This article is a bit old. For a full writeup on the project please visit the Balloon Project Page.

Carry on, and thanks for visiting iamkosta.org

The Balloon Project LAUNCH! was nothing less than a complete success in so many ways. If you’re not to sure what the project is feel free to explore the technical write up (pdf) and the movie of the systems in action, the launch video, and lest we forget the kajillion photos of the project being built.

On Friday the 11th setup began for the launch of the project the very next day. A photographer was there to document the pre-Balloon Launch adventure for an article that was published in the Ventura County Star. Obviously I had to look muy importante so I sported my cellphone for the majority of the photoshoot.

Actually that is a complete lie, I was on the phone with the FAA and I would have rather not been. To make a long story short, very short in fact, the waiver that gave the balloon clearance to fly at 2500 feet had a clerical error on it. Because of that error it was impossible for the waiver to go into effect because, well, I don’t know– ask the FAA. Basically planes would crash and people would die as far as I understood it.

This means that the Balloon Project could not fly legally on Saturday, under any circumstances. Fantastic…

You’d think I would have stopped doing whatever I was doing but to be perfectly honest, I had a mission, and with all that FAA talk aside I went back to what I was doing with the photographer on that Friday morning.

…and my roommate Pat was wearing his sexiest V-neck, just for me, so it was easy to get distracted from all the FAA mumbo jumbo.

We were doing a helium fill of a large balloon I had bought just two days prior. To make another very long story short, the Balloon that I had ordered a whole month earlier, a big fat yellow 13 ft diameter balloon that was being shipped from China, had been lost in the mail. In fact the
balloon had been lost a grand total of three times. Fortunately for me a wonderful man in Chatsworth California- a quick 30 minute drive from my location, just so happened to have an extra balloon he was selling on ebay. Granted the balloon was only ~10 feet in diameter but I had hoped it would have enough lift to do the job…

And of course because Murphys’ Law has to rear it’s ugly head at every turn, something went wrong.

The balloon did not have enough lift to carry the 13.5 lb payload… Greaaat. I’m in a panic. I run to my dorm room/lab, I check ebay for other balloons, try my hardest to call the freight company in Beijing China to see if the balloon will ever be arriving. I send e-mails, and I am just about to get in my car to drive to the Los Angeles Airport because the tracking information on one of the shipments says it has arrived in LAX and is just held up in customs.

…and then I get a phone call from my favorite faculty advisor Phil Hampton: The balloon from China has arrived.

FRANTICALLY Phil and I build a system to pump the two tanks of helium (thank you praxair for your generous donation) from the already filled balloon into the new yellow balloon. We started by using a small pump, then we moved to a bigger pump, then we just got a large piece of PVC, connected the balloons together, and squeezed the helium from one balloon into the other. Does that even make sense? I hope so.

And then it got complicated. Well, it was already complicated– it just got more complicated. I don’t know who’s bright idea it was to fill the balloon away from the launch site (probably mine) but driving a huge partially inflated balloon up the windy and windy (windy as in wind and windy as in wind, oh wait, that doesn’t make sense either…) hill in the middle of friday evening traffic was a terrible idea.

The wonderful (and hot) Liz was generous enough to donate her truck to help facilitate the transportation of the balloon. She doesn’t know this yet but none of us can really drive stick shift.

As bad as I felt for stalling her truck after every stop I felt worse for Zack in the bed of the truck doing the honors of acting as a human tie down.

Of course Kyle and I pretty much spent the whole drive laughing at the silliness of the situation as a line of cars piled behind us. Every once in awhile we did the ol’ pull over to let them pass, it wasn’t often enough though, I can guarantee that.

Once we arrived at the launch site, the Santa Monica Mountains National Park and Mountain Range (that’s a mouthful) we proceeded to unload Kyle who had made his way to the back of the truck and Zach.
blog/arrival.jpg

We topped off the balloon with helium

And then we somehow managed to get a tarp over the balloon, setup a few things, and then we called it a day.

Now, if you do recall, a while back I mentioned that the FAA had not cleared me to fly due to some small clerical error. That was still a bit of an issue. Well it was a big issue. I wish it had magically gone away but I ended up working with the wonderful Robin from the Camarillo Tower till 11:30 in the evening. I wish I could be more descriptive about the experience but to be perfectly honest, it was stressful beyond belief and if I could delete it from my memory I would die happy. In the end we finally got the approval to fly from a sleepy manager somewhere in a land far away.

SATURDAY, 4:30 IN THE MORNING MY ALARM CLOCK DISTURBS MY REST. I grab my lamp from my room, evacuate the air sampler with a giant vacuum I borrowed from the chem department. If you’re wondering why I grabbed my lamp– it was dark outside I was afraid I wasn’t going to be able to see.

I get to the launch site. I fire up the generator. Damnit. I turn off the generator. I get in the van and I drive back the dorms because I forgot something. I drive back to the launch site.

I start setting up. I was surprisingly easy. It was if I had setup and torn down the balloon project systems for the last 2.5 years. Strange.

The parents showed up with the good eats and then the paparazzi entourage arrived. The good thing about being friends with photographers is that they are down to shoot any cool thing you’re doing–and they make it look even cooler because they always have high end equipment that makes the whole thing look important. The bad thing about being friends with photographers is that you have to sort through gigs of photos (because they shoot in RAW) trying to find the best ones, and then when you’ve gotten everything out of order and mixed up you remember that it’s very important to give them photo credit. So here goes… Many thanks to: JR Goleno, Eric Suliga, Shawn Mulchay, and my parental units.

Another tank of helium arrived courtesy of the CSUCI Chemistry Department and we proceeded to top off the balloon whilst Phil brought himself back to prepubescence.

With all the systems up and running…

We sent the balloon on its way to explore really high places.

And then the winch jammed and the bottom of the gondola cracked in half…

And if that wasn’t bad enough, a very upset park ranger started asking very loudly to see our permits. Apparently we were trampling the native California grasses.

But all was not not lost. Duct Tape came to the rescue and saved the gondola.

and we befriended the park rangers enough to have them come out with the balloon for a photoshoot– trampling their own precious native grasses which was kind of funny. They were really great though, you could tell how dedicated they were to their jobs.

We prepared to launch the balloon again with the gondola repaired. Zach was prepared also.

It went up, we took a sample, cheered wildly, and then we called it a day.

I want to give a very big thank you to everyone who showed up at 7 a.m. for the launch when they should have been sleeping, all of the folks at the FAA and the National Park Service, the faculty and staff of CSUCI, World Class Manufacturing, my roomates who lived amongst balloon project paraphanalia for far too long, and everyone else who helped me over the last 2.5 years to bring this project to life. It’s been an amazing experience.
Check out the gallery for some sweet pics.

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