Altitude record attempt today

Edited by the Engineeringtalk editorial team Sep 3, 2003

British pilots Andy Elson and Colin Prescot will attempt to take the largest ever helium balloon to a record-breaking 40km and break the 40-year-old world altitude record for a manned balloon.

This morning British pilots Andy Elson and Colin Prescot are due to attempt to take the largest ever helium balloon to a record-breaking 40km and break the 40-year-old world altitude record for a manned balloon.

UK science and technology research company, Qinetiq, is sponsoring the mission which is expected to launch between 0600 and 0800 on Tuesday 2nd September.

Scientists from the Russian Space agency Zvezda are in mission control in St Ives to help Prescot and Elson dress in the spacesuits which will be vital to their survival.

The conditions on their open platform will resemble those on the surface of Mars, with temperatures dropping as low as -70C, then rising to around -25C and with high levels of radiation.

At their target altitude Elson and Prescot will be floating in a virtually atmosphere-free environment and be able to see the curvature of the earth.

The Met Office has been monitoring the weather and has provided the pilots with forecast data allowing them to pinpoint the preferred conditions to launch and fly the balloon.

A novel trajectory prediction model that was developed by Reading University also helped them narrow down a launch date.

Made from 1.7t of polyethylene, the Qinetiq 1 helium balloon will have a volume at 132,000 feet of 44 million cubic feet.

At its launch, it will be seven times higher than Nelson's Column and as high as the Empire State Building; 400 times the size of a normal balloon.

Elson and Prescot, are both commercial balloon pilots, with 40 years experience between them and a number of ballooning records to their names.

Most recently, together they set the world endurance record for any aircraft in the earth's atmosphere, when they flew from Spain to the Pacific in 17 days, 18 hours and 25 minutes as part of their round-the-world attempt.

Elson led a team of 12 in Glastonbury, which has designed and built the balloon envelope and flight platform for Qinetiq 1.

In order to make the enormous envelope Elson designed a brand new manufacturing process.

Polyethylene load tapes give the balloon its strength and structure and the entire process is strictly quality assured.

Malcolm Ross and Vic Prather of the US Navy with their Strato-Lab set the current altitude record of 113,740 feet on 4th May 1961, as part of the US space programme.

No one has attempted the record since this time and this region of the stratosphere, commonly known as the "ignorosphere", has remained equally unexplored.

Qinetiq will be mounting several experiments on board the balloon to find out more about this region.

Its CREAM (cosmic radiation activation and effects monitor) experiment, previously used on Concorde, NASA's space shuttle and the MIR space station, will collect a record of the region.

Sensors on board will also collect data about temperature and pressure, which will help scientists plan hypersonic flight vehicles of the future.