[Home][Mission Statement][About Me][Forum]

Monday, October 22, 2012

Reader's Quiz: What do you think the weight of the capsule and balloon are in the photo below?

By Rick
What do you think the weight of the capsule is? How about the balloon? Does this image look real to you? Given the fact that the original video of the launch didn't include the amount of cloud cover you see here, I suspect this is a fake image. But more importantly, I know what the weights of those devices are and it seems to me that the weather balloon was never made to carry a payload with the weight of the manned capsule. When you're dealing with balloons, you cannot simply add payload like this. There are entire engineering efforts being made to have balloons lift payloads and weather balloons are not part of the engineering design efforts. This is a cartoon image made with computer CGI. It's as much a cartoon as Popeye and Bugs Bunny. It's being promoted by mainstream media and others who should know better as real. Discuss]