balloons

Reed Arts Week

The talk and workshop went great. I was too busy to photograph the flights, but will get photos soon.  Su Liu came up with a great double-layer heat seaming ...

Reed Arts Week, RAW: Geographies

I’m proud to be participating in Reed’s Art Week. I’ll be giving** a lecture and demonstration of aerospace in the arts and Grassroots Mapping tools on Satur...

Kite Balloon Development @ PLOTS

Follow the kite balloon working page over at the Public Laboratory for Open Technology and Science.  There’s a lot of research in there that I’ve only now go...

kite balloon futures and histories

To follow on my love of kite balloons, and the kite balloon action at the grassroots mapping list.  here are a few awesome kite balloon histories.

Open Hardware Summit Notes

Met and ran into fellow grassroots mapping folks Bonny Gregory and Cesar Harada, and my old roommate Isaac Ravishankara.

Grassroots Mapping PDX: test conclusions

With help from my Dad, RJ Steinert, Samantha Mitchell, Robby Kraft, and Molly Danielsson, I’ve been flying balloons most weekends since the workshop in June,...

GrassrootsMappingPDX: Heat Seaming

Here’s the instructional video from the workshop on heat seaming balloons.  If you have the space and equipment, this will produce a lighter, more air-tight ...

warhol while you wait

I’ll have photos and videos from Grassroots Mapping up soon, Special thanks to Dustin Zemel for documenting.

Helium Dispersion Through HDPE

In conversations on the Grassroots Mapping google group we’ve been wondering how long a homemade Polyethylene helium balloon could stay aloft.  At what rate ...

Quick Links

I’ve been very busy with a trans-continental move and more… So I’m going to try to just post links regularly, rather than longer things.

No/Low Tech Magazine

Kris de Decker produces some of the most insightful and well-researched articles on technology anywhere on the internet.  He has a simple premise- novel “hig...

Airship Profile Simulator

over at AirshipWorld, Andreas has created a new version of his airship profile simulator.  It’s only good for rotationally symetrical pressurized envelopes (...

The First Self-Blogging Aerostat?

I’ve recently gotten in touch with Chris Fries in Chicago through the Balloon_Sked mailing list for amateur near space balloon missions.  He’s not going to n...

Aerospace at Toorcamp

Several amateurs played in aerospace around Toorcamp, and many more space lovers and hobbiests were present. JonM from Hackerbot, who is one of the leads on ...

Simple Solar Balloons (and spacepunk?)

After my ignite talk I met Alex Peake, who is trying to fund efforts in human potential and space exploration through the sales of a Tactical Corset (it look...

Magnificent Flight, Failed Recovery

I spent the last two weeks of March in the SF/Bay Area, and while there decided to try a new balloon. My intent- record the sounds of California by air. I...