Introduction
Balloon launches have often served as a fun and interesting
project that many kids will often do as a school project, or
just as an interesting activity. Having never done this when I
was young, and still being a kid at heart, and finding myself
with inordinate amounts of free time due to circumstances beyond
my control, I decided to undertake this easy and fun project in
my adult years.
The way it works is this... You fill a number of balloons with
helium, and attach cards with contact information so that anyone who
finds one of them can inform you of where the balloon landed. These
locations can then be plotted on a map, and you can see how the winds
have carried your balloons and how far they've travelled.
Why?
I remember when I was a kid, there was a film shown at one of my summer
camps that depicted a kid hand-carving a small wooden canoe. It was
probably no more than about 10 inches in length, complete with a small
indian in the canoe. He painstakingly hand-painted it, and filled the
underside with lead, which he melted and poured in (to keep it upright).
When it was complete, he released it into the river. The rest of the
movie follows it's travels through the wilderness, down the river, across
frozen ice and snow, over a waterfall, and so on. The thought that you
can create something, even something simple and easy, that will travel
large distances, and even reach high altitudes, is exhilerating. It's
no wonder that I had an interest in model rockets as a kid, and have
considered getting into high-powered rocketry as an adult. This is merely
one small step that I can take to turn the sky into my playground.
It can be an interesting experiment, not only to see how far the
balloons will travel, but also how many contacts you'll make. Will
people find them? And once they do, will they bother to write back?
It's as much a socialogical experiment as it is an atmospheric one.
In fact, the social experiment is not an insignificant one, since
many contacts may be made by people expecting it was a child's
project, or that there might be a prize involved since it clearly
is connected with a website, and yet others may be deterred by the
skeletal theme. There are all kinds of people out there, and it's been
proven to me recently that not everyone appreciates halloween related concepts,
since someone reported me to the condo-association for a "violation" for leaving up
a halloween decoration too long in my window (one of those cheap styrofoam
"RIP" gravestones, shown on the right).
All of this discussion only takes into account what happens when the cards/balloons
are found, though. Many can land in the sea or the bay, or get stuck in the
trees in a wooded area, or land in the middle of a highway or otherwise just
appear to be road-side garbage, or even end up on the roof of a large building.
There's any number of reasons that any given balloon may never be found or
reported. But that's what this experiment is all about, to see how many will
be called in, and how far they will have travelled... And if I ever decide to
attempt a more elaborate balloon project, this may give me some useful information
on how to plan for it. (One possible future project idea is a smaller number of balloons
with larger payloads containing electronics)
The Project
The project began with locating a source of helium.
I had remembered seeing small helium tanks at Wal-Mart in their
party-supply section, but upon returning discovered that it was a
one-time thing, and not a regular product. However, a quick stop
to a nearby party-supply shop solved the problem, as they had larger
helium tanks. While there, I also bought the balloons (the tank comes
with balloons, but I wanted larger ones).
The next step was to design the cards and print them out. For this,
I used a bright yellow/green paper, printed 8 copies per page (front
and back so that the cards have the same information on both sides),
and then cut them out. To water-proof them, I did the "poor man's
laminating" by covering them with clear packing tape. A simple hole-punch
and tying on some ribbon is all that was necessary to attach them to
the balloons, and they were ready to go.
The image on the right is the design I used for the cards. Some of the
contact information is blurred out here, since I try to limit access to
it here on the website. :)
Concerns
When starting this project, I had not considered that there might be
any potentially negative issues. A full week after the first launch,
I did a little poking around on the web and saw that there are groups
who consider balloon releases to be a form of environmentally unsafe
pollution. However, it also appears that some of it is blown severely
out of proportion, as latex is a biodegradable material that decays
at about the same rate as oak leaves, and often passes through animals'
digestive tracts without harming them. Also, latex is a natural material
harvested from trees. Either way, a lot of schools have
decided to err on the side of paranoia, as with most institutions that
are plagued by political correctness, and many kids no longer get to do
this sort of project.
Whether the risks are large or small, several states have
instituted laws regarding balloon releases. This is something I also
had not considered, but it appears that I'm still within the legal
limit, as Virginia law only prohibits the release of 50 or more balloons
within a one hour period.
I now realize it may have been a mistake to use metallic ribbon on the earlier
launches, as I didn't know this could, on rare occasions, cause problems with
power lines. I had already switched to a non-conductive ribbon prior to learning of this.
Design Considerations
You may think this sort of project is 100% brainless, that you just
simply fill balloons and launch them. Well, this can be true,
but depending on what your goals are with the project, some science
can come into play.
In one of the pictures below,
you'll see that one card had three balloons... this is because I was
experimenting with half-filled balloons, and discovered that it takes
3 of them to lift a card. It takes less latex and helium to use single
full balloons. There are several reasons to use as little helium as you
can. One is obviously to make your helium tank last as long as possible
and fill as many balloons as you can, but the other is a travelling
distance issue. As a balloon gains altitude, ambient air pressure
drops and the balloon expands, until it bursts and the card falls. The
more room the balloon has to expand, the higher it can go, and thus the
longer it can stay in the air and the further it can travel. Balloon #2
may or may not end up travelling further with its 3-balloon configuration,
but it uses more balloons and more helium... More helium because there's more
weight in rubber to lift, and also the balloons exert more internal pressure
when they're less inflated, thus compressing the helium more and reducing
lift. This may seem counter-intuitive, but the higher pressure in under-inflated
balloons can be demonstrated by connecting a half-inflated balloon to a
mostly-inflated one with a straw or tube, and watching the smaller balloon
loose it's air to the larger one.
There's also a travel issue with regards to how long the helium will last.
Latex balloons slowly leak it out, and the instructions that come with the
helium tank estimate 5 to 7 hours of floating. Since these balloons, even
when well filled, don't climb terribly fast, it' hard to know whether
they'll reach burst altitude before losing enough helium to cease climbing.
At this point, the balloon would pass through a phase of being neutrally-buoyant,
and thus would just follow the air currents without climbing or descending
out of them. Eventually it would start a slow descent as more helium is lost.
Between these different possibilities, it's hard to know exactly what the
balloon will experience and how far it will travel based on how much helium it
started with. I'm also not sure how temperature is going to factor into this,
since these balloons were flown in freezing January air.
Generally it's estimated that most latex helium balloons will reach an altitude
of about 5 miles (over 25,000 feet) before descending, with about 90% of them
bursting, and the other 10% descending due to out-gassing.
At this point, I almost regret not including instructions on the cards asking
people to also provide me with information about whether the balloon was
torn or whether it was intact but fairly deflated.
The Launches
All of the balloons were simply launched by letting them go, one by one,
in small batches right outside of my house. Because my street is lined by
row-houses on both sides, the wind tends to run right down the street.
For the first batch of 40 (originally intended to be the only batch), I had
a case of what we call "Go Fever", which is the state of mind that you're going
to launch no matter what the weather conditions, because that's when you've been
planning to do it and you're too excited to let it sit. So I launched them in spite
of the high winds blowing to the east... and I launched all of them, rather than
spreading them out as I should. The balloons fought down-drafts along the way. Most
didn't start climbing until reaching the end of the street, but others did climb up
over the houses on one side or the other. It was a very windy day, and whatever may
ultimately have caused their descent, they'll likely have been in the air for most of the
day and may have travelled a good distance.... but hopefully not out into the ocean,
which is a distinct possibility.
After a few days, I started to consider the possibility that all of them were carried
out to sea. The launches resumed, with the plan to release them in smaller quantities
here and there to increase the chances they'd go in different directions.
This page will be updated with landing information and maps
as contacts are made.
Mission Log:
01/22/03, 06:30 pm - Balloons 1 & 2 launched.
01/23/03, 09:30 am - Balloons 3-8 launched (3 & 4 slightly under-inflated).
01/23/03, 10:10 am - Balloons 9-14 launched.
01/23/03, 10:30 am - Balloons 15-22 launched.
01/23/03, 11:00 am - Balloons 23-27 launched (26 highly inflated).
01/23/03, 11:30 am - Balloons 27-32 launched (29 under-inflated, heard one pop out of view).
01/23/03, 12:00 pm - Balloons 33-38 launched.
01/23/03, 12:02 pm - Balloon #29 recovered. Popped on a tree down the road, and was the one heard earlier.
01/23/03, 12:30 pm - Balloons 39 & 40 launched, Balloon 29 relaunched properly inflated. This is the first batch that flew away at a nice upward angle, without darting up and down and sideways.
01/25/03, 11:40 am - Fearing that balloons 1-40 may have been blown into the ocean by strong winds earlier in the week, have decided to buy more helium and resume launches.
01/25/03, 12:20 pm - Balloons 41-44 launched in nearly-still air.
01/25/03, 05:45 pm - Balloons 45-48 launched in a light breeze, flew North.
01/27/03, 11:50 am - Balloons 49-52 launched in a mild wind, flew SW. Helium tank #1 depleted on last balloon.
01/27/03, 02:55 pm - First contact made! Balloon #5 recovered!
01/27/03, 07:00 pm - Balloons 53-56 launched in a light breeze, flew SW (#53 highly inflated, #54 underinflated).
01/28/03, 04:10 pm - Contact #2 - Balloon #39 recovered! Distinct possibility exists that some did indeed go out to sea or land in the bay, judging by these landing locations.
01/29/03, 10:00 pm - Contact #3 - Balloon #24 recovered! Found 01/29/03 at 3:30pm in Vineland New Jersey. Furthest recovered to date.
04/14/03, Afternoon - Contact #4 - Balloon #22 recovered! Found in a trailer park in Middletown DE.
04/19/03, Afternoon - Contact #5 - Balloon #34 recovered! Found along a road in Stevensville MD.
02/09/04, Afternoon - Declaring project over. Since I still have a lot of materials left over, it's possible that I may resume again someday with a second balloon project. Considering it's now been a year, the likelihood of turning up additional cards is extremely low. After 56 balloons were launched, only 5 were recovered, all of which were from the batch of 40 that were released on the windy day.
Balloon Status
BALLOON
NUMBER | FLIGHT AND LANDING STATUS | APPROXIMATE DRIVING DISTANCE |
| 1 | Unknown | - |
| 2 | Unknown | - |
| 3 | Unknown | - |
| 4 | Unknown | - |
| 5 | Landed in Northern Delaware (Wilmington), ZIP 19807. Balloon found shredded on a farm, 1/27/03. | 130 miles |
| 6 | Unknown | - |
| 7 | Unknown | - |
| 8 | Unknown | - |
| 9 | Unknown | - |
| 10 | Unknown | - |
| 11 | Unknown | - |
| 12 | Unknown | - |
| 13 | Unknown | - |
| 14 | Unknown | - |
| 15 | Unknown | - |
| 16 | Unknown | - |
| 17 | Unknown | - |
| 18 | Unknown | - |
| 19 | Unknown | - |
| 20 | Unknown | - |
| 21 | Unknown | - |
| 22 | Found on 4/14/03 in a trailer park in Middletown DE. | - |
| 23 | Unknown | - |
| 24 | Found 01/29/03 at 3:30pm on a farm in Vineland New Jersey, ZIP 08361. Balloon found shredded. | 170 miles |
| 25 | Unknown | - |
| 26 | Unknown | - |
| 27 | Unknown | - |
| 28 | Unknown | - |
| 29 | Recovered, Popped in a tree shortly after launch. Relaunched. | 30 feet |
| 30 | Unknown | - |
| 31 | Unknown | - |
| 32 | Unknown | - |
| 33 | Unknown | - |
| 34 | Found on 4/19/03 along a road in Stevensville MD. | - |
| 35 | Unknown | - |
| 36 | Unknown | - |
| 37 | Unknown | - |
| 38 | Unknown | - |
| 39 | Landed in Eastern MD (Easton), ZIP 21601. Found 1/28/03 | 100 miles |
| 40 | Unknown | - |
| 41 | Unknown | - |
| 42 | Unknown | - |
| 43 | Unknown | - |
| 44 | Unknown | - |
| 45 | Unknown | - |
| 46 | Unknown | - |
| 47 | Unknown | - |
| 48 | Unknown | - |
| 49 | Unknown | - |
| 50 | Unknown | - |
| 51 | Unknown | - |
| 52 | Unknown | - |
| 53 | Unknown | - |
| 54 | Unknown | - |
| 55 | Unknown | - |
| 56 | Unknown | - |
Pictures:
