STUDY SITES FOR VBP MEMBERS. After you appreciate the strength of the upper winds and the coldness, CONTRIBUTE YOUR design ideas!
Very high wind charts for South America, our expected base site, are at the U of Wyoming. When you arrive at this page, select "text" output, "Stuve to 10 millibars" and the SOCA weather station, (which is located at Cayenne, French Guyana). Visit this page on a regular weekly basis to learn how the upper winds and temperatures vary.
Jetstream graphic map shows current windspeeds at 300 millibars (about 10 kilometers high). Our space deck is at the 50 millibar level but the strongest winds are at the 300mb level which our elevators must be able to safely, comfortably traverse.
What IS the atmosphere? An excellent, brief but thorough, online tutorial which includes near space phenomena.
BEANSTALK RESEARCH LABORATORY is our knowledge base and where to get the mathematics and techniques for designing the highest structure in the world. Hosted by our Chief Scientist, CM Edwards.
Research links at Embry-Riddle Aeronautical University, [ERAU].
Research links at California Technical Institute.
Colleges' aerospace departments links at ERAU.
Fuel cells info page at Kettering University. Fuel cells convert H and O into water, electricity and heat, ideal for night time power on the near space deck. This is a good H info site with good links.
Fuel cell power system integrated with a hydrogen generator is under development by Proton Energy Systems. This package concept is perfect for near space deck usage and hopefully will soon be in commercial production.
Life Support research links at Astrobiology Web.
Relevant High Altitude Sites
Ballooning links galore at Roland Escher's site.
Facetmobile, a proven ultralight aircraft lifting body design that would make a great solar elevator.
Kansas Near Space Project floats student experiments to near space.
NASA Wallops UltraLong Duration Balloon Flight development program is similar to what the Virtual Beanstalk Project is researching. Good place to get familiar with the techniques of high altitude float.
Pathfinder See a 600-pound solar-electric flying wing with propellers that has flown to 21.6 km which is beanstalk territory!
Pegasus is a three stage solid fuel LEO rocket which, with modifications, could be launched from rails on the near space deck.
Plasma weather at geosyncronous orbit from the Space Environment Center at NOAA. (Because inquiring minds want to know)
Red Sprites photos of strange lightning in the stratosphere. It's not always tranquil at 20 km high.
University of Washington Space Geophysics Department researches high altitude plasma dynamics. Our science advisor, Professor Bob, Robert Holzworth, is an atmospheric scientist there. This is where the M2P2 plasma sail was discovered.
Metric Converter website. Just plug in your numbers to convert.
Hapless HAP'ers [High Altitude Platform developers]
Companies are persuing the juicy profits offered by a cheap radio antenna at 20 kilometers high. The jetstreams prohibit a tethered aerostat being located in temperate latitudes, the winds would put too much drag on the tether and pull the platform down into the turbulent tropopause and break it. The richest markets are outside the tropics, therefore, they're looking for ways to get around, and above, the jetstream, either via solar-powered airplanes or free-flying high altitude airships. We wish them luck with their big budget design challenges while we design a manned, tethered permanent airship to be stationed outside the jetstream latitudes.
Japanese Stratospheric Platform is government-sponsored and has the best shot at actually building a high giant airship. Even if they manage to fly it, it won't directly compete with our more-versatile elevator ride to near space.
Helinet is Europe's plan to use a Helios electric aircraft for telecommunications relay.
Platform Wireless company is really trying hard to sell its low altitude tethered aerostat broadband scheme. Its balloon has to be reeled in when the winds blow. That's infrastructure?
SkyStation started it all with a fancy website with artists' realistic 3D drawings of stratospheric blimps, as if they really existed. Three years after they said they'd have an ion thruster-powered stratospheric station fully operational over Los Angeles, they have yet to build even a prototype airship. Their founder, General Haig, is learning that faking it may work better in the Army than in the stratosphere. [Apparently they have failed and seem to have disappeared from the internet]. This link is to the Italian branch of Skystation, which is slow to pull the outdated webpage.
StratSat and SkyTower Two more hapless HAP'ers with business plans but no airship.
HAP scholarly paper in PDF format, about the promise of high airships and beanstalks.
Parachuting from the stratosphere! Yes! It has been successfully done, from 31 kilometers. Kittenger, the parachutist, was the first person to exceed the speed of sound -- with his own body!
Space is not a spectator
sport any more --