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Strange. Presumably there are many different methods which would be much more efficient and reliable. And I don't see any mention on how they would track and re

Strange. Presumably there are many different methods which would be much more efficient and reliable. And I don't see any mention on how they would track and recover the cargo.

dylan604 1y ago
Tracking and recovery is as simple as placing a GPS locator on the payload, and then driving+hiking out to where the payload lands. hopefully on dry land. If these are simple balloons using hydrogen or helium, they will continue to rise in altitude until the gasses expand to the point the balloon bursts. This could take around 2-3 hours depending on size of balloon and weight of payload. Once the balloon bursts, it's just free falling with I'd assume a parachute of some sort. From burst altitude to on the ground would be about an hour again depending on weight and parachute. From there, you just go to the dot on the map. This is all based on my personal experience with helium balloon "experiments". Balloon reached close to 90000', and went 100+ miles down range in about 3 hours from launch to landing. Depending on how sophisticated the efforts are, there are websites you can go to that will give you a flight path prediction based on current+previous day(s) wind. So you could stage recovery teams in the general area to get much closer. There could also be some sort of timer that some how deflates the balloon instead of waiting for simple physics to have a little more control. At the end of the day you are subject to whatever the wind currents are.
- kragen 1y ago
  What kinds of locators did you use?
  - dylan604 1y ago
    nothing "professional". we used a handheld off trail hiking tracker. it stops tracking at the higher altitudes, but picked back up once it returned under that altitude. it led us right to it. it updates once every five minutes. we knew it was on the ground when it started repeating the same location.
    - kragen 1y ago
      Yeah, that's an arms control antiproliferation regulation.

Strange. Presumably there are many different methods which would be much more efficient and reliable. And I don't see any mention on how they would track and recover the cargo.

dylan604 1y ago

Tracking and recovery is as simple as placing a GPS locator on the payload, and then driving+hiking out to where the payload lands. hopefully on dry land. If these are simple balloons using hydrogen or helium, they will continue to rise in altitude until the gasses expand to the point the balloon bursts. This could take around 2-3 hours depending on size of balloon and weight of payload. Once the balloon bursts, it's just free falling with I'd assume a parachute of some sort. From burst altitude to on the ground would be about an hour again depending on weight and parachute. From there, you just go to the dot on the map. This is all based on my personal experience with helium balloon "experiments". Balloon reached close to 90000', and went 100+ miles down range in about 3 hours from launch to landing. Depending on how sophisticated the efforts are, there are websites you can go to that will give you a flight path prediction based on current+previous day(s) wind. So you could stage recovery teams in the general area to get much closer. There could also be some sort of timer that some how deflates the balloon instead of waiting for simple physics to have a little more control. At the end of the day you are subject to whatever the wind currents are.

kragen 1y ago
What kinds of locators did you use?
- dylan604 1y ago
  nothing "professional". we used a handheld off trail hiking tracker. it stops tracking at the higher altitudes, but picked back up once it returned under that altitude. it led us right to it. it updates once every five minutes. we knew it was on the ground when it started repeating the same location.
  - kragen 1y ago
    Yeah, that's an arms control antiproliferation regulation.