High Altitude Balloon Project Kickoff Meeting

Have you ever wanted to see the curvature of the Earth and the black sky of space? Here is your chance to take your very own pictures of the Earth from 90,000+ feet up. Dayton Diode (in partnership with Adler Planetarium and Mach 30) is going to build a High Altitude Balloon and take pictures of the Earth from near the edge of space. We are looking for Dayton Diode and Dayton area volunteers to help build and launch this balloon.

Our first meeting is this coming Tuesday at the Dayton Diode Hackerspace (http://goo.gl/eAwu1). The space is on the second floor of Building 100 in the Front Street Warehouse Buildings. The meeting will start at 7:00 PM (doors open at 6:30). We will be joined by representatives from Adler Planetarium and Mach 30 over a telecon. During the meeting we will cover all of the material needed to get the project off the ground (heh), including defining the scope of the project and the roles of each of the groups involved, and then laying out the next steps. We'll wrap up the meeting with some videos and pictures of Adler's Dec 10, 2011 balloon launch which Dayton Diode members were able to participate in.

See you there!

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Background
Adler Planetarium's Far Horizon's Project (http://farhorizonsproject.com/blog/) has experience building and operating HABs, and Adler Planetarium wants to share this knowledge with other groups interested in HABs. Mach 30 (http://mach30.org/) is developing a web portal for sharing projects like Far Horizons as open source hardware (https://opendesignengine.net/). Dayton Diode (http://www.daytondiode.org/) has the facilities and interest to create a local Dayton HAB resource. All three groups will benefit by working together on a Dayton HAB.

• Adler gets a space for sharing the technical details of their Far Horizons HABs, and feedback on their documentation from Dayton Diode's active use of the published materials in an HAB build and flight
• Mach 30 has gets to support the publication and use of open source documentation for HABs (something that has been on its hardware road map for the last year)
• Dayton Diode gets a high profile, funded (through Mach 30) project to work on and include in its marketing materials