Yup, that's right, we're doing it again folks. Balloon Launch v2.0, A Grand Day Out: The Sequel, Near Space 2, whatever you want to call it, we're making a second journey to the stratosphere in a weather balloon. Well, not us personally, but you get the picture. Learning from previous mistakes and implementing some better, and invariably more expensive, telemetry technology, we're planning a launch in the Spring of 2014.
Why another launch?
The main reason is simply this: You can never get anything perfect the first time. That's something we found out quickly in our first launch. Apart from our landing predictions being totally blown out of the water and our payload landing 2 hours late and 30 miles away from where it should have, the camera only recorded footage up to 75,000 feet because the batteries ran out. So we want to make another launch that we can be completely satisfied with. Apart from the desire to get everything near-perfect, we also want to do things a little different, maybe add some scientific equipment or more cameras, so long as we stay under the 4 lb limit. But we'll discuss that later.
What will be different?
The biggest difference will be the telemetry. Instead of a cell phone with inconsistent coverage and limited operating area, we'll be using a pair of FRS radios (462-467 MHz) with a 40 mile range that will transmit little bursts of data containing GPS coordinates. The coordinates will be supplied by a serial GPS unit feeding data into a circuit board which translates the data into APRS format. This data is sent over the radio in packets about every minute, and the receiving radio plugs into a computer's sound card. A program then finally translates the sound data into readable GPS coordinates. We'll go into more detail in a later post. The second biggest difference is the size of balloon we're using. Instead of an 800g balloon like the one we used last launch, we're going to use either a 1000g or a 1200g balloon. We'll also need more helium than last launch, and hopefully the price won't have gone up too high (yes, there is a helium shortage). We also haven't decided on a location yet, but since the radios only require line-of-sight we could theoretically launch anywhere there is unrestricted airspace. I wonder if we'd get in trouble launching it across crater lake...
How much will it cost?
The launch we did last summer cost us around $460, and this year we're estimating the cost to be around $400. Half of that price is in expendables like helium and the balloon. We could stop there and do the launch at that price, but as I've mentioned before we are going to purchase telemetry equipment. This will cost the other $200. These estimates are a little high, but that is about the max we are planning to spend.
Well that's about all I have for now, later I'll go into more detail about how exactly the telemetry works, and update you on the status of this next mission. As always, thanks for reading and check back with us often. You can email us at nearspace13@gmail.com if you have questions or want to donate to or sponsor our launch.
