Balloon Science by Dan

Balloon engineering log

Flight summary, a GHOST balloon from 1969. Typical of the program, 172 days, 3+ orbits of earth.

FYI, I've imported all the old posts into Bluesky, though they all have today's posting date :-) Happy ballooning! - Dan

Would love to know more about this!

Official illustration of a Project MOGUL balloon train very similar to the one W.W. "Mac" Brazel found on his ranch in June 1947.

Brigadier General Roger Ramey, left, and Colonel Thomas J. DuBose posing with recovered Project MOGUL debris on July 8, 1947.

Major Jesse A. Marcel posing with recovered Project MOGUL debris on July 8, 1947.

Project MOGUL used “trains” of high-altitude balloons more than 650 feet long, radar reflectors (to assist in ground tracking), and acoustic sensors to detect distant blasts. Numerous tests of the apparatus were conducted in New Mexico in 1946 and 1947. It was one of these—Flight 4—that failed.

NASA and Forest Service Use Balloon to Help Firefighters Communicate - NASA NASA is participating in a collaborative effort to use high-altitude balloons to improve real-time communications among firefighters battling wildland

NASA participating in collaborative effort to use high-altitude #balloons to improve real-time communications among firefighters battling #wildfires
Strategic Tactical Radio and Tactical Overwatch (STRATO) technology
www.nasa.gov/centers-and-...

Filling an early Loon "Ibis" balloon using a crane at Winnemucca, NV airport. Dec 9, 2014

A bad day on the ground. This unfilled, loose balloon has gotten caught in a gust of wind and opened like a spinnaker sail. Note the people running away on the left. The folded balloon was probably neatly on the red strip. Training at Timmins, ON, Canadian Space Agency 2014

Excited to be going to #AGU23 American Geophysical Union conference this week!

A dark little lenticular cloud rides the crest of Alcatraz Island's gravity wave today. The wind coming into the bay from the west (left) is bounced up by hitting the prison island. It's highest is downwind where some vapor condenses and then evaporates as it bounces back down.

A wild roof appears!

x.com/MoffettHangar1…

Aaaand now I know how punishing the NOS operating system and it's text editor are. I just want to type in a file, please. I just want to make two lines in a text file. "Using the CDC 6500 is, for many, a new and daunting experience." is not kidding.

Historic balloon design code from 1978 can now be run again! the programs I found were for a CDC mainframe supercomputer in FORTRAN-63 language, and I am stunned to find that there is one CDC-6500 mainframe left, and YOU CAN LOG INTO IT ONLINE and run code! @LivingComputers

Some info on the AU ballooning situation from the Australian operator of theballoon tracking site:

x.com/vk5qi/status/1… Sondehub.org

Quote from me in this one :-

x.com/NPR/status/162…

HYSPLIT is a public tool that has been dear to me since 2005. I’ve always been amazed that it is free to access forecast of wherever the wind will blow. Every balloon project uses this extensively, from amateurs to Google:

www-forbes-com.cdn.ampproject.org/c/s/www.forbes…

At Google's Project Loon we were told that U2s occasionally checked out our balloons, and one time they sent us a pic like this over Lake Tahoe :-). I hope I can find my copy to post sometime!

x.com/bizjetsofwar/s…

The two amateur pico balloons are cruising unharmed through Montana and Arizona skies! It looks like the military has finally chilled out :-) #BalloonShotDown #balloongate #weatherballoons

Hopefully less sweat this time ;-

x.com/tacticalmaid/s…

It should wake up tomorrow morning local time near the border of British Columbia and Alberta, Canada, in the middle of this pic. Link to track it:

amateur.sondehub.org/#!mt=Mapnik&mz…

Remember that it cannot transmit while the sun is not up. The dots along the line are 4 hour intervals. It will probably lose power in the next 2 hours if not already

Alaska airspace was just penetrated by the next amateur balloon. What will happen? The rainbow lines are where it may drift in the future.
Track it live (if it lives on) here:#balloonshotdown #balloongate #weatherballoons

amateur.sondehub.org/#!mt=Mapnik&mz…

There's a third as well, Swedish, with the first northern one, Canadian. The southern one, American, is the same one that Romania tried to shoot down.

The next two pico balloons that might enter North America. This guess is based on weather forecasts and the variable longevity of the balloons. Being solar-powered, the northern one won't transmit when it's in the northern arctic night. #picoballoons

Great to haveown Mark @vk5qi on the stream tonight, and old friend. Got to talk about the underpinnings of the data path from balloon-to-map and balloon regs. @xssfox and he run SH together. Find #picoballoons and others on

amateur.sondehub.org sondehub.org

Thanks, everyone for watching the Pico Balloon stream. If you're looking for the international balloon regulations, ICAO Annex 2, Rules of the Air, Appendix 5, Unmanned Free Balloons, just DM me and I can show you how to get them.

Stratospheric Balloon Science I will be producing educational content relating to high altitude balloons, in regards to their technical design, engineering, and the scientific challenges in making them work. Are these interesting to you? Please consider donating to help me be able to share more balloon science with the world :-): https://www.patreon.com/balloonscience I don't expect to have a particular schedule/frequency of these videos, though I sometimes do make a few in a row. About me: I'm Dan Bowen, a stratospheric balloon science/engineering expert, and I want to share my knowledge with you. It's always fascinated me (biased much? lol), I'd like to show you some tidbits that you might like too. I'll be getting back to making balloons some time, and your support of this will get us there faster! If you need my help on a balloon project, I'm available at http://www.stratosphericballoon.consulting Please subscribe, and share this with your friends :-)

Livestream Thursday: Where the small balloons came from, who made them, how amateurs knew before, and how they are built. 20 more of these are on their way. 6pm Pacific, 9pm Eastern, 0200 UTC#BalloonShotDown #balloongate

Twitch.tv/balloonscidan bit.ly/balloonscivide…

Amateur Pico balloons, floating between 10,000m and 15,000m high, with only business card sized circuit board, hanging below a small or vary large mylar balloon. The balloons are silver or clear, spherical or cylindrical. They will drift aimlessly for months, innocent.

Little hand-made balloon adventurers are drifting round and round the Earth... #BalloonShotDown

"As 99 red balloons go by
99 dreams I have had
In every one, a red balloon
It's all over, and I'm standing pretty
In this dust that was a city
If I could find a souvenir
Just to prove the world was here
And here is a red balloon
I think of you, and let it go"

"99 knights of the air
Ride super high-tech jet fighters
Everyone's a superhero
Everyone's a Captain Kirk
With orders to identify
To clarify and classify
Scrambling the summer sky
99 red balloons go by"