) encoding. Or it would be like ham operators to make it an automated transceiver with either a "voice mail" capability, for the ATCs, or a civilian version of the digital military "Identify Friend/Foe" scheme, for the ATCs' smart radar.
As to emulating this experiment, they are toying with breaking an altitude record, they are hams (used to coaxing complicated stuff -- that you may have to build yourself -- into usability), and Brian may well have earned rather than bought the NASA ball-cap he is shown wearing, since there have been Canadian NASA subcontractors (and there are surely emigre NASA engineers). So beware of underestimating the skills and effort involved.
Finally, for miscellaneous curiosity, note- the package was falling around 100 miles per hour (in that thin, thin air) a few minutes after the balloon burst
- they aren't done yet, and per the grandparent page on the same site, the next launch may be this weekend: "Saturday, October 20th - 2007"; check that link in case the schedule changes.
Update, Oct. 24: Sad news. As has been reported earlier this month on NPR's Talk of the Nation, helium is a minor side-business of natural-gas extraction, and its production level is down since that of gas is. (It is created by fusion of hydrogen in the sun, but on earth virtually only when alpha-rays, emitted mainly by radium and thorium deep in the earth, slow down, attract electrons, and become prosaic helium atoms; this helium may bubble up through -- but IMO more likely is swept up in (very slowly) rising plumes of -- magma, i.e., molten granite and basalt, and probably eventually thru cracks and pores in solid rock, until it escapes into the atmosphere or collects in reservoirs of petroleum gas and crude oil.) And as the reviewed page's grandfather now states, SABLE-4, not being an ongoing customer, can't get any He allocated to it, and is on hold pending that. - Canadian Radio Hams' Hi-Altitude Camera (entitled Southern Alberta Balloon Launch Experiment #3)
