Weather Balloon Question

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pacuda59

pacuda59

pacuda59
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I was reading a copy of Popular Mechanics at lunch and saw an ad for an all weather camera that they attached to a weather balloon. This balloon goes so high you can see the curvature of the earth. You've probably seen stuff about people doing this.

My question, how do they retrieve these balloons? There's no way they come down anywhere close to where they were launched.

I'm sure that the learned gentleman of FABO can answer this one, and help out a not so learned one...lol.
 
I'd guess that they don't retrieve them. The signal is transmitted and recoreded and the balloon and camera simply lost. Just a guess.
 
I'm thinking that if I launched one in Pennsylvania and the winds were westerly, wouldn't it end up somplace pretty far away...Kansas? I mean if the balloon goes high enough to see curvature ( 80,000 feet ) it would go pretty far?
 
It can also get caught in tree branches on its way down.

They must send up "extras" to plan for a certain percentage that will get lost and not recovered.
 
Launch it in Kansas, 200 miles in any direction is still fields right? And they use wide angle lenses to to exagerate the curvature. 80K is only ~16 miles so they are not in orbit or anything....Put a receiver on it that drops the camera on a chute, do a HALO and retrieve the camera probably within 20-30 miles of where it was launched with its GPS enabled. Heck throw a cell phone in there with an android app that allows tracking. Get it out of the jet stream and its not going anywhere fast.
 
Tie a few balloons to a lawn chair ( take a .22 to shoot them one at a time to come down (IMPORTANT!!)). Take the photos your self and show them off.
 
The astronauts open the hatch on space station and snag the with a big hook. :blob::blob::blob::blob: LOL
 
Found a piece of paper attached to an old ballon laying in the yard when I was a kid. Opened it up and found that a child had sent the ballon up with her classmates. It traveled from Corpus Christi, TX to Anderson, SC.
 
I'm liking the lawn chair idea...it has to be more comfortable than 'steerage' on USAir.
 
67cudafb said:
The astronauts open the hatch on space station and snag the with a big hook. :blob::blob::blob::blob: LOL
Click to expand...


This was actually DONE, Google the "Corona" satellites. The first of the surveillance satellites, these used FILM and the sat would drop a film container, which, after re--entry, would deploy a parachute and "hopefully" be snagged out of mid- air by a specially equipped aircraft:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Corona_(satellite)

Keyhole_capsule_recovery.jpg
 
About 15 years ago, I was harvesting soybeans and found a small orange parachute hooked to a ballon and a weather recording devise.On the outside of the box were instructions to return (all shipping paid) to the national weather service in Aberdeen South Dakota, about 160 miles to my west.
 
pearlblue said:
About 15 years ago, I was harvesting soybeans and found a small orange parachute hooked to a ballon and a weather recording devise.On the outside of the box were instructions to return (all shipping paid) to the national weather service in Aberdeen South Dakota, about 160 miles to my west.
Click to expand...

Yes, they depend on honest citizens to return it.
 
You send the balloon up, the camera transmits the image back. Sometimes you can retrieve the camera, but don't count on it.
We used them when I was in the Army. They were all tagged, but if they ever were returned, I never knew about it. The govt kept us in a nice supply of transponders.
 
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