Team Prometheus How to make a Zero Pressure High Altitude Balloon

[Monroe]

Making your own Zero Pressure balloon is a bunch easier than you might think! What is a Zero Pressure balloon? A Zero Pressure balloon is a high altitude balloon much like the latex weather balloons many people use to do experiments in NearSpace these day's or altitudes higher than 65,000ft.

These balloons go so high you can see the curvature of the earth and the black of space. Until you've tried it there's nothing like looking at you own photo's and video's from the stratosphere!

   The latex weather balloons are great for this, but if you really want to get as high as you can and carry a decent size payload you really need a Zero Pressure balloon.

   These balloons are open on the bottom to release any pressure that would otherwise cause the balloon to pop at high altitudes like the latex balloons do.

   This allows them to reach higher altitudes and stay much longer at their peak altitudes. You can see how this might be the better way to go! The problem is they are very expensive! So I'm going to describe some methods you can use to make your own.

  

[Chris Anderson]

Is this post incompete? I was looking for those methods..

[Ellison Chan]

Oops, so mesmerized by the pictures did not read the text, and distracted by Super Bowl pre-grame. ;-)

Monroe, you can edit and re-submit.  Seems there's some missing text.

[Monroe]

Lol I was going to just add the methods as I go :) In the post here. So people can comment on them and I can get a better idea how to answer any questions as we go. I could redo it if you think it's better to just do it all in one post?

[Ellison Chan]

Hmm, looks like your last picture is covering up the last part of the last sentence, "...you can use to make your own." Maybe you could edit and see if you can fix that.

[Andrew Rabbitt]

Thanks Monroe!

I have done a bunch of calcs on balloons to figure out how they work, and come to the conclusion that for sealed balloons like say latex weather balloons, the altitude limit is determined by the maximum strain the material can withstand.  I had a look to see if people made silicone balloons to improve the strain properties, but I didn't find anything.

Surely with a zero pressure balloon, the limiting factor is the mass of the balloon itself for a given practical volume limitation, unless you start using really expensive and lightweight materials?

Looking forward to your wisdom!

[Jack Crossfire]

Looks like a job for a motorized valve.

[Monroe]

  The first thing you need to do is figure out what shape balloon your going to build. Some shapes offer easier construction. You can use different shapes other than spherical however spherical are the strongest and also the hardest to make.

I'll talk about the 2 designs I'm familiar with the natural shape and the tetrahedron.

 

 

[Dave]

I'm all for a redo... it's hard to follow posts that jump back and forth.

 

Thank you.

[Gary Mortimer]

There have been a couple of motorized valves, they freeze Jack. There was one project that spend gajillions on a computer controlled cooling fan for a manned endurance flight and another achieved the same goal by wiring a solar panel to a fan, sun out fan on, sun in... you get the idea. Guess which one worked best.

[Rigel]

Yep...I'm game for a redo as well!  Looks interesting.