How many engineers does it take to replace a balloon?\u00a0 The video, below, explores this complicated issue…<\/p>\n
It seems that the balloon used in the Space Elevator Games venue mockup was leaking and losing some of it’s lift, so it had to be replaced.\u00a0 In this video, we see Ben Shelef, founder of Spaceward and the creator of this exhibit doing just that.\u00a0 First he had to untie one of the four tethers so that he could pull the ‘current’ balloon over close enough to him so he could work with it.\u00a0 Then we see him replace the balloon with the new one and then have it returned to its original position.\u00a0 He was ably assisted by Brian Turner and Ravi of the Kansas City Space Pirates.<\/p>\n
All in all, a competent job \ud83d\ude42<\/p>\n
[youtube]http:\/\/www.youtube.com\/watch?v=nrOlT9cGJ50[\/youtube]<\/p>\n
.<\/p>\n
Some things I learned (or relearned)\u00a0about balloons and tethers today:<\/p>\n
This balloon is filled with Helium, a monatomic (single atom) molecule.\u00a0 This means that it will leak more than a balloon filed with Hydrogen, a diatomic (two-atom) molecule.\u00a0 I may have learned this in High School, but probably not…<\/p>\n
You’ll note that there are four tethers holding up the balloon.\u00a0 Four was used, rather than three, for a very specific reason.\u00a0 If you have four tethers and one of them snaps, this will not put any additional force on the tether\/rope in the middle, the one being used for the racetrack.\u00a0 However, if you have only three tethers and one of them snaps, then additional force can be put on the ‘racetrack’ tether, possibly causing it to snap.\u00a0 And if a climber happens to be on it at the time, well, look out below…<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
How many engineers does it take to replace a balloon?\u00a0 The video, below, explores this complicated issue… It seems that the balloon used in the Space Elevator Games venue mockup was leaking and losing some of it’s lift, so it had to be replaced.\u00a0 In this video, we see Ben Shelef, founder of Spaceward and […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[6],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-1018","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-news-announcements"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.spaceelevatorblog.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1018","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.spaceelevatorblog.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.spaceelevatorblog.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.spaceelevatorblog.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.spaceelevatorblog.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=1018"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.spaceelevatorblog.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1018\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.spaceelevatorblog.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=1018"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.spaceelevatorblog.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=1018"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.spaceelevatorblog.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=1018"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}