>Our balloon is 2.4 pounds at launch and gets lighter throughout flight.
Interesting, I wonder why is this.
UA 1093
111–117 of 117 posts
Re: UA 1093
#112Earlier quoted context omitted.
The birthday paradox seems relevant here as well: With 23 people, your chance of having a "collision" in birthdays is over 50%. With more objects in the sky, the chance of collision is likely greater than one would assume given the space they have to occupy.
Though the birthday paradox is concerned with self-collisions, I think since these are explicitly collisions with other objects it feels less paradoxical to compute
It still applies.
The classic scenario involves birthdays, a one-dimensional space that closes in itself; while this one is a three-dimensional space that is closed on two of them.
Airborne objects also move so I don't know if that decreases or increases the probability of collisions, I guess it depends on how much correlation there is between their movements.
It sounds like a fascinating thing to study!
Re: UA 1093
#113I wonder how much damage to the society should Musk do before people stop posting links to Twitter.
Do you stop using American products when you don't agree with the ones running it?
It is a bit of an odd comparison to make - one on hand you have world's biggest economy which is part of huge majority of our lives, and on the other hand you have a website from a billionaire who is bored and wants to destroy our social fabric.
But to answer your question: yes, if there is a good alternative or the product is replaceable. Twitter is one of those things.
I do actively avoid products produced by a nation which is committing genocide for example and ignores international law.
Re: UA 1093
#114Earlier quoted context omitted.
The FCC requires that airborne transmitters identify themselves by broadcasting the an FAA designator such as the aircraft registration number.[1] The FAA has no identification or registration process for small weather balloons. So this effectively prohibits them from broadcasting. It's possible to add a radar reflector, but they add significant weight and bulk to the balloon's payload. I think reflectors are only re…
I'm confused about where the prohibition is. N991SS is an example of an FAA aircraft registration number for a balloon; I looked it up myself on the FAA N-number inquiry site to confirm. Your link does not talk about balloons at all. Where does the FAA prohibit weather balloons here? It sounds like it's just physically not possible to carry a transponder or reflector on a small weather balloon? But that's different t…
That balloon has a payload of up to 55lbs, so it follows different rules. WindBorne balloons are 1.1kg including the initial ballast.
There are ADS-B transmitters that weigh 50 grams and would require 60 grams of batteries to power them for 8 hours, so payload limitations are not an issue for WindBorne.[1]
The CEO of WindBorne replied to a comment about the inability to use ADS-B on weather balloons saying, "Yea, the FAA does a lot and I think overall they do a great job, but I wish there was better systems for communications here."[2] So I'm reasonably confident that my understanding is correct.
Re: UA 1093
#115> The system is designed to not pose a risk to human life in the worst case event of a collision. This is what the FAA 101 and ICAO weight limits are for. And indeed, there were no serious injuries and no depressurization event to my knowledge as a result of the collision. This seems close to a worst case scenario for this failure mode, and everyone is still OK. I consider that good engineering.
WindBorne cofounder CEO (John Dean) here -- Thanks, indeed I think that a strike to the cockpit glass, in the corner where there is more stress concentration, is one of the worst places to hit for human safety. And indeed the system was designed to be safe in the event of a collision. But still, in light of this I think we can do better. I think it's possible to operate the way we do and have a the mass distributed s…
It’s great that you’re taking responsibility at all, but in my opinion, a better system would be not releasing balloons that could impact aircraft in places that aircraft fly.
If that means that either you can’t release balloons or the aircraft can’t fly, then that’s a discussion that we should have about which we value more.
When I buy a ticket to fly on a aircraft, I do not want to know that I’ll probably survive if my plane hits a weather balloon, I want to know that my plane won’t hit a weather balloon.
I understand there are all sorts of inherent risks in aviation, and that if I want to fly, I must accept those risks. But hitting a balloon is not an inherent risk of flying, it’s a risk imposed on by others.
Re: UA 1093
#116Earlier quoted context omitted.
I'm confused about where the prohibition is. N991SS is an example of an FAA aircraft registration number for a balloon; I looked it up myself on the FAA N-number inquiry site to confirm. Your link does not talk about balloons at all. Where does the FAA prohibit weather balloons here? It sounds like it's just physically not possible to carry a transponder or reflector on a small weather balloon? But that's different t…
That balloon has a payload of up to 55lbs, so it follows different rules. WindBorne balloons are 1.1kg including the initial ballast. There are ADS-B transmitters that weigh 50 grams and would require 60 grams of batteries to power them for 8 hours, so payload limitations are not an issue for WindBorne.[1] The CEO of WindBorne replied to a comment about the inability to use ADS-B on weather balloons saying, "Yea, the…
Sorry to drive by, but weather balloons like Windborne produces are deployed for a lot longer than eight hours. Many are up for more than two weeks, some even exceeding a month.
Re: UA 1093
#117Earlier quoted context omitted.
Anyone arguing against government regulation as a whole is completely delusional. Companies can't be trusted to regulate themselves.
This event was unsafe, despite being wholly within the regulations, but in the comments of this post, the CEO of the company has made a promise to do better: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=45656044#45659295 Government regulators have failed, but at least the company is making an effort to prevent this from happening again.
Government regulators have NOT failed. The CEO already pointed this out - hitting the front windshield on a corner at cruise speed is the worst possible case for a collision like this.
Once pilot got some light shrapnel and the airplane successfully landed with zero deaths. This is such a rare collision that people attributed it to SPACE DEBRIS initially.
The only fix I'd like to see the government make is allowing lightweight objects to broadcast transponder data. Even if they don't do that, another 50 years will probably pass before the next collision of this type.