Balloon Launch Discussion

How far away is that?

It went 14miles in 2 hours and change. I'm about to leave to retrive it. Wish us luck that the camera did it's job!

Monroe
Team Prometheus

best of luck with the video, hope to see some great images!

We have video!!! The extra lightweight package seems to have made greater altitude than most photos I've seen. Working on getting it to the net. Wow this is really a great payoff. Standby for some photo's 1.45hrs. of video and the balloon didn't embolise during the video.

Monroe
Team Prometheus

First photo from Near Space Expedition I is up! http://www.teamprometheus.org/NearSpace.html

More to be posted as they are processed thrue the night. Posted to the blog first then the website.

2 More missions and then we launch a rocket from right here!

Monroe, cool images!

Here goes my 100 questions!!!

Will the flight video be uploaded?

Did the equipment carry on past 35k do you know?

What will be different on the next mission?

When will the next mission be?

What were your expected results and were you generally happy or dissapointed with the mission?

Just to note, i think i am right when i say:

CUSF went to around 98,500 ft with the Teddies in Space Exp'
JP go to around 90,000 ft generally?
TP have started at over 35,000 ft for their first attempt

Looks like there should be some interesting competition amongst these guys!

Cheers
Rob

Rob,

I think I can answer some of your quesions.


Monroe is working on editing the video and he'll post it in a few days.

We decided to move to a new tracking location when the balloon was at 30,000 feet. The Sonde battery ran down shortly after we reached our new tracking location, and we did not record any further data from the Sonde. We received the BeeLine signal until the payload landed, but we were not able to locate it at the time. The video camera recorded for 1 hour and 45 minutes. The balloon rose at a rate of 15 feet/second, so it must have been around 80k to 90k feet when the video stopped recording.

We need to understand why we lost GPS data after the balloon launched. The launch video shows that the payload was swinging under the balloon, which may be the cause of the loss of GPS. We'll run some tethered balloon tests to verify this. We also need to ensure that the Sonde battery lasts for several hours. We are planning on using a rechargeable Li-poly battery for the next launch.

We'll do the next mission once we fix all of the problems from the first mission.

None of us had ever launched a balloon before, so we didn't know what to expect. Personally, I was happy to receive the temperature and pressure data up to 30,000 feet. I was amazed that someboy found the payload, and I am overjoyed with getting it back along with the video!

Dave

Dave

Fantastic input, thanks for answering those for me!

I look forward to the video and also to the next flight!

Good luck and thanks again!

Rob

Dave
I found the problem with the GPS and we can solve it with your help. You have a device you used to time the snap shots with the Rocket Cam on LOC Forte' If we use the clock signal from the beeline to trigger your timmer it may work. Otherwise we can just make a new circut. Anyway we wont have that problem again.

Monroe

Nice pic, what camera did you use? any thoughts on upgrading the camera to get some high res images?

Rob

Oh, yes I am grateful we got the photos. However the next launch will have a much better camera now that we know we can track and recover.
All in all we learned exactly what we needed to know and I'm very pleased with how we did the whole mission. For me it was a complete success now.

The camera was a cheap camcorder 640x480 probably just over 1 MP from Walgreens. I thought it was a CVS disposable because that what I asked Basil to get. Turned out it was a closeout for 35 bucks. There is no name on the camera but the video chip SPCA1528a is a Sunplus camera. It did hold a 2gig SD card and so it got the nod for NSE 1

There was some discussion on the google group from Pete of team Nebula about figuring the lens angle and using the curvature of the earth to reference the altitude.

The camera is still quite functional. We may use it in our first rocket launched from Near Space just because that will be a new experiment and we don’t yet know how that will turn out.

Monroe
Team Prometheus

haha i was about to suggest that. guess someone else thought of it first. it's a great idea you should do it. the hard part's already done (getting the pictures) might as well see what they can tell you.

The videos and pictures look great. Congrats on the mission.

I'm really curious about the FAA involvement though. All you have to do is call the FAA 24 hours before you launch a balloon that goes 35+ miles in the air?

http://www.chem.hawaii.edu/uham/part101.html - What information did they want when you called them?

Our payload weighed 250 grams, so it was well below 4 pounds. We also used a string that would break at less than 50 pounds of force. Section 101.1 a.4 lists the requirements of balloons covered by Part 101. Since our balloon fell below these limits it did not apply to Part 101. We felt that it was good to notify the FAA about the launch anyway. Future missions will have much heavier payloads and we will need to notify them for those missions.

It took me a while to track down the right phone number to call. I finally was able to get the number from a post on the Austin Area Rocketry Group list. The person at the FAA took down the information on the balloon launch over the phone. They didn't seem to be very concerned about the launch.

Dave

Guys,

Can i ask how much the total cost was? also where did you get all the equipment.

There are pleanty of rockets for sale that only go 1000 feet or so, i was wandering if there may ever be a market for buying high altitude balloon sets.

Rob