xix
There is a very silent realm where few people have been but many have studied
from afar. Some even dare to play there, if just for a few hours. Some have spent
their entire careers studying the place, as vast as it is. I am speaking of that thin
envelope that blankets the Earth, in relative terms no thicker than the skin on an
apple. It provides us with the air and moisture we need, and shields us from the
harmful radiation and particles that would surely annihilate life. In particular, I’m
addressing that portion of our atmosphere we call the stratosphere. This is a huge
and potentially dangerous place that even astronauts scurry through on their way
to space.
While this portion of the atmosphere varies with latitude and with the season,
we can approximate the definition (for the purposes of this book) as altitudes
between roughly 18 km (60,000 ft) and 50 km (164,000 ft). This swath of very
thin air is a region that we are seeking to address for both scientific and commercial reasons. It is above the weather, but below orbit. To reach it costs a fraction of
the cost of using launch vehicles and spacecraft to conduct experiments from
orbit.
There are literally thousands of people who study this area today, and there
were thousands before them. Most of them used very special kinds of balloons to
give them the information they wanted. Some of these vehicles are quite sophisticated, as they need to be in order to investigate the broad range of sciences they
support.
To be a bit more specific, this book will describe what is happening today in the
world of science as well as the world of commercial uses of the stratosphere with
balloons. This book will cover the new world of 21st century balloon flights. It is
hard to believe there have already been 2,300 stratospheric flights since 1962. The
pace seems to be increasing. In 2018 there were 181flights and in 2019 there were
218 flights. The 2020 numbers are lower because of the Covid-19 pandemic. Most
Preface
There is a very silent realm where few people have been but many have studied
from afar. Some even dare to play there, if just for a few hours. Some have spent
their entire careers studying the place, as vast as it is. I am speaking of that thin
envelope that blankets the Earth, in relative terms no thicker than the skin on an
apple. It provides us with the air and moisture we need, and shields us from the
harmful radiation and particles that would surely annihilate life. In particular, I’m
addressing that portion of our atmosphere we call the stratosphere. This is a huge
and potentially dangerous place that even astronauts scurry through on their way
to space.
While this portion of the atmosphere varies with latitude and with the season,
we can approximate the definition (for the purposes of this book) as altitudes
between roughly 18 km (60,000 ft) and 50 km (164,000 ft). This swath of very
thin air is a region that we are seeking to address for both scientific and commercial reasons. It is above the weather, but below orbit. To reach it costs a fraction of
the cost of using launch vehicles and spacecraft to conduct experiments from
orbit.
There are literally thousands of people who study this area today, and there
were thousands before them. Most of them used very special kinds of balloons to
give them the information they wanted. Some of these vehicles are quite sophisticated, as they need to be in order to investigate the broad range of sciences they
support.
To be a bit more specific, this book will describe what is happening today in the
world of science as well as the world of commercial uses of the stratosphere with
balloons. This book will cover the new world of 21st century balloon flights. It is
hard to believe there have already been 2,300 stratospheric flights since 1962. The
pace seems to be increasing. In 2018 there were 181flights and in 2019 there were
218 flights. The 2020 numbers are lower because of the Covid-19 pandemic. Most
Preface