Comments on: Ask Aerospace Engineer Jose Mariano Anything You Want About Space Tourism

By: Jose

Jose — Sat, 13 Jul 2013 10:49:45 +0000

In reply to Kathleen Whalen. Thank you! I hope one day all options are Earth-friendly, the whole point is seeing how beautiful our planet is, so it has to be respectful :) Let me know when your book is coming along :)

By: Jose

Jose — Sat, 13 Jul 2013 10:42:31 +0000

In reply to Kathleen Whalen.

Hey Kathleen,

Each bit and piece of the bloon is made of the material that has less weight and the aviation authorities have certified that it can do the work. For instance, the balloon envelope (or “sail”) is made of a special type of polyethylene, the flight train (the ropes connecting the balloon to the pod) is made of Dyneema (15 stronger than steel for the same weight) and the pod itself is mostly made of carbon fiber.

Punctures on the balloon would not have much of an effect, it would just mix the outside air with the helium. The material is rip-stop and cannot pop. The chances of being hit by space debris or meteorites are similar to that of aircraft, that is incredibly unlikely to happen. If one magically cut the balloon in half, the mission would just be shorter and the system would land under parafoils, as usual, just earlier.

There are at least 2 redundancies for each critical subsystem, like in commercial airliners, and there are no catastrophic failure modes (that cannot be said of rocket based systems).

By: Kathleen Whalen

Kathleen Whalen — Fri, 12 Jul 2013 22:34:11 +0000

Thank you for doing this interview. It is wonderful to see an eco-Green option for space tourism out there. I am including a section of space tourism and privatized space travel in my book, and I will now include links to bloon as well. Thank you for sharing.

By: Kathleen Whalen

Kathleen Whalen — Fri, 12 Jul 2013 22:32:11 +0000

What is the material of the bloon? As far as safety goes, I am sure planning for our space junk, and small particles flying into the bloon have been taken into account. How many redundancies have been integrated into the process around the bloon material possibly being punctured and back up bloons itself? thank you

By: Anil Polat

Anil Polat — Thu, 11 Jul 2013 18:03:26 +0000

I’m very sorry all for the technical troubles during today’s live chat. Thank you Jose for spending some of your time with us.

You can learn more about bloon on this website (http://www.inbloon.com/) and follow Zero2Infinity on Facebook and Twitter @flyabloon.

I’ll try to recover the lost comments and hope we can catch back up with you Jose at a later date to get to those questions. Thank you again everyone!