This is a serious concern, not a joke, and if it works out I will demonstrate photographic proof of my trip.

I am interested in what kind of material I will need for a hydrogen balloon that I will ride in to space, or, the very edge of Earth's atmosphere. I am also curious about what requirements this balloon will necessitate for space float.

I have already ordered this space suit here (http://www.thespacestore.com/apasfuspsu.html) and am fully capable of pressurizing it as well as fully aware the effects of high-atmosphere/space environments on human beings.

I will also be purchasing a parachute for when I must abandon the balloon.

I am not afraid of death so being overly cautious is not a concern for me; nor do I feel the need to whore myself out to the media to make it "official". I would feel much more content knowing that I did it on my own.

Comments/suggestions are appreciated.

Oh my god.

You are aware that REAL space suits that actually work cost... millions of dollars?

No I was not and no they do not.

Edgar Allan Poe, anyone?

no balloon can go into space because the expansion due to pressure difference would result in it bursting before you leave the atmosphere, and anything strong enough to hold it in would also be too dense

http://www.globaleffects.com/C_pages/Rental/Wardrobe/SpaceSuits/Historical/Russian/Gagarin_suit_hi.jpg

I just bought one of these, and I'm going to beat you into space motherfucker.

Yeah Joseph Kittinger, Malcom Ross, Victor Prather and everyone else that reached space in air balloons are just part of fabricated conspiracy theories. All of the civilians that have done it as of this decade were photoshopping that shit.

Smith, where did you get that space suit? The toilet store?

I came not expecting lulz. I found lulz. I think we have found the new car ejection seat.

Yeah Joseph Kittinger, Malcom Ross, Victor Prather and everyone else that reached space in air balloons are just part of fabricated conspiracy theories. All of the civilians that have done it as of this decade were photoshopping that shit.

Smith, where did you get that space suit? The toilet store?

that went over your head.

it's a ruski suit, you silly motherfucker.

psh. Spacesuit? I don't NEED a spacesuit. I'm already done welding my pressurized cabin together!


***

In the interest of the topic, however, I'll change the topic:

What if I wanted to make a balloon with some electronic/scientific equipment on it go up into the extremes of the atmosphere? What sort of material would this entail? Hydrogen or helium are both relatively easy to come by. Would mylar (or a thicker equivalent) be best for the balloon envelope? And what is the altitude limit of a conventional balloon?

It would be pretty cool to make a balloon with an altimeter connected to a radio transmitter, so you could launch it and monitor its altitude.

You can get pretty high with a regular latex weather balloon. For carrying heavier loads, use mylar. NASA made a few giant mylar balloons for high altitude experiments.

that space suit is made of denim......denim is not airtight.

its a good replica but is not going work at all as a real space suit.

Wonderful, I will look in to Mylar.

And what is the altitude limit of a conventional balloon?

Unknown. The three guys I mentioned in an earlier post all got in to space though. Of course not outer space, but the very edge of the atmosphere. Kittinger reported he couldn't feel himself falling for the first few minutes. I think a pressurized suit may not even be entirely necessary for this. The real problem is landing and trajectory, as you could very will take off from say; Kingsman, Arizona and end up in in the pacific ocean. I also think this would be an incredible opportunity to actually float across the globe and land on another continent, it is entirely possible. But a helmet is most definitely necessary for when you must bail as the mean speed you would have to reach will around 600mph, which might blow your eyes out.

Also where do you live? Perhaps we can team up and cut the costs in half.

GP airtightness is not entirely necessary as this will not be a mission to outer space.

While this could easily be overcome by a simple one-way valve, there is still the problem of overcoming the mechanics of lighter than air craft.

A lighter than air craft works by displacing a volume of air whose weight is greater than the weight of the payload. In the upper reaches of the atmosphere, the air is much less dense, so the balloon would have to be obnoxiously large to displace enough air to keep you aloft. And any such obnoxiously large balloon would probably rip itself apart at ground level due to the extreme force of buoyancy.

Furthermore, no matter how large your balloon, you would not totally escape our atmosphere. Even if you used hydrogen with an obnoxiously large balloon that didn't somehow rip itself apart, your balloon could never displace an amount of vacuum equal to its weight.

The temperature and pressure at the Karman line, the most common definition of where space begins, is about 1750K and 1 Pa. V=nRT/P=14,550,326 L per mol. Dry atmosphere weighs about 29 grams per mol, that's a density of about 2x10^-9 Kg/L. Assuming the mass of you, your spacesuit, the balloon, the support structure, and gas in the balloon have a mass of 1000kg (VERY conservative estimate), your balloon would have to be 500,000,000,000 L, thats 200,000 olympic sized swimming pools, or 2500 hindenburgs, to simply be neutrally buoyant at 100km above sea level.

bring gunz. ufos iz up dere.
u dont wanna get raep'd with metal dix n shit.

werd.

With Lieutenant Commander Victor A. Prather (United States Navy), he successfully piloted a Strato-Lab V balloon into the stratosphere, setting an altitude record of 113,740 feet (34.67 km). Ross and Prather were wearing the Navy's Mark IV full-pressure suit in a gondola that was protected by venetian blinds, but otherwise open to space. At 10 million cubic feet (280,000 m3), the balloon envelope was the largest ever launched, expanding to 300 feet (91 m) in diameter when fully inflated.

Stratosphere-
http://www.williamsclass.com/EighthScienceWork/Atmosphere/atmosphereLayers.gif

Good luck making a 300 foot diameter balloon that can withstand the atmospheric conditions up there.

And to clear up the mass thing with all the mols, the basic concept is that a rubber ducky won't float up out of the water in the same way you won't float out of our atmosphere- There's nothing up there to float in.

Figure you're another Fournier eh?

He's spent $20 million.

http://www.abc.net.au/news/stories/2008/05/26/2255683.htm

Venetian blinds. Spectacular. Nothing would make me feel safer when I'm in a wicker-basket gondola
34 kilometers above the ground.

***


By the way, where can I find the density/temperature at different altitudes? I want to figure out how high my theoretical radio-controlled balloon of a given volume and mass will go. Any ideas on the altimeter/radio-transmitter idea?

US Standard Atmosphere, Page 64 (http://ntrs.nasa.gov/archive/nasa/casi.ntrs.nasa.gov/19770009539_1977009539.pdf)

It'd be fucking fun to just launch with a big as fuck balloon and get up a nice large altitude .. then descend and land in a random place, then hitchhike back home :D

With the high altitude balloons, this is it fully inflated at ground level, it inflates fully to a round shape at high altitude:
http://marsairplane.larc.nasa.gov/graphics/balloon_launch.jpg
http://marsairplane.larc.nasa.gov/reliability_2.html <-- pretty much just a fancy as fuck RC plane :D


At just 50,000 ft it still looks cool as fuck too ..
http://www.bbc.co.uk/bristol/content/concorde/2003/10/24/gallery1/image12.jpg

OH SHIT!!! The new space race is ON NOW!!!

This will end in tears.


continue

Its possible if you were serious about it. Seems kind of fun.

I bet the government would be more that willing to use you as an experiment. Not many people want to be ballooned into space and then parachute down. While being put at high risk with pressurization.

Hahaha, oh wow, I remember that thread...

Edgar Allan Poe, anyone?

:( I guess not

I think I know what you are all trying to say. I think... we need to build a space helicopter.

More like another Larry Walters, eh?

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Larry_Walters


Lawrence Richard Walters, nicknamed "Lawnchair Larry" or the "Lawn Chair Pilot", (April 19 (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/April_19), 1949 (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/1949) – October 6 (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/October_6), 1993 (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/1993)) was an American truckdriver[1] (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Larry_Walters#cite_note-0) who took flight on July 2 (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/July_2), 1982 (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/1982) in a homemade aircraft. Dubbed Inspiration I, the "flying machine" consisted of an ordinary patio chair with 45 helium (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Helium)-filled weather balloons attached to it. Walters rose to an altitude of 16,000 feet (3 miles or 4,900 meters) and floated from his point of origin in San Pedro, California (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/San_Pedro,_California) into controlled airspace near Long Beach airport (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Long_Beach_airport). His flight was widely reported in many newspapers.

Man that lawnchair shit is awesome. OP you should totally do it. Man even I might give that a try.. Why the hell not?

haha metalocalypse

dethklok home for wayward kitties

Woot! 2009 totse space cadet meetup.

I was wondering how long it would be until someone said exactly that...


Metalocalypse FTW!

You just need to make sure of one of two things before you do this... 1st being that if you do this, make sure you at least get high enough before you fail so that your parachute will at least open.
2nd being, make sure you aren't floating in the path of a plane.

OP come back and keep posting in ur thread.

thinking about this idea has me in a mild giggly seizure.

OP i beleive in you and this idea. you have to go through with it. just buy the parachute equipment, w/e attire you can find that will keep you warm enough to survive up there, and spend the rest of your available funds making the largest balloon you can. even if you don't reach your target elevation, you'd be high up on the list of crazy-motherfucker badasses.

when designing the escape system, you might wanna figure it out so that if/when the balloon bursts from the thin altitude it somehow punts you a good distance away from the wreckage. you don't wanna get tangled up in it, or worse, get ur parachute tangled up if it deployed.