onedef92
07-20-2011, 6:48am
Bobblehead launched on high altitude balloon lands in Autauga Co.
Tuesday, July 19th, 10:28 am
MARBURY, AL (WSFA) - A bobblehead doll duct taped to a weather balloon and sent aloft has come back to earth, and it landed in Autauga County, Alabama. "We were shocked," said Jason Sager, the man responsible for the expirement. "We only expected it to go 30 miles..."
The launch, sponsored by Sager's franchises of Home Instead Senior Care, started at a small marina in Lanett, Ala. just over the state line from West Point, Georgia and ended with an amazing YouTube video of its discovery in Marbury more than 110 miles away.
Saturday's launch was the end result of two months of planning, but bad weather nearly halted the project.
After putting the balloon together, attaching lights, weather instruments, a glow stick so it could be found in the dark and a bobblehead doll modeled after Sager, it was time to launch. The balloon, weighing just 3,000 grams, drifted upwards and out of eyesight, but Sager's team kept track of its every movement on an iPad.
Then, the balloon disappeared from the map. For two hours the team waited, hoping they would get a beep out of the balloon's on-board GPS. Sager said he figured they'd lost it, until it suddenly reappeared well beyond the range they were expecting, and it was north of Montgomery!
On-board, the cameras - aimed in different locations of the wandering balloon's platform - showed cars disappearing out of sight below, clouds, the bobblehead shaking "yes" in the wind, and eventually, the view of utter darkness into space as it climbed beyond the clouds. The balloon's weather instruments recorded extreme temperatures, some as low as negative 91 degrees at which point the thermometers bottomed out. Other indicators showed the balloon to be nearly weightless as it climbed higher and higher.
The bobblehead and balloon climbed to an altitude of more than 114,000 feet (approximately 20 miles) before video shows a dramatic event. A camera trained on the balloon shows the helium-filled balloon, perfectly light by the sun in the backgroun, as it explodes. Sager said at 100,000 + feet, the material in the balloon stretched nearly four times its original size and finally gave way.
The video shows the dramatic descent back to earth, past the clouds, trees coming into focus - then BOOM. Into a tree where it "landed on the nicest farm," Sager said.
The crew, sporting Home Instead's purple shirts, took a fleet of vehicles to the scene in Marbury where the instruments showed the balloon had landed. They knocked on the door of a home that belonged to a couple who lived on a farm in Marbury. They didn't know if they would be allowed to search the property.
"The man and his father-in-law said, we know exactly where on the map that is," and with that, Sager and his team were off on a trek, deep into the woods.
The search, on foot and by four-wheeler, ended with the discovery that the balloon never actually touched the ground. It was hanging from a limb approximately 50 feet in the air. "We threw things at it trying to knock it down," Sager explained. When they finally pulled it from the tree, the cameras were intact, but the bobblehead was destroyed. "He was gone from the ankles up..." Sager lamented, after it struck the branch.
The crew took the cameras and the remains of the balloon and went to dinner not knowing exactly what they'd captured. Sager said he figured there would be fog on the camer lenses, but he wasn't expecting to see what he found. When he looked at the crystal clear video, "I was blown away."
The two hour and forty minute video, from four 10:80HD cameras was something he'd never seen.
He said he struggled to clip down all the video to just 7 minutes on YouTube, because he wanted to use it all. He's now in the process of going through and creating albums from more than 10,000 slides one of the cameras captured.
When asked why he did it, Sager said he wanted people to know that average people can do experiments like these. Neither he nor anyone on his team has a science background. You just need to make sure you have all the approvals from the various airports and military bases in the area where you want to launch one before you actually start!
Sager's franchises, Home Instead, bills itself as helping seniors remain independent, by providing in home care and needed respite for their family members.
‪High Altitude Weather Balloon Launch - Bobblehead in Space Raises Awareness of the Needs of Seniors‬‏ - YouTube
Tuesday, July 19th, 10:28 am
MARBURY, AL (WSFA) - A bobblehead doll duct taped to a weather balloon and sent aloft has come back to earth, and it landed in Autauga County, Alabama. "We were shocked," said Jason Sager, the man responsible for the expirement. "We only expected it to go 30 miles..."
The launch, sponsored by Sager's franchises of Home Instead Senior Care, started at a small marina in Lanett, Ala. just over the state line from West Point, Georgia and ended with an amazing YouTube video of its discovery in Marbury more than 110 miles away.
Saturday's launch was the end result of two months of planning, but bad weather nearly halted the project.
After putting the balloon together, attaching lights, weather instruments, a glow stick so it could be found in the dark and a bobblehead doll modeled after Sager, it was time to launch. The balloon, weighing just 3,000 grams, drifted upwards and out of eyesight, but Sager's team kept track of its every movement on an iPad.
Then, the balloon disappeared from the map. For two hours the team waited, hoping they would get a beep out of the balloon's on-board GPS. Sager said he figured they'd lost it, until it suddenly reappeared well beyond the range they were expecting, and it was north of Montgomery!
On-board, the cameras - aimed in different locations of the wandering balloon's platform - showed cars disappearing out of sight below, clouds, the bobblehead shaking "yes" in the wind, and eventually, the view of utter darkness into space as it climbed beyond the clouds. The balloon's weather instruments recorded extreme temperatures, some as low as negative 91 degrees at which point the thermometers bottomed out. Other indicators showed the balloon to be nearly weightless as it climbed higher and higher.
The bobblehead and balloon climbed to an altitude of more than 114,000 feet (approximately 20 miles) before video shows a dramatic event. A camera trained on the balloon shows the helium-filled balloon, perfectly light by the sun in the backgroun, as it explodes. Sager said at 100,000 + feet, the material in the balloon stretched nearly four times its original size and finally gave way.
The video shows the dramatic descent back to earth, past the clouds, trees coming into focus - then BOOM. Into a tree where it "landed on the nicest farm," Sager said.
The crew, sporting Home Instead's purple shirts, took a fleet of vehicles to the scene in Marbury where the instruments showed the balloon had landed. They knocked on the door of a home that belonged to a couple who lived on a farm in Marbury. They didn't know if they would be allowed to search the property.
"The man and his father-in-law said, we know exactly where on the map that is," and with that, Sager and his team were off on a trek, deep into the woods.
The search, on foot and by four-wheeler, ended with the discovery that the balloon never actually touched the ground. It was hanging from a limb approximately 50 feet in the air. "We threw things at it trying to knock it down," Sager explained. When they finally pulled it from the tree, the cameras were intact, but the bobblehead was destroyed. "He was gone from the ankles up..." Sager lamented, after it struck the branch.
The crew took the cameras and the remains of the balloon and went to dinner not knowing exactly what they'd captured. Sager said he figured there would be fog on the camer lenses, but he wasn't expecting to see what he found. When he looked at the crystal clear video, "I was blown away."
The two hour and forty minute video, from four 10:80HD cameras was something he'd never seen.
He said he struggled to clip down all the video to just 7 minutes on YouTube, because he wanted to use it all. He's now in the process of going through and creating albums from more than 10,000 slides one of the cameras captured.
When asked why he did it, Sager said he wanted people to know that average people can do experiments like these. Neither he nor anyone on his team has a science background. You just need to make sure you have all the approvals from the various airports and military bases in the area where you want to launch one before you actually start!
Sager's franchises, Home Instead, bills itself as helping seniors remain independent, by providing in home care and needed respite for their family members.
‪High Altitude Weather Balloon Launch - Bobblehead in Space Raises Awareness of the Needs of Seniors‬‏ - YouTube