7 ms·

I saw this earlier and thought it was pretty cool. I like the idea of sending stuff into the atmosphere. I'm curious as to what the repercussions of something l

by bjdixon 15y ago

I saw this earlier and thought it was pretty cool. I like the idea of sending stuff into the atmosphere. I'm curious as to what the repercussions of something like this are though. I'd guess that there are laws or international conventions on controlling air traffic.

jrockway 15y ago
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lawnchair_Larry#Arrest_and_notoriety http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lawnchair_Larry#Arrest_and_noto... From the article: Lawrence Richard Walters, nicknamed "Lawnchair Larry", was an American truck driver who took flight on July 2, 1982 in a homemade airship. Dubbed Inspiration I, the "flying machine" consisted of an ordinary patio chair with 45 helium-filled weather balloons attached to it. Walters rose to an altitude of over 15,000 feet. After 45 minutes in the sky, he shot several balloons and descended slowly, until the balloons' dangling cables got caught in a power line. Walters was able to climb to the ground. He was immediately arrested by waiting members of the Long Beach Police Department. "We know he broke some part of the Federal Aviation Act, and as soon as we decide which part it is, some type of charge will be filed. If he had a pilot's license, we'd suspend that. But he doesn't." "If the FAA was around when the Wright Brothers were testing their aircraft, they would never have been able to make their first flight at Kitty Hawk." Walters committed suicide at the age of 44 by shooting himself in the heart.
- gcb 15y ago
  "He committed suicide in 1993 at the age of 44 by shooting himself in the heart in Angeles National Forest.[6]" for me that smells as "assassinated in the woods but the case was never investigated"
  - jrockway 15y ago
    Does it count as an assassination if the FAA uses its mind control device to convince you to walk out into the middle of the forest and kill yourself? Wait, it's the NSA that has the mind control ray...
    - camiller 15y ago
      But in the spirit of interdepartmental cooperation....
    - gcb 15y ago
      just saying that suicide with a shot in the heart is weird. in the middle of woods it's even weirder
- timdoug 15y ago
  To be fair, legal and unlicensed powered paragliders are able to reach those heights[1]. I only know about airspace classes by way of Wikipedia, but it seems like anything below 18,000 feet and far enough away from an airport in the US is fine. [1] http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Powered_paragliding http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Powered_paragliding
  - roxic 15y ago
    * The current world altitude record for powered paragliders (RPF1) is 6,102m (20,019 ft) * ... captured photographs of the figurine posing with a Canadian flag at 78,000 feet
  - jrockway 15y ago
    Indeed the problem was that he didn't establish two-way communication with air traffic control. Historically, VFR flights inadvertently straying into a terminal control area have actually killed a few hundred people, so it was reasonable for the FAA to fine him.
- larrydag 15y ago
  Does the article write realize how silly it is to say "If the FAA was around when the Wright Brothers were testing their aircraft". So what came first the plane or the regulations?
markelliot 15y ago
In the United States, these kinds of things are governed by FAR 101. It's reasonably straight forward to become exempt from _most_ of the rules by following the criteria outlined in section 101.1(4)[1]. Roughly, these regulations correspond to making sure that if a plane were to hit your unmanned balloon on the way up or on the way down that the plane will survive and that your package won't be dragged along; and, that the package itself won't be hazardous to folks on the ground. (IANAL) Conformance with the rules means that no single payload is more than 6lbs, that the side-wall density of your payload does not exceed 3oz/sq in on the smallest side, and that the cabling you use will break with an impact force of 50lbs. We could debate about how you measure impact force, but most folks in this hobby read it to mean "tensile" strength. For 6lbs payloads, to meet the density requirement, you want a box about 1x1x1ft, which is often why most of the pictures of payloads that people send up in the sky look about the same size and shape. Last, you need to conform with the safety regulations in FAR 101.7. The gist here is that you need to make sure that your payload isn't a danger to others on the ground, and not a danger to those in the air. Compliance here is more subjective, but a parachute and padding box go a long way to making others on the ground safe. It's relatively easy to file a Notice To Airmen (NOTAM) that indicates you'll be launching a balloon. A courtesy call to your local Air Traffic Control office wouldn't hurt either. If you don't have a local ATC, the nearest airport is good place to start. My familiarity with these regs comes from actually launching several helium-lifted payloads to near-space a few years ago and talking through the regs with the FAA and ATC to make sure we didn't need an official waiver (we didn't). My group had a slightly higher budget, but we went higher, longer and farther than these young Canadians, making two launches within an hour and sending the first balloon about 2000 miles over 34 hours starting at around 80,000ft, and sending the second balloon + payload to 123,000ft with about 3 hours of flight time. Like many enthusiasts, our project used amateur radio frequencies to communicate, which qualified us to be listed on the Amateur High Altitude Radio Balloon (ARHAB) website for our achievements, we're listed as PBH-9 and PBH-10, for the duration and distance records.[2] [1]:http://ecfr.gpoaccess.gov/cgi/t/text/text-idx?c=ecfr&rgn=div5&view=text&node=14:2.0.1.3.15&idno=14#14:2.0.1.3.15.1.9.1 http://ecfr.gpoaccess.gov/cgi/t/text/text-idx?c=ecfr&rgn... [2]:http://www.arhab.org/ http://www.arhab.org/
- rdamico 15y ago
geoffschmidt 15y ago
Here is the original article, which has slightly more info: They "checked to make sure the flight wouldn’t be dangerous or illegal", and they used forecasts from "a website that calculates a weather balloon’s estimated landing spot based on input launch coordinates, prevailing winds, and balloon specs" to time the launch so that the balloon would land in Canada in the US. http://www.thestar.com/news/article/1120808--toronto-teens-send-lego-man-on-a-balloon-odyssey-24-kilometres-high http://www.thestar.com/news/article/1120808--toronto-teens-s...
- CWuestefeld 15y ago
  Any idea what web site it is that does this calculation? I quick DDG search didn't reveal anything, at least with my search-fu. UPDATE: Never mind, I think I found it: http://nearspaceventures.com/w3Baltrak/readyget.pl http://nearspaceventures.com/w3Baltrak/readyget.pl

by bjdixon 15y ago

jrockway 15y ago

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lawnchair_Larry#Arrest_and_notoriety http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lawnchair_Larry#Arrest_and_noto... From the article: Lawrence Richard Walters, nicknamed "Lawnchair Larry", was an American truck driver who took flight on July 2, 1982 in a homemade airship. Dubbed Inspiration I, the "flying machine" consisted of an ordinary patio chair with 45 helium-filled weather balloons attached to it. Walters rose to an altitude of over 15,000 feet. After 45 minutes in the sky, he shot several balloons and descended slowly, until the balloons' dangling cables got caught in a power line. Walters was able to climb to the ground. He was immediately arrested by waiting members of the Long Beach Police Department. "We know he broke some part of the Federal Aviation Act, and as soon as we decide which part it is, some type of charge will be filed. If he had a pilot's license, we'd suspend that. But he doesn't." "If the FAA was around when the Wright Brothers were testing their aircraft, they would never have been able to make their first flight at Kitty Hawk." Walters committed suicide at the age of 44 by shooting himself in the heart.

gcb 15y ago
"He committed suicide in 1993 at the age of 44 by shooting himself in the heart in Angeles National Forest.[6]" for me that smells as "assassinated in the woods but the case was never investigated"
- jrockway 15y ago
  Does it count as an assassination if the FAA uses its mind control device to convince you to walk out into the middle of the forest and kill yourself? Wait, it's the NSA that has the mind control ray...
  - camiller 15y ago
    But in the spirit of interdepartmental cooperation....
  - gcb 15y ago
    just saying that suicide with a shot in the heart is weird. in the middle of woods it's even weirder
timdoug 15y ago
To be fair, legal and unlicensed powered paragliders are able to reach those heights[1]. I only know about airspace classes by way of Wikipedia, but it seems like anything below 18,000 feet and far enough away from an airport in the US is fine. [1] http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Powered_paragliding http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Powered_paragliding
- roxic 15y ago
  * The current world altitude record for powered paragliders (RPF1) is 6,102m (20,019 ft) * ... captured photographs of the figurine posing with a Canadian flag at 78,000 feet
- jrockway 15y ago
  Indeed the problem was that he didn't establish two-way communication with air traffic control. Historically, VFR flights inadvertently straying into a terminal control area have actually killed a few hundred people, so it was reasonable for the FAA to fine him.
larrydag 15y ago
Does the article write realize how silly it is to say "If the FAA was around when the Wright Brothers were testing their aircraft". So what came first the plane or the regulations?

markelliot 15y ago

In the United States, these kinds of things are governed by FAR 101. It's reasonably straight forward to become exempt from _most_ of the rules by following the criteria outlined in section 101.1(4)[1]. Roughly, these regulations correspond to making sure that if a plane were to hit your unmanned balloon on the way up or on the way down that the plane will survive and that your package won't be dragged along; and, that the package itself won't be hazardous to folks on the ground. (IANAL) Conformance with the rules means that no single payload is more than 6lbs, that the side-wall density of your payload does not exceed 3oz/sq in on the smallest side, and that the cabling you use will break with an impact force of 50lbs. We could debate about how you measure impact force, but most folks in this hobby read it to mean "tensile" strength. For 6lbs payloads, to meet the density requirement, you want a box about 1x1x1ft, which is often why most of the pictures of payloads that people send up in the sky look about the same size and shape. Last, you need to conform with the safety regulations in FAR 101.7. The gist here is that you need to make sure that your payload isn't a danger to others on the ground, and not a danger to those in the air. Compliance here is more subjective, but a parachute and padding box go a long way to making others on the ground safe. It's relatively easy to file a Notice To Airmen (NOTAM) that indicates you'll be launching a balloon. A courtesy call to your local Air Traffic Control office wouldn't hurt either. If you don't have a local ATC, the nearest airport is good place to start. My familiarity with these regs comes from actually launching several helium-lifted payloads to near-space a few years ago and talking through the regs with the FAA and ATC to make sure we didn't need an official waiver (we didn't). My group had a slightly higher budget, but we went higher, longer and farther than these young Canadians, making two launches within an hour and sending the first balloon about 2000 miles over 34 hours starting at around 80,000ft, and sending the second balloon + payload to 123,000ft with about 3 hours of flight time. Like many enthusiasts, our project used amateur radio frequencies to communicate, which qualified us to be listed on the Amateur High Altitude Radio Balloon (ARHAB) website for our achievements, we're listed as PBH-9 and PBH-10, for the duration and distance records.[2] [1]:http://ecfr.gpoaccess.gov/cgi/t/text/text-idx?c=ecfr&rgn=div5&view=text&node=14:2.0.1.3.15&idno=14#14:2.0.1.3.15.1.9.1 http://ecfr.gpoaccess.gov/cgi/t/text/text-idx?c=ecfr&rgn... [2]:http://www.arhab.org/ http://www.arhab.org/

rdamico 15y ago

geoffschmidt 15y ago

Here is the original article, which has slightly more info: They "checked to make sure the flight wouldn’t be dangerous or illegal", and they used forecasts from "a website that calculates a weather balloon’s estimated landing spot based on input launch coordinates, prevailing winds, and balloon specs" to time the launch so that the balloon would land in Canada in the US. http://www.thestar.com/news/article/1120808--toronto-teens-send-lego-man-on-a-balloon-odyssey-24-kilometres-high http://www.thestar.com/news/article/1120808--toronto-teens-s...

CWuestefeld 15y ago
Any idea what web site it is that does this calculation? I quick DDG search didn't reveal anything, at least with my search-fu. UPDATE: Never mind, I think I found it: http://nearspaceventures.com/w3Baltrak/readyget.pl http://nearspaceventures.com/w3Baltrak/readyget.pl