There's
another thread going on about it, but a balloon manufactured by TIFR was used to send Google exec Alan Eustace to an altitude of 135890 feet, from where he skydived back to Earth, possibly reaching supersonic speed on the way back:
http://www.wired.com/2014/10/googles-search-czar-just-smashed-felix-baumgartners-sky-dive-record/From the Paragon site:
http://www.paragonsdc.com/stratex/http://webcache.googleusercontent.com/search?q=cache:EwgGvy5BlBEJ:www.paragonsdc.com/stratex/+&cd=5&hl=en&ct=clnk&gl=ca&client=firefox-nightlySreenivasan Shankarnarayan
Scientist in Charge (retired), Tata Institute of Fundamental Research (TIFR)
Since its inception in 1970, the TIFR Balloon Facility, located in Hyderabad, India has been used extensively by the Scientific Community from within the country as well as from abroad. All of the balloons for the StratEx program were manufactured by Balloon Facility off the Tata Institute of Fundamental Research, Hyderabad, India. Balloon Flights carrying payloads of scientific experiments in Cosmic Ray, X-Ray, Gamma Ray and Infrared Astronomy, Astrobiology as well as Atmospheric sciences have been launched from this facility with several important and interesting results being obtained. TIFR is unique in that it has all aspects of Scientific Ballooning i.e. Balloon Design and Fabrication, Payload Integration with Telemetry, Telecommand and other instrumentation, and finally Balloon Launch, Tracking, Data Collection, Balloon Flight Control, as also Payload Recovery, under one roof. For more information please click here.
Since even the previous RedBull space jump done by Felix Baumgartner was used to gather data to improve spacesuit design, I'm wondering why ISRO couldn't then cooperate with TIFR to do similar experiments to validate and improve ISRO's spacesuit design.
Space jumping seems like a natural extension of extreme adventure sports, and could perhaps even become a "Poor Man's Space Tourism" of a sort, if done in a responsible way. Data could be gathered along the way to usefully benefit spacesuit technology. Might be nice for Indian space engineers to consider this - although I don't know if it's the most frugal approach or not.
At least it would give HSF preparatory activities a way to advance in the meantime, even while man-rating of the GSLV-Mk3 launch platform is underway.
Since even the previous RedBull space jump done by Felix Baumgartner was used to gather data to improve spacesuit design, I'm wondering why ISRO couldn't then cooperate with TIFR to do similar experiments to validate and improve ISRO's spacesuit design.
Space jumping seems like a natural extension of extreme adventure sports, and could perhaps even become a "Poor Man's Space Tourism" of a sort, if done in a responsible way. Data could be gathered along the way to usefully benefit spacesuit technology. Might be nice for Indian space engineers to consider this - although I don't know if it's the most frugal approach or not.
At least it would give HSF preparatory activities a way to advance in the meantime, even while man-rating of the GSLV-Mk3 launch platform is underway.
Perhaps they are not yet at that stage where they feel comfortable enough to conduct such tests. They already have a specialised Vacuum Chamber to test flight suit and crew module environmental control sub systems.
I wonder what the quality control method is, to ensure that balloons made for these purposes are able to pass muster? How do they ensure that there are no holes or tears in the polyethylene, especially when it's so thin and fragile?
If they could make such balloons reliably robust, then these could be used as a sort of "poor man's space tourism"
Worldview, a company that's been newly created by the founders of Paragon who were involved in this space jump, seem to be looking to offer such services:
http://worldviewexperience.com/
