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When I did my high altitude balloon I was struck by the changing wind directions at different altitudes. In this blog there's a picture of the actual drifting f
by jgrahamc 9y ago
When I did my high altitude balloon I was struck by the changing wind directions at different altitudes. In this blog there's a picture of the actual drifting flight path: http://blog.jgc.org/2011/04/gaga-1-flight.html http://blog.jgc.org/2011/04/gaga-1-flight.html
This flight path was pretty closely predicted 48 hours before using NOAA predicted wind data (see this blog: http://blog.jgc.org/2011/04/gaga-1-looking-good-for-sunday.html http://blog.jgc.org/2011/04/gaga-1-looking-good-for-sunday.h...). The difference in size between the two 'loops' is caused by a slow ascent and rapid descent.
If I'd had altitude control (like Loon) and uploaded data on wind speed it would have been possible to make the balloon hang around a target area.
- dmix 9y agoThat's interesting, it seemed like the most challenging problem to solve given the balloons are always moving. They mention using machine learning to perfect the coverage: > This is the first time we have used our new machine learning powered algorithms to keep balloons clustered over Puerto Rico, so we’re still learning how best to do this. As we get more familiar with the constantly shifting winds in this region, we hope to keep the balloons over areas where connectivity is needed for as long as possible.