High Altitude Balloon

Guys

Just say I was very bored, has anyone got any rough costs of laughing a balloon up high enough to get some black sky and curvature?

There seem to be a lot of these balloons going up and taking great pics, I was after a kind of basic cost. Also how easy is it to acquire the equipment?

Rob

I'm bored too. In Yankee dollars because I'm lazy too.

$66 - 8 foot diameter weather balloon
$150 - ~300 cf of He and cylinder rental. You could also build an electrolysis rig and crack your own hydrogen for about the same amount.
$50 - Used android based cell phone with a camera and GPS enabled.
$5 - Ball of nylon string.
$5 - Some chemical hand warmers to keep the camera warm and happy.
$10 - A used styrofoam box and packing tape to build your enclosure. Don't forget to build a "stage" out in front of your phone's camera aperture opening for putting odd objects to video "in space".
$20 - for the "Where's My Phone?" GPS tracking app (so you can find where it landed after its flight) and one for doing long videos or timelapse. Or I guess writing your own.

So what is that? $306. of course you would get cheaper per flight costs if you did more than one, but I imagine chasing them down would get old fast, and you might annoy the local authorities...

First awful can of beer in space.

Hahahaha
It isnt that much money, I think it might be worth it for the local media interest and a cool photo on your wall.

One day....perhaps! I think ti is routine to take something up there now though! Lego man, lego shuttle, beer, phone etc. I just need to think what to take up haha

I'm sure its not long before someone tries to fly a lawnchair to space.

You mean like JP did for the Toshiba commercial? Well, it was a normal chair, not a lawn chair, but other than that it's been done already...

Not with someone sitting in it...

While there have been manned high altitude balloon projects, including skydiving, we are talking about improvised personal attempts. Which I think might cause trouble, not only for the "Hey Ya'll, watch this!" individual, but also with the overall New Space and sub-orbital space environment if someone kills themselves or causes an aviation accident.

A bit beyond the scope of this thread, but its the natural progression of the development of this activity.

Ah, your statement was ambiguous . I seems that this has been done as well, though not to those altitudes. You'd need a space suit and a lot of balloons I guess...

1 large balloon would be more structurally efficient. What is the purpose of this, anyway? Why build it, unless you're going to do something with it?