There are three missions in the works. A Short description is here, and
links to each detailed flight is at the bottom of this page.
First is :
This started out as a thought of lets break
every maximum altitude
record there is, and most likely be the holder of this record forever!
And with this balloon, this whole mission started with, unless
something
drastically went wrong, maximum
altitude and flight duration records would be exceeded by far!
But
after doing research on the capabilities of what a 300,000 cubic foot
balloon could do, Yes I did say a three hundred thousand cubic foot
balloon! I realized that no matter what I placed on this
balloon as a payload, that this flight still could break all those
records and even be a fun and exciting flight at the same time! Not
just a GPS and tracker beacon!
So I decided to offer this balloon to all the
balloon groups and individuals out in the Amateur Radio High
Altitude Ballooning (ARHAB) world to come up with interesting
payloads and mission concepts to make this balloon flight as exciting
and interesting as possible for everyone. And we sure did!
I sent out a message on as many of the
E-Mail lists as possible, to offer a chance that most likely will never
happen again.
A flight on a 130 foot tall 300,000 cubic foot volume balloon! I mean
honestly, when will another 300,000 cubic foot balloon become available
for
an amateur to use solely for their own mission? Three gentlemen came
forward offering ideas, and payloads for this
project. Details on the mission and who is involved with Project
Apogee, will be found on the Project Apogee Link below.
Next is a Balloon Project I call:
This flight is based on the flight
theory and design of the manned balloon that was called "EarthWinds"
Where an anchor balloon is used to control the altitude the balloon
levels off and flies at. This we did try once before, but it was in the
days before GPS's were available, and RDF was the only way to track any
payload in those days. It did seem to work because it was heard for a
few days and last beam headings from both the USA East coast and Europe
placed the payload someplace over the North Atlantic.
Click on the EarthBreeze Link At the bottom of this page to take you to
that flights mission page.
And the Third Alternative flight we are
working on is called:
Where Most groups use "HE" (Helium) as
their lifting gas, and a few use H2 (Hydrogen) Like we here at Near
Space Sciences have done for over 25 years and 50 flights so far. But
This flight will use NH3 as the lifting gas. It has a weak amount of
lifting power, but it does poses a unique property that has the
possibility of making it into a long duration flight. As usual click on
the NH3 link below to take you to the flight page for that mission.