This service also includes providing emergency services on a demand basis when
a disaster strikes. They have learned to launch constellations of balloons, using an
autolauncher that puts one balloon up after another. Up until 2021, they have been
launching more balloons than NASA or anybody else.
Other international companies are also competing for this type of service. One,
the High Altitude Platform Station (HAPS) Alliance, has the target of ensuring
member companies can collectively advocate for HAPS business development
with the relevant authorities in various countries to create a cooperative HAPS
ecosystem, develop common product specifications and promote standardization
of HAPS network interoperability. All of these activities are key to the Alliance’s
aim of creating new value by providing telecommunications network connectivity
worldwide through the utilization of high altitude vehicles including balloons and
aerostats. Other balloon commerce is structured to provide basic services across
the spectrum to the point of designing, manufacturing, launching and recovering
customer payloads, be these scientific, commercial, safety or military. There are
such companies all around the world.
One company, World View Enterprises built a huge balloon complex in Tucson,
AZ and started off by providing internet services and supporting some scientific
missions, then expanded to providing a broad range of services for both science
and commercial flights. In 2019-2020, they continue to develop their Stratollite
balloon and Stratocraft gondola, making several test flights called GRYPHON.
Two of the original owners of World View Enterprises started another company,
Space Perspectives to provide flights for tourists to the edge of space. They have
plans to launch tourists from the Kennedy Space Center’s Space Shuttle landing
area and recover them in the Atlantic Ocean for return to Florida on a ship. They
are also considering other locations including landing in the Gulf of Mexico and
off Hawaii in the Pacific Ocean.
The vision of the commercialization of stratospheric balloons has reached the
point where a company can advertise their products by photographing them from
30 km (100,000 ft) with the curvature of the Earth in the background and stream
the images to the internet, and then to their customers and prospects. But this is
nothing new. Even the Montgolfier brothers teamed with wallpaper manufacturer
Jean-Baptise Reveillon to construct their balloon with beautiful, embellished art
to advertise their wall paper designs.
But the well-funded companies have some competition. There are high school
children who, for a modest price, will launch just about any small, lightweight
object into the stratosphere, including a picture of a wedding couple or a bobble
head doll of Captain Kirk, and provide an image of it with the curvature of the
Earth in the background. In addition to basic laws of physics they have learned
the rules of supply and demand – the tools of finance and entrepreneurship. The
balloon world has evolved from Noble Prize winning science to the essence of
human nature.
6 Introduction
a disaster strikes. They have learned to launch constellations of balloons, using an
autolauncher that puts one balloon up after another. Up until 2021, they have been
launching more balloons than NASA or anybody else.
Other international companies are also competing for this type of service. One,
the High Altitude Platform Station (HAPS) Alliance, has the target of ensuring
member companies can collectively advocate for HAPS business development
with the relevant authorities in various countries to create a cooperative HAPS
ecosystem, develop common product specifications and promote standardization
of HAPS network interoperability. All of these activities are key to the Alliance’s
aim of creating new value by providing telecommunications network connectivity
worldwide through the utilization of high altitude vehicles including balloons and
aerostats. Other balloon commerce is structured to provide basic services across
the spectrum to the point of designing, manufacturing, launching and recovering
customer payloads, be these scientific, commercial, safety or military. There are
such companies all around the world.
One company, World View Enterprises built a huge balloon complex in Tucson,
AZ and started off by providing internet services and supporting some scientific
missions, then expanded to providing a broad range of services for both science
and commercial flights. In 2019-2020, they continue to develop their Stratollite
balloon and Stratocraft gondola, making several test flights called GRYPHON.
Two of the original owners of World View Enterprises started another company,
Space Perspectives to provide flights for tourists to the edge of space. They have
plans to launch tourists from the Kennedy Space Center’s Space Shuttle landing
area and recover them in the Atlantic Ocean for return to Florida on a ship. They
are also considering other locations including landing in the Gulf of Mexico and
off Hawaii in the Pacific Ocean.
The vision of the commercialization of stratospheric balloons has reached the
point where a company can advertise their products by photographing them from
30 km (100,000 ft) with the curvature of the Earth in the background and stream
the images to the internet, and then to their customers and prospects. But this is
nothing new. Even the Montgolfier brothers teamed with wallpaper manufacturer
Jean-Baptise Reveillon to construct their balloon with beautiful, embellished art
to advertise their wall paper designs.
But the well-funded companies have some competition. There are high school
children who, for a modest price, will launch just about any small, lightweight
object into the stratosphere, including a picture of a wedding couple or a bobble
head doll of Captain Kirk, and provide an image of it with the curvature of the
Earth in the background. In addition to basic laws of physics they have learned
the rules of supply and demand – the tools of finance and entrepreneurship. The
balloon world has evolved from Noble Prize winning science to the essence of
human nature.
6 Introduction