 | | Monday 1st September 2003
Balloon record attempt - Q&A with the pilots | |
|  | | Simulation of the record attempt |
| | The pilots of the balloon, Andy Elson and Colin Prescot answer questions about the record attempt. |
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Q. What is QinetiQ 1 about?
Colin: "The project is about achieving the world altitude record for a balloon. That entails going right to the very edge of space – about 132,000 feet, 25 miles above earth, where the sky is completely black, and the mission is to get the balloon up there and down again and to land the balloon safely and stand up and walk away."
Q. Why are you doing this?
Colin: "Andy and I have both been interested in this project for several years. To go to this kind of altitude and to attempt to do something that has not been done for over 40 years is the ultimate professional challenge for balloonists, and I’ve always had my eye on it.
From Andy’s point of view as an engineer the fascination is actually putting the whole thing together and making it happen for real so it’s practical. For me it’s the schoolboy image of two men on an open deck in spacesuits, under the biggest balloon in history in an ink-black sky with the curvature of the earth underneath and being able, with modern technology, to be able to communicate that back to earth, I think is going to be an awesome experience."
Q. What is different about this balloon flight?
Colin: "QinetiQ 1 is going to be a truly massive balloon, the biggest manned balloon in history by some fourfold. The record has not been attempted for over 40 years and it was done by two American balloonists from the deck of an aircraft carrier in the Gulf of Mexico and their balloon was 10 million cubic feet. Ours is going to be 40 million cubic feet; it’s going to stand some 1200 feet tall when we launch and on the edge of space it will be truly awesome."
Q. Why do you need to wear spacesuits?
Andy: "On this sort of trip spacesuits are essential for our life support – we’re going on an open platform so the spacesuits are our primary defence against the low pressure of the upper atmosphere. Above 63,000 feet the human body can’t survive without some sort of pressurised suit or a cabin. And if at 120,000 or 130,000 feet our suits were to depressurise then our blood would boil within a couple of seconds and we would die almost instantly."
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