4 ms·

Startups building balloons to hoist tourists

42 points by amichail 2y ago

ginkgotree 2y ago
This is a local startup in my hometown, I have been following them for 4 years or so, and have met the founders on several occasions. Decided to pull the trigger on a reservation for a seat for ~2028 flight. Excited to keep tabs on their progress.
- leetrout 2y ago
  Three companies are mentioned--which one are you flying with?
dsr_ 2y ago
This is one of those situations where "move fast and break things" is not good advice.
pintxo 2y ago
> Ticket prices range from $50,000 per seat with World View to around $184,000 with Zephalto. Space Perspective sells tickets to its experience for $125,000 per seat. That’s all assuming commercial service gets off the ground. This suddenly makes paying for a 0g flight a steal.
- hbossy 2y ago
  They wanted to make it cheaper but investors didn't like Logitech controllers in the cockpit.
  - pintxo 2y ago
    At least, using carbon fiber makes sense when the problem is to hold pressure inside your vessel vs trying to do the opposite.
  - 93po 2y ago
    hopefully also doesn't entail windows running antivirus
blueflow 2y ago
> Passengers will not experience weightlessness If this needs to be said, i think its not clear to everyone... being "in space" is not what causes weightlessness. "Falling" towards your local gravitational source does it. This includes orbiting.
- exe34 2y ago
  if you have a long enough rope, you could keep the balloon up there and freefall for a while and then brake close to the ground.
  - Retric 2y ago
    Air resistance means you only feel weightless for a few seconds on a long fall. Indoor skydiving lets you ‘fall’ for hours, but you don’t accelerate so you don’t feel weightless.
    - exe34 2y ago
      fair point, but 100k up hopefully it's a lot smaller. maybe you could pull harder on the rope from the ground as well to balance it somewhat. but yes, you won't be weightless the whole way.
- chankstein38 2y ago
  I honestly had no idea this was the case! I assumed it was just space that "had no gravity" what you're saying makes sense though. Mind blown!
  - _6khi 2y ago
    I've been part of a space industry non-profit that partners with the Government of Canada to put experiments run by students on planes that do "parabolic flights" to simulate "weightlessness" while falling. Around when I first started, I proposed writing the term "zero gravity" on a webpage we were updating. But as my supervisor adamantly noted at the time, that would have been inaccurate. The convention was to never use the term "zero gravity," since using that term would perpetuate a common misunderstanding. Instead, we've used the term "microgravity" in its place—which makes sense, as there are still small gravitational forces acting on every object in space. NASA also published a webpage with a good explanation of what microgravity is, with a nice diagram of how it works (including a visual of the parabolic flight): https://www.nasa.gov/learning-resources/for-kids-and-students/what-is-microgravity-grades-5-8/ https://www.nasa.gov/learning-resources/for-kids-and-student...
simondanerd 2y ago
I feel like we tried to do something similar to this and it didn't go very well. https://www.cnn.com/americas/live-news/titanic-missing-sub-oceangate-06-23-23/index.html https://www.cnn.com/americas/live-news/titanic-missing-sub-o...
surfingdino 2y ago
That page would read better if it played the tune from the Lemmings.
surfingdino 2y ago
One prick and it's gone. Just saying...
led76 2y ago
100k feet in altitude may not be quite high enough to get that 'in space' feel. I think you can see the curvature of the earth and the sky above you is dark / blackish.
gammarator 2y ago
I’d recommend the documentary BLAST! (https://m.imdb.com/title/tt1190065/ https://m.imdb.com/title/tt1190065/) for a look at the scientific side of stratospheric ballooning, which personally would put me off wanting to ride in one.
- solardev 2y ago
  Why did it put you off?
azinman2 2y ago
I’d love for some flat earther influencers to board this. That said this seems… dangerous. Giving me OceanGate vibes.
- threesevenths 2y ago
  Where is Ocean gate was charged with dealing with pressures above one atmosphere, this company will have to deal with pressures between zero and one atmospheres. Probably the same outcome will occur at some point.
  - the__alchemist 2y ago
    Could you talk us through this one? I am interested in the equation of "above one atmosphere" to between 0 and 1.
    - rflrob 2y ago
      I’m not OP, but the startup ethos of the last few decades has been to move fast and break things, fake it til you make it, and generally operate on the bleeding edge to deliver incredible products (and, occasionally non-credible, cough Theranos). My concern would be that the team would cut safety corners until the probability of success just barely rises above some threshold, rather than engineering everything to have as low a risk as is feasible. Is 0-1atm easier than 1-infinity atm? Yes, but that just means you can cut more corners.
      - the__alchemist 2y ago
        I buy it. OP's comment struck me as interesting, because the "above 1atm" value turns out to be about 300atm; designing a pressure vessel to sustain a 300atm pressure difference is much more challenging than one to withstand 1atm, which is the case for these balloons. If we assume relative cost cutting due to cultural concerns, then the analogy makes sense.
  - Someone 2y ago
    1 atmosphere of pressure is a lot less than a few hundred atmosphere. I also remember reading (but cannot find a reference) that it is easier to design a container for overpressure than to design it for underpressure. In this case, I think providing a safety valve that fails before the container implodes violently may be a a good option (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pressure_vessel#Safety_features https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pressure_vessel#Safety_feature...)
itslennysfault 2y ago
That price seems crazy to me. It's "just a balloon" I don't see what their hard costs are that make this more than the cost of a commercial flight. I'm glad there are multiple players in this space so they can compete and drive the cost down over time.
- aleph_minus_one 2y ago
  > That price seems crazy to me. It's "just a balloon" I don't see what their hard costs are that make this more than the cost of a commercial flight. Answer: exclusivity. --- Or to explain the topic in economic terms: with their offering, these companies offer a given supply for balloon rides into the stratosphere. On the other hand, for a given price for such a ride, a demand to buy it for this price. What a company wants to optimize is (number of sales for a given price) * price. Since the supply is currently rather limited, the price can be set to a very high value to optimize this function.
- brookst 2y ago
  Almost no prices are set based on cost to produce. When you shop for eggs, do you care if the producer’s costs were higher or lower than normal? Essentially all prices are based on the value people receive from the good.
  - fellowniusmonk 2y ago
    That is a new development and the massive shift away from cost plus pricing to value based pricing is a big part of the financial squeeze of the lower and middle classes. Simultaneously, from all sides sellers are now constantly testing the elasticity of consumer budgets to maximize profit until they exclude the bottom x%, it's a huge financial strain for the poorest among us.
    - brookst 2y ago
      Cost plus was never a pricing model differentiated goods. Human psychology just doesn’t work that way; nobody says “having a nice reliable car is worth $20k to me, but I’ll pay $30k because their cost to produce is high”. That’s kind of the whole point of the capitalist / consumerist model: first movers take high risks with investment and can reap outsized returns if successful, while success breeds competition from new entrants who have a proven market and a product to copy. The expansion of the market means more price competition, driving prices and returns down. I’m not saying it always works like that, just that it generally does.
spuz 2y ago
I tried to find out how these balloons intend to navigate and descend. I read that World View completed a parachute test earlier this year but I'm not sure if that's intended during normal operation or during an emergency. Details of how each of these companies intend to operate is thin on the ground.
stdcall83 2y ago
Put some flat earthers so they can see the curve
smusamashah 2y ago
That's the website of the startup from the article https://www.worldview.space/space-tourism https://www.worldview.space/space-tourism
nanomonkey 2y ago
I'd love to see a version of this where each passenger is in a glider, allowing a long distance controlled decent to a new destination. Maybe even use reusable balloons filled with hydrogen, that can be depleted with a fuel cell to create enough ballast, and electricity to do a controlled decent. It would be an interesting new way to travel.
- AnarchismIsCool 2y ago
  There's so little air up there that the gliders would go supersonic rather quickly until they got into denser air. This would mean you'd need low aspect dart like wings so they don't get ripped off but that means the landing performance would be abysmal. You'd have landing speeds nearing 200kts (as opposed to ~50kts for a normal glider). Since kinetic energy is the square of speed, any fuck up would be very fatal at those speeds. The U2 was famous for this issue, the pilots were flying on a knife edge because a stall (a less aggressive situation that deploying from a static balloon) would mean the plane starts accelerating well beyond it's structural limit before you can do anything about it.
  - nanomonkey 2y ago
    Yeah, I was thinking about that...you'd likely need wings that could be pulled in close at higher speeds/altitudes or to not go quite as high. I would be happy for the later...just get rid energy needs of gaining altitude in a glider.
    - AnarchismIsCool 2y ago
      Funny enough, this was a thing in Pandora's Star. There's a weird chapter where the author gets bored and describes this exotic glider extreme sport where people ride variable geometry winged gliders through mega storms on another planet.
beretguy 2y ago
I read it as “Starbucks” at first, which didn’t make any sense.
cromulent 2y ago
> If we go over 98,000 feet, we are a spaceship. Outside the capsule, it’s essentially a vacuum. This CEO of a balloon company doesn’t seem to understand how balloons work.
yandie 2y ago
The inverse of OceanGate? Call it StratosphereGate or AirGate?

42 points by amichail 2y ago

This is a local startup in my hometown, I have been following them for 4 years or so, and have met the founders on several occasions. Decided to pull the trigger on a reservation for a seat for ~2028 flight. Excited to keep tabs on their progress.

leetrout 2y ago
Three companies are mentioned--which one are you flying with?

dsr_ 2y ago

This is one of those situations where "move fast and break things" is not good advice.

pintxo 2y ago

> Ticket prices range from $50,000 per seat with World View to around $184,000 with Zephalto. Space Perspective sells tickets to its experience for $125,000 per seat. That’s all assuming commercial service gets off the ground. This suddenly makes paying for a 0g flight a steal.

hbossy 2y ago
They wanted to make it cheaper but investors didn't like Logitech controllers in the cockpit.
- pintxo 2y ago
  At least, using carbon fiber makes sense when the problem is to hold pressure inside your vessel vs trying to do the opposite.
- 93po 2y ago
  hopefully also doesn't entail windows running antivirus

blueflow 2y ago

> Passengers will not experience weightlessness If this needs to be said, i think its not clear to everyone... being "in space" is not what causes weightlessness. "Falling" towards your local gravitational source does it. This includes orbiting.

exe34 2y ago
if you have a long enough rope, you could keep the balloon up there and freefall for a while and then brake close to the ground.
- Retric 2y ago
  Air resistance means you only feel weightless for a few seconds on a long fall. Indoor skydiving lets you ‘fall’ for hours, but you don’t accelerate so you don’t feel weightless.
  - exe34 2y ago
    fair point, but 100k up hopefully it's a lot smaller. maybe you could pull harder on the rope from the ground as well to balance it somewhat. but yes, you won't be weightless the whole way.
chankstein38 2y ago
I honestly had no idea this was the case! I assumed it was just space that "had no gravity" what you're saying makes sense though. Mind blown!
- _6khi 2y ago
  I've been part of a space industry non-profit that partners with the Government of Canada to put experiments run by students on planes that do "parabolic flights" to simulate "weightlessness" while falling. Around when I first started, I proposed writing the term "zero gravity" on a webpage we were updating. But as my supervisor adamantly noted at the time, that would have been inaccurate. The convention was to never use the term "zero gravity," since using that term would perpetuate a common misunderstanding. Instead, we've used the term "microgravity" in its place—which makes sense, as there are still small gravitational forces acting on every object in space. NASA also published a webpage with a good explanation of what microgravity is, with a nice diagram of how it works (including a visual of the parabolic flight): https://www.nasa.gov/learning-resources/for-kids-and-students/what-is-microgravity-grades-5-8/ https://www.nasa.gov/learning-resources/for-kids-and-student...

simondanerd 2y ago

I feel like we tried to do something similar to this and it didn't go very well. https://www.cnn.com/americas/live-news/titanic-missing-sub-oceangate-06-23-23/index.html https://www.cnn.com/americas/live-news/titanic-missing-sub-o...

surfingdino 2y ago

That page would read better if it played the tune from the Lemmings.

surfingdino 2y ago

One prick and it's gone. Just saying...

led76 2y ago

100k feet in altitude may not be quite high enough to get that 'in space' feel. I think you can see the curvature of the earth and the sky above you is dark / blackish.

gammarator 2y ago

I’d recommend the documentary BLAST! (https://m.imdb.com/title/tt1190065/ https://m.imdb.com/title/tt1190065/) for a look at the scientific side of stratospheric ballooning, which personally would put me off wanting to ride in one.

solardev 2y ago
Why did it put you off?

azinman2 2y ago

I’d love for some flat earther influencers to board this. That said this seems… dangerous. Giving me OceanGate vibes.

threesevenths 2y ago
Where is Ocean gate was charged with dealing with pressures above one atmosphere, this company will have to deal with pressures between zero and one atmospheres. Probably the same outcome will occur at some point.
- the__alchemist 2y ago
  Could you talk us through this one? I am interested in the equation of "above one atmosphere" to between 0 and 1.
  - rflrob 2y ago
    I’m not OP, but the startup ethos of the last few decades has been to move fast and break things, fake it til you make it, and generally operate on the bleeding edge to deliver incredible products (and, occasionally non-credible, cough Theranos). My concern would be that the team would cut safety corners until the probability of success just barely rises above some threshold, rather than engineering everything to have as low a risk as is feasible. Is 0-1atm easier than 1-infinity atm? Yes, but that just means you can cut more corners.
    - the__alchemist 2y ago
      I buy it. OP's comment struck me as interesting, because the "above 1atm" value turns out to be about 300atm; designing a pressure vessel to sustain a 300atm pressure difference is much more challenging than one to withstand 1atm, which is the case for these balloons. If we assume relative cost cutting due to cultural concerns, then the analogy makes sense.
- Someone 2y ago
  1 atmosphere of pressure is a lot less than a few hundred atmosphere. I also remember reading (but cannot find a reference) that it is easier to design a container for overpressure than to design it for underpressure. In this case, I think providing a safety valve that fails before the container implodes violently may be a a good option (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pressure_vessel#Safety_features https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pressure_vessel#Safety_feature...)

itslennysfault 2y ago

That price seems crazy to me. It's "just a balloon" I don't see what their hard costs are that make this more than the cost of a commercial flight. I'm glad there are multiple players in this space so they can compete and drive the cost down over time.

aleph_minus_one 2y ago
> That price seems crazy to me. It's "just a balloon" I don't see what their hard costs are that make this more than the cost of a commercial flight. Answer: exclusivity. --- Or to explain the topic in economic terms: with their offering, these companies offer a given supply for balloon rides into the stratosphere. On the other hand, for a given price for such a ride, a demand to buy it for this price. What a company wants to optimize is (number of sales for a given price) * price. Since the supply is currently rather limited, the price can be set to a very high value to optimize this function.
brookst 2y ago
Almost no prices are set based on cost to produce. When you shop for eggs, do you care if the producer’s costs were higher or lower than normal? Essentially all prices are based on the value people receive from the good.
- fellowniusmonk 2y ago
  That is a new development and the massive shift away from cost plus pricing to value based pricing is a big part of the financial squeeze of the lower and middle classes. Simultaneously, from all sides sellers are now constantly testing the elasticity of consumer budgets to maximize profit until they exclude the bottom x%, it's a huge financial strain for the poorest among us.
  - brookst 2y ago
    Cost plus was never a pricing model differentiated goods. Human psychology just doesn’t work that way; nobody says “having a nice reliable car is worth $20k to me, but I’ll pay $30k because their cost to produce is high”. That’s kind of the whole point of the capitalist / consumerist model: first movers take high risks with investment and can reap outsized returns if successful, while success breeds competition from new entrants who have a proven market and a product to copy. The expansion of the market means more price competition, driving prices and returns down. I’m not saying it always works like that, just that it generally does.

spuz 2y ago

I tried to find out how these balloons intend to navigate and descend. I read that World View completed a parachute test earlier this year but I'm not sure if that's intended during normal operation or during an emergency. Details of how each of these companies intend to operate is thin on the ground.

stdcall83 2y ago

Put some flat earthers so they can see the curve

smusamashah 2y ago

That's the website of the startup from the article https://www.worldview.space/space-tourism https://www.worldview.space/space-tourism

nanomonkey 2y ago

I'd love to see a version of this where each passenger is in a glider, allowing a long distance controlled decent to a new destination. Maybe even use reusable balloons filled with hydrogen, that can be depleted with a fuel cell to create enough ballast, and electricity to do a controlled decent. It would be an interesting new way to travel.

AnarchismIsCool 2y ago
There's so little air up there that the gliders would go supersonic rather quickly until they got into denser air. This would mean you'd need low aspect dart like wings so they don't get ripped off but that means the landing performance would be abysmal. You'd have landing speeds nearing 200kts (as opposed to ~50kts for a normal glider). Since kinetic energy is the square of speed, any fuck up would be very fatal at those speeds. The U2 was famous for this issue, the pilots were flying on a knife edge because a stall (a less aggressive situation that deploying from a static balloon) would mean the plane starts accelerating well beyond it's structural limit before you can do anything about it.
- nanomonkey 2y ago
  Yeah, I was thinking about that...you'd likely need wings that could be pulled in close at higher speeds/altitudes or to not go quite as high. I would be happy for the later...just get rid energy needs of gaining altitude in a glider.
  - AnarchismIsCool 2y ago
    Funny enough, this was a thing in Pandora's Star. There's a weird chapter where the author gets bored and describes this exotic glider extreme sport where people ride variable geometry winged gliders through mega storms on another planet.

beretguy 2y ago

I read it as “Starbucks” at first, which didn’t make any sense.

cromulent 2y ago

> If we go over 98,000 feet, we are a spaceship. Outside the capsule, it’s essentially a vacuum. This CEO of a balloon company doesn’t seem to understand how balloons work.

yandie 2y ago

The inverse of OceanGate? Call it StratosphereGate or AirGate?