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Dorian Gray
Veteran Member
 
Join Date: May 2005
Location: Paris, France
 
2010-03-28, 04:38

Quote:
Originally Posted by MumboJumbo View Post
It would be interesting to see if there were some way of keeping the weather balloon from popping for longer. Perhaps a mesh netting covering the balloon but it would have to find some way to get out of the way of the parachute.
But the mesh netting would defeat the purpose of the balloon. The balloon rises because the gas inside it is less dense than the atmosphere, at a given atmospheric pressure. By preventing it from expanding you would pressurise the gas relative to the atmosphere, thus preventing the balloon from rising any further. In theory it would be an option for keeping the balloon drifting around at a certain altitude, rather than rising until it bursts; but in practice the weight of the mesh would be an insurmountable hurdle. A pressure differential of even 0.5 psi would require a tremendously strong netting, and that netting would need to cover 2 million square inches for a 20-metre diameter. We're probably talking about hundreds of pounds of weight.
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