How high could a balloon fly?

What is the highest altitude a hydrogen filled balloon could reach provided the skin is burstproof against pressuredifferences?

I know the current weather ballons have lot of spare room for the hydrogen to expand as it goes up, or vents to get rid of some, but they will either stabillize at a certain height or the skin will burst.

But what if the skin was burstproof ?

 

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I belive i heard it was somewhere around 12 to 13 miles high.

 

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To have such a strong skin wouldn't very heavy materials be needed?..unless spider silk was used to make the skin....then i guess it would burn up in the atmosphere. I believe it's around 50 miles before we hit the ozone layer.

 

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Well, at some point the balloon will expand to its maxiumum, and the pressure within the balloon will remain constant, as will the density of the balloon. Once this density equals that of the outside atmosphere, the balloon will quit rising.

 

until it expands and pops

 

Surely nowadays carbonfibres with high tensile strength could withstand that pressure ???

But I think it is more of an economic thing , the skin of weatherballoons is only a few microns thick, a stronger skin would be maybe 1 millitmetre and add several thousands kg weight to the balloon, wich means you would need a REALLY big several footballfields sized balloon to make it fly.



But ok, suppose, you have this balloon made out say nanotubefibres, really thin but really strong and some vents to dynamically let go off some steam as the balloon climbs (to lower the density while maintaining large surface area).

Where would the ceiling be? I think it would be near as high a free floating hydrogen atoms would be able to reach in the earth atmosphere .....

So, let's rephrase the question, how high can free hydrogen fly in the atmosphere before equillibrium is establised?


The ideal balloon would be vacume magdenburger hemispheres, not made out of steal (wich prevents it from collapsing) but from rigid buckyball material, really light and strong. The surface area/weight ratio would be unmatches, this thing would probably accelarate like crazy in the thicker airlayers and fly straight out of the atmosphere... ????

The main problem would be to keep this vacuballs grounded, but you could place some smaller tennisball sized vacuballs in car/airplanes and ships to give them some extra lift, it appers as if they are lighter and will use less fuel ???

 

a perfectly strong weightless shell containing perfect vacuum would float out of the earth's atmosphere, it seems to me, just as you suggest.

I had heard of vacuum balloons but never heard them called "magdenburger hemispheres". And why hemi? Perhaps you can fill in the picture? Are these propelled somehow rather than being just passive floaters?

It seems to me that the ultimate limit on a simple round balloon filled with H2 molecules is that if you go very high the atmosphere is no longer O2 and N2 but it becomes a different mix of (partially ionized) gas and eventually the density of the atmosphere might be less than H2 gas at the same temperature and pressure, so a balloon containing only neutral molecules of hydrogen might not be able to rise further.

practically speaking, I agree with you that there are economic limits operating in conjunction with practical skin-material limits

 

The original buckyball was a C60 molecule, soon after discovery people found c70 and c120, research is going on to predict the shape and production method for megabuckyballs

http://phycomp.technion.ac.il/~ira/fullerenes.html#C480

Keep scaling up like that and some day you have a buckyball that fits in the palm of your hand.

About the Magdenburger hemispheres, it was a classic experiment:

http://scienceworld.wolfram.com/biography/Guericke.html

 

Carbon nano-fibers?!?! Jesus you people make high altitude pressure difference look like the devil! First of all the pressure difference would never exceed 15-30lbs this means Standard High Strengths plastic, Kevlar and Ultra-Fiber (such as Zylon) can do the job!

http://universe.gsfc.nasa.gov/press/2000/cw00_13.html
Look NASA has a plastic balloon with Ultra-Fiber reinforced ribs getting 22miles up (35Km or ~116,000ft) and staying for several months!

The true maximum altitude is determined by weight of the balloon as compared to the weight of the air it displaces, as the balloon goes up the air gets thinner and lighter. No matter how light you make the balloon there will be a point at which the balloon weighs more then air it displaces, even if it were a vacuum filled balloon it structure would have weight and it would never float of into outer-space.

 

The weight of the structure (average density) would be very small, also it travels through several tens of kilometres of thick air in wich the buckmobile gains some good speed, maybe not escape velocity, but still it would go a long way i think....

.........Maybe the ceiling would be "only" 60 or 100 kilometres, who knows??? , but even that would provide a nice launch platform you could use to launch a rocket from, so that it could do with less stages and less fuel.

 

Lightweight propulsion for the Buckmobile: C60H60

A fuzzyball is created by adding single atoms to the outside of the
buckyball. One example predicted would be the fully hydrogenated buckyball, C60H60.

This would cause the buckyball to take on a fuzzy appearance, hence the name. There are many applications to fuzzyballs, one of which could create a slicker substance than teflon. A fully fluorinated buckyball would create the slickest molecular lubricant known to man, C60F60. The uses for a molecular
lubricant are boundless, limited only by our imagination.

A Buckmobile , covered with hydrogen would probably display a strong positive charge, due to the hydrogen nuclei, the surface could perhaps act a deflector for solarwind particles, causing a slow but steady accelleration. Radial segments of the Buckmobil could be put under negative charge to allow some rudimentary navigation....

It would suffice for the the Buckmobile to passively climb to a pretty high altitude where airdrag is very low, from there it could pick up solarwind to provide the additional slingshot to outer space. Alternative, ion engines could also be applied at this altitude....

Here is a picture of the 1904 Buckmobile, I really would like to know how the 2010 version will drive

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Depending on the size of the rocket you want to launch, any thing above putting 100kg into orbit is going to be one fucking huge baloon!

... and if your going to copy text provide the link or refrence:
http://www.lsi.usp.br/usp/rod/bucky/buckyball.txt

 

Current record for manned balloon is 34,668 metres.

A recent attempt to break this failed recently;

http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/england/cornwall/3078074.stm

 

Once the inside pressure becomes equal to the outside e.g.( the balloon expands to balance the pressure) the balloon will theoretically stay at the height it's at. But if you can get it rigid enough to stay at its current volume even in a vacuum I believe you will be able to go higher than other weather balloons and maybe even get out of earth's gravitational pull.

 

This thread is 12 years old....yet unfortunately for the OP, never relevantly answered.

 

53km (so far)

 

...and yet you didn't answer it?

The answer is...20 miles up.

http://coolcosmos.ipac.caltech.edu/ask/243-Could-a-helium-balloon-float-all-the-way-up-into-space-

 

Why bother? The OP won't see it.

Well, that answer is neither accurate nor relevant (for more than one reason!).

 

During 2002, a balloon named BU60-1 attained 53.0 km (32.9 mi;173,900 ft).
Launched by the Japan aerospace research agency.

 

Why bother replying to a thread that is 12 years old?