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News: Brits with altitude prepare to float into space in a giant balloon
Brits with altitude prepare to float into space in a giant balloon
A bag of helium the size of the Empire State building to challange Nasa record Tim Radford, science editor Friday July 11, 2003 The Guardian Andy Elson, 50, and Colin Prescot, 53, spent yesterday morning strapped into chairs inside a freezer at a temperature of -44 C, being intermittently blasted with artificial sunlight, inside a workshop in an airfield at Boscombe Down, near Salisbury. It was the last full dress rehearsal before - sometime in the next few weeks - they climb into their Russian spacesuits, strap themselves into their cockpit chairs, slowly inflate the biggest balloon ever made, and float towards the heavens at 1,000 feet a minute, into a temperature of around -60 C and an altitude of 132,000 feet, or about 25 miles. They will be suspended from a bag of helium inflated to 310 times its original volume, and their lives will depend on exquisitely accurate weather forecasts, a battery of state of the art engineering, and their pressure suits. If anything goes wrong, if the suits fail, death would take about half a second. "Once you get past about 33,000 feet, you are unable to breathe unaided. Even if you are breathing oxygen, it has to be forced in under pressure. At about 44,000 feet, you need to be wearing a pressure suit, because if not the blood will start to heat and actually boil. At anything over 40,000 feet, you are in big trouble if a suit fails," says Brian Jones, veteran of a round-the-world balloon flight, an altitude record holder, and mission controller to the flight of Qinetiq 1. The pressure at 25 miles altitude is one thousandth of the pressure at sea level. Flesh and blood are mostly water. Work it out. "We have done some pretty vivid demonstrations of putting half a pint of water in a decompression chamber and decompressing it to 100,000 feet and the water boils and explodes in less than half a second, just disappears. It's scary stuff," he says. The view, however, should compensate for the hazard. "The sky goes black when you look up at just above 60,000 feet, so from then on, when they look up they are looking into the blackness of space, instead of the blue sky. From 132,000 feet, assuming they get there, they will see the curvature of the earth." Qinetiq 1 is the stuff of dreams and meticulous planning. The balloon - it takes its name from its sponsor Qinetiq, the government defence research agency - has a skin about the thickness of a freezer bag. On the launch day it will rise slowly from the deck of an Qinetiq-designed experimental naval trimaran called Triton off the coast of Cornwall and float to the height of the Empire State Building before it begins to lift its tiny gondola bearing two humans, two chairs, instruments, sunscreen, wind barriers, and ballast. The height to which it will fly is governed precisely by the amount of helium it encloses. As atmosphere becomes less dense, the helium expands, and at 130,000 feet the helium will have expanded 300-fold. "So the balloon starts off as a raggedy, floppy thing and then eventually at altitude will completely fill. When it is completely full of helium the balloon cannot go any higher, because if it does, the helium will just escape," says Jones. The whole exercise will take 12 hours or more. During that time, the helionauts will measure cosmic and solar radiation, run a series of experiments, concentrate on controlling the craft and snatch moments to admire the view through their visors. Photographs will be taken by a tethered companion craft called Zephyr, a solar-powered glider with a wingspan of 12 metres and a total weight of 12 kilograms. The project is the climax of twin obsessions with hot air. Andy Elson is an aeronautical engineer from Wells in Somerset, who piloted the world's first hot air balloon flight over Mt Everest and then made two attempts to float around the world. Colin Prescot is a businessman from Stockbridge in Hampshire, who began in advertising and ended up with a balloon company that co-ordinated all the flying and aerial sequences for the last eight James Bond films. They tried to circle the world together in 1998. They spent last summer waiting for ideal weather to make an assault on the world balloon altitude record, set at 113,000 feet by Nasa pilots in 1961. The ideal weather never arrived. They dare not risk high winds: the balloon is so tall that wind shear could rip the fabric apart. This summer, wearing the new Russian space suits tested yesterday, they will try again. Takeoff could be any time between now and mid-September. Coming down will present as many challenges as going up: to lose height the helionauts will vent gas through a valve for a few seconds and the balloon will lose a small amount of its buoyancy and begin to sink. As it begins to sink, the gas will start to contract and the balloon will start to sink even faster. At which point, the pilots will start to discard ballast in the form of tiny glass beads to lighten the burden and slow the descent. The aim is to come down at less than 1,500 feet a minute until they reach 15,000 feet, and then slow to less than 1,000 feet a minute. This is relatively gentle. A second world war military parachute descends at 1,800 feet a minute. The two adventurers need cloudless skies, high pressure, gentle winds and a 72-hour forecast they can be confident in. They have to think about more than just the weather and the fabric and the controls. When they get the word, they will begin a three-day diet of what nutritionists politely call "solid low residue food" and "elemental drinks" to sidestep the obvious challenge of life inside a space suit. And yes, they will also wear nappies. No food, little water, but plenty of bottle · Seven times higher than Nelson's column, Qineteq 1 will hold 44m cubic feet of gas. It is made of polyethylene · A three-hull design will keep the research ship Triton so stable that the balloon will be exactly vertical as it is launched from its deck · The solar-powered companion glider Zephyr will fly in an atmosphere only 1% as dense as that of sea level. It will circle the balloon, on a quarter of a mile-long tether, filming the ascent and sending images back to mission control · The flight platform will remain open to the winds. Its square base allows it to float like a raft when the pilots splash down in the sea · Elson and Prescot spent 18 days in a balloon capsule in 1998 before ditching in the Pacific, the longest nonstop flight on any suborbital craft · During the flight they may drink but not eat. They can hold only two-thirds of a litre of water · Solid 'low-residue' foods eaten before takeoff include meat, cheese, eggs, prawns, white bread, peeled potatoes, white rice and pasta - but no vegetable sauces. http://www.guardian.co.uk/life/news/...996082,00.html -- Rusty Barton - Antelope, California |
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News: Brits with altitude prepare to float into space in a giant balloon
Rusty Barton wrote in message . ..
Brits with altitude prepare to float into space in a giant balloon A bag of helium the size of the Empire State building to challange Nasa record http://www.guardian.co.uk/life/news/...996082,00.html Additional information and pictures at the BBC News website: BALLOONING 25-MILES HIGH http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/shared/spl/h...ml/default.stm -- Rusty Barton - Antelope, California |
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