A few weeks ago I had a chance to speak at a balloon workshop at NCAR (National Center for Atmospheric Research) in Boulder Colorado.
http://www.boulder.swri.edu/LCANS09/Home.html
It was small workshop, only about 30 folks. All the big players with the multimillion dollar balloon projects were there. I was pretty floored by the whole thing. With few exception innovation in dead in big balloon research. Sure, the balloons are a little bigger, the telescopes are a little more sophisticated, but there’s nothing going on that someone working balloon 50 years ago wouldn’t need more than an hour to be up to speed on. The workshop was called “Bridging the Gap to Space”. Sadly it was good and brilliant people locked in the the us vs. them with the space folks trying to figure out the best way to beg for more funding.
I don’t think they knew what to make of me….
It’s was a beautiful facility. Day one was sunny, day three a big stow storm shut it all down.
