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The launch teams seldom recover their balloons. reported its last position on Feb. 10 at 38,910 ft. off the west coast of Alaska Oh neat, I always wanted to b
by causi 4y ago
The launch teams seldom recover their balloons.
reported its last position on Feb. 10 at 38,910 ft. off the west coast of Alaska
Oh neat, I always wanted to be a litterbug and a floating aviation hazard at the same time. If you launch something into the sky, be it a drone or a balloon, you should be responsible for retrieving it.
- deleted 4y ago[deleted]
- shadowgovt 4y agoRegarding small research balloons: that has never been the case. Even the NWS has a return rate of 20% for the radiosondes they attach to weather balloons. Not saying a rules change can't be considered, but the current rules are "n'ah." No more than people are expected to retrieve their plain-old helium balloons from birthday parties (and we know those do ecological damage).
- jakear 4y agoI get that NOAA and NWS and whomever else release balloons that they never see again, but those at lease provide helpful data that benefits the public in some way. These seem to just... blast some portion of the EM spectrum with their location?
- shadowgovt 4y agoThe interesting data they provide is how they move and the air currents that cause that motion. Amateur science is still science and woe betide the free people that moves towards reserving science to professionals disproportionate to risk of harm.
- jakear 4y agoWhats the bar for the amount/type of data an individual needs to collect for the random trash they discard in the sea to be "science"?
- shadowgovt 4y agoPretty low. Successfully crafting it, getting it off the ground, and having it go as far as the ocean without popping is a pretty good accomplishment providing value disproportionate to cost. More environmental damage was likely done fabricating the plastics in the balloon than crashing it into the sea.
- jakear 4y agoI spend most of my days picking up trash from the ocean (<1 mile away from me). Suffice to say, our perceptions of the difficulty and nobility of throwing trash into it are vastly different.
- shadowgovt 4y agoWhat percentage of that trash is scientific experiments?
- jakear 4y agoWell trash just looks like trash when its trash, so it's hard to say for sure. Definitely enough mylar to really get some fantastic data.
- Dylan16807 4y ago> n'ah I don't think I've seen an apostrophe there before. Was that intentional?
- shadowgovt 4y agoIt was.
- Dylan16807 4y agoCan you elaborate on it? Is that a contraction? A pause? Something else? What kind of accent? I searched and found nothing. Should I be parsing it as N/A rather than the word "nah"?
- shadowgovt 4y agoIt parses as the word nah. But it's basically impossible to search because none of the major browsers hold that apostrophe in their tokenization.
- causi 4y agoRegarding small research balloons: that has never been the case. Why not? If I throw a "research baseball" through someone's window I'm still liable for replacing the window. Pick up your shit.
- shadowgovt 4y agoIf you break a window, you're certainly liable. That's a difference in kind from having a balloon come down on someone's property. Why? Because the law is path dependent and arbitrary.
- reaperducer 4y agoI always wanted to be a litterbug and a floating aviation hazard at the same time. It's not hard to find a dead endangered tortoise in the Mojave Desert because of people in Los Angeles letting their mylar Happy Birthday balloons float away. It's usually on purpose, because they can't think of anything farther than the end of their noses. I have noticed, however, in some other parts of the country and the world (Australia), that people have started to realize that they are polluting in ways they didn't think of before.
- TedShiller 4y ago> Oh neat, I always wanted to be a litterbug Exactly. We're worried about plastic pollution in the wilderness unless it's floating in the air, got it.
- Dylan16807 4y agoIf you think about it for a few seconds, quantity is the important factor here.
- rmason 4y agoWhy isn't there a website where a student or hobbyist group can register their balloons before they launch? So the FAA knows what balloons are in the air at any given time. I'd bet they're already tracking the governments weather balloons right now. Right now it would be a fools errand to launch a balloon and actually expect it wouldn't be shot down.
- ceejayoz 4y ago> Why isn't there a website where a student or hobbyist group can register their balloons before they launch? My local school district launched a balloon. It's made four trips around the world. What good would registering the launch site have done?
- krisoft 4y agoIf your payload is above a certain weight limit or density you have to inform the FAA under part 101.7. You can obviously opt to inform them even if you are under those limits. (There are some safety equipment you have to design into your unmanned balloon if it falls under part 101.7, such as a radar retro reflector and redundant flight termination system.)
- fuckHNtho 4y ago[dead]
- mardifoufs 4y ago>aviation hazard I guess you know more than almost every single aviation regulator in the world, since they don't usually consider that type of usage to be dangerous to airplanes?