A good friend of mines Dad passed away last week...((( Moment of silence ))) At the end of the funneral at the grave side they released a bunch of Balloons .At the dinner that followed some of us were talking about where they would end up .There wasnt any wind at all that day so they climbed almost straight up in a hurry and kept climbing out of sight .I guess all of us were wondering how far a normal Helium ballon can climb (( Is there a ceiling where it wont rise any further .)) Some thought with thinner air it might expand and pop if it got to high . How many miles could one go ??
Any body have any knowledge or thoughts on this ?????

and where would the rubber land

Balloons with messages that were released (here) have been found in Europe. They go up until they a.) catch the jetstream, and off they go. b.)until they go high enough to pop, but still the rubber can travel a long way before it returns to earth.
I have sent up many, but never got any replies.
Once when they were having some special ceramony at the old Cleveland stadium, they release a giant bunch of ballons. Later in the day my kids started yelling for me to come outside. I went out and the whole flying field/orchard/backyard were filled with helium ballons! (I live 35 miles SE of there) These balloons went up, got wet, then came down all around my and nearby properties. We took a couple hundred into the house, and dried them off, wrote messages on them, and re-released them. Never heard a word from anyone who may have found them.

Jetts

A friend, Billy Bob Bubba Joe, tied 750 to a lawn chair, tied a cooler of Bud to the chair and cut the rope. We haven't heard from him in over six months now ?

Hrm..it has been tried.

Just watch out for the yellow rain!!!!![X(]

It was actually attempted by a guy in California (I know, hard to believe he's from California) with unexpected results.
[link=http://home.earthlink.net/~quade/lawnchair.html]Here[/link] is the story.

Honey, get worried when the kids come home with a tank of helium and are looking for the cat.

The cat....

Hmmmmm...

I'll be right back.

we've sent latex balloons up to 120k feet (close to 25 miles straight up!) the main limiting factor is how much does your material stretch? In the case of a typical party balloon, not much. couple thousand feet for a well inflated balloon, higher for a saggy one. Also, helium leaks through basically any material you use it in, which does affect the results, and also temperature drops.

The final limiting factor is where basically the density of helium is equal to the surrounding environment, and that turns out to be around 130-150k feet up, depending quite a bit on location, time of year, sunspot cycle... Hydrogen helps little, but also makes it easier for the hydrogen to leak out of your transport.

Ryan
http://balloons.space.edu

Wasent' there a soemthing similar, but with running shoes inteh Pacific?!

A cargo ship went down,a dn one board were a shipment of .. running shoes. These drifted aroudn teh pacific, and some university was using them as a water current study, as thyere were being found all over teh pacific rim.. the US, Canda, Japan, Malaysia, etc... And with the known date of teh sinking, andn teh dates shoes were found, they could form a model of teh ocean's currents.

Shipping containers go overboard all the time. There are websites that tell you what, when and where they should wash ashore. Some sites do request information from people that find these items for ocean current studies.

Hey BB, maybe I need to contact those websites when the ARF I ordered doesn't show up after 6 weeks.

A new delivery method for RC skydiving.