To a layperson like me, could you explain how these balloons will be cleaned up / collected after their life? What material are they made up of?
Launch HN: Sorcerer (YC S24) – Weather balloons that collect more data
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Re: Launch HN: Sorcerer (YC S24) – Weather balloons that collect more data
#12Very cool, congrats on the launch. You're spending nearly all of your time in the stratosphere collecting data, but what correlation does that have to ground forecasts? Are your "AI models" that you're producing forecasting stratosphere conditions, or more than that?
Re: Launch HN: Sorcerer (YC S24) – Weather balloons that collect more data
#13This is awesome, how do you manage climbing and descending with a balloon. Are you compressing the gas on board or using thermals?
Re: Launch HN: Sorcerer (YC S24) – Weather balloons that collect more data
#14To a layperson like me, could you explain how these balloons will be cleaned up / collected after their life? What material are they made up of?
Sure thing! They're made of about 300 grams of polyethylene. Towards the end of their lifespan, we can steer them to an area that's easy for us to drive out and pick them up. The payload has a GPS, which lets us track where they are both in the sky and on the ground.
Right now, most weather balloons fall back to Earth and stay where they land unless someone happens across them (since they can't be controlled and only last a couple of hours).
Re: Launch HN: Sorcerer (YC S24) – Weather balloons that collect more data
#15This is one of the most fascinating Launch HNs in a while. Excited to follow your progress and congrats on the launch!
It’s a literal launch!
Re: Launch HN: Sorcerer (YC S24) – Weather balloons that collect more data
#16Wow! I am surprised it is even legan to launch those ballons from SF, specially that close to the airport. What is the regulation? Is it based on the size/weigth of the ballon?
Re: Launch HN: Sorcerer (YC S24) – Weather balloons that collect more data
#17Very cool! How are the balloons transferring telemetry back to earth for analysis, etc?
Asking because my research at the University of Oxford was around hyper space-efficient data transfer from remote locations for a fraction of the price.
The result was an award-winning technology (https://jsonbinpack.sourcemeta.com) to serialise plain JSON that was proven to be more space-efficient than every tested alternative (including Protocol Buffers, Apache Avro, ASN.1, etc) in every tested case (https://arxiv.org/abs/2211.12799).
If it's interesting, I'd love to connect and discuss (jv@jviotti.com) how at least the open-source offering could help.
Re: Launch HN: Sorcerer (YC S24) – Weather balloons that collect more data
#18This is a great idea. I had no idea about the single-use radiosondes.
Re: Launch HN: Sorcerer (YC S24) – Weather balloons that collect more data
#19Congrats on the launch! Seeing this reminded me of building and launching a high-altitude weather balloon with some buddies back in high school - one of the coolest projects I've gotten to work on.
If it's not proprietary, I'd love to know - how do you "steer" vertically between different wind layers to move in the direction you want to go?
Can't wait to see where you guys take this!
Re: Launch HN: Sorcerer (YC S24) – Weather balloons that collect more data
#20For those interested, check out Bill Brown, the grandfather of lightweight modern ballooning. Multiple circumnavigations have been achieved with his equipment.
https://www.stratoballooning.org/membership#!biz/id/5f4d7b97...