Elser Family Blog

Science!

Well, They launched the Balloon yesterday! It was pretty exciting, I must say. Here they are preparing the insulated box. It is supposed to get below -30F at 60000 feet, and we did not want the camera shutting down unexpectedly. It also allowed them to put a little Fox creek logo in the shot, so it would have their High school logo in space! Sarah writing the note that will go into the box in case we cant retrieve it, to make the odds better that it can get back to us.

Getting the Balloon ready for filling.

Getting ready.

Still getting ready..

Counting down! seconds before launch!!

Here is a youtube video of the launch itself! This was as exciting as it seemed..

We were able to track it for about 15 minutes. Here are the last two readings before we lost contact. It looks like was at about 15000 feet when it tried and failed communication the last time. We waited for about 2 hours for it to come back down into cell service again, but it never did. it must have landed in an area with no cell service. 🙁

So, what did they (we) learn? Well, lot’s really. number one, make sure we use a checklist!! There where a couple things that we failed to do that would have helped it be returned to us in case of communication failure (like we had). We learned that cell service stops around 15000 feet! We learned the rate of ascent was around 1000Feet/M… pretty fast. We also learned that we need to use a cell carrier with better coverage. Turns out virgin mobile pretty much only covers the major highways. And we learned to be patient.. we could have avoided some of these pitfalls with a little more patience and research. Also, I feel I participated a bit too much.. But it was fun! Next time I will make sure they do all the work. They are perfectly capable of filling the balloon and sealing it, and tying the knots on the string. Dad just got a little too interested for his own good.
But other than that? It was science! Even in failure you learn a lot.

Tags: balloon, science