The UMass Lowell High Altitude Balloon project (UML HAB) has created a reusable balloon payload for taking instruments to the edge of space! This system includes a hot wire cutdown mechanism, ...

[Kensho Miyoshi] — an avid reader of Hack a Day — needed an art installation project in Tokyo, he came up with these clever glowing balloon blimps. They feature a mini gondola hanging from the ...

Auguste Piccard and an assistant took a gas-filled balloon to 15,781 meters in 1931. Their gondola was pressurized, and they were the first humans to see the curvature of the Earth and the dark ...

When all the ballast is gone, the balloon eventually sinks, and another automatic device cuts the instrument gondola free and lowers it to earth on a parachute. Instructions on the gondola urge ...

Two of the occupants were unwell and in dropping rapidly through cloud, the collection of ice on the gondola, together with that falling on it from the lower part of the balloon structure itself ...