Romania's moon balloon - May 28, 2009
Over on space.com, there's one of those stories that's just so crazy that it must be true. A team of Romanians are planning on going to the moon… in a balloon.
There are so many places I could take this. Let's stick to the facts: The Aeronautics and Cosmonautics Romanian Association (ARCA), a non profit organization dedicated to space flight, is shooting for the final frontier on a shoestring. They can't afford costly launch pads and first stages, so they're trying to get a boost into orbit from a high altitude balloon. The balloon carries their rocket (which looks weirdly like a Constantin Brâncuşi sculpture, see below) to 18 km. Then the rocket will fire, and woosh! Off it goes to the moon.
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This may sound, um, completely insane. But it's not completely insane. A quick search of Encyclopedia Astronautica reveals that NASA experimented with balloon-launched sounding rockets in the 1950s. They were especially favored by the famous planetary scientist James Van Allen, who called them "Rockoons". Rockoons were a hit for a while, but they fell out of favor for a couple of reasons. First, they were difficult to control. Second, if something in the balloon failed, or if the rocket was deployed too early, those below had to watch out for a giant falling tube of rocket fuel.
The guys and gals at ARCA don't seem too fussed. They're already hard at work designing a giant bouncing ball that their Rockoon will ferry to the moon's surface. You can learn more by watching this informative video.
By the way, I tried to find a video of the original rockoon flights, but this is the closest I could get (they rockoons actually launch a rocket at 1:07):
Enjoy.
Image: ARCA, Wikipedia
