Good luck to BROD member Troy Bradley.... Lift off expected mid-day or so tomorrow Central Time. ---------------------------------------------------------- The team is ready, weather conditions look great, and Two Eagles pilots Leonid Tiukhtyaev and Troy Bradley are preparing for an early Friday morning launch (Thursday afternoon Mountain Standard Time (MST) in the US, or Thursday evening GMT (Z)) in their international quest to complete a transpacific crossing in a helium balloon. The team began moving equipment to the launch site in Saga, Japan on Wednesday afternoon local (approximately 12 AM MST or 0700Z). The Two Eagles launch and Mission Control teams received a standby message at about the 48-hour mark before the anticipated launch. This is the signal for the team in Japan to begin staging equipment at the launch site and the flight support team in the US to convene in Albuquerque to begin operations at the Mission Control Center at the Anderson-Abruzzo Albuquerque International Balloon Museum. After further analysis of weather and launch conditions, the team received a go notice later Wednesday evening (MST). This moved the process into the next phase, preparations to inflate the giant 350,000 cu. ft. (9,911 cu meter) balloon with helium. The team will also load the 287 40-pound sandbags that will provide ballast (expendable weight for maneuvering), and all the equipment and provisions the pilots will need for up to 10 days in flight. If weather conditions remain favorable, including very light winds at the launch site coupled with faster winds at altitude to facilitate a successful transit of the Pacific, the team will begin to fill the balloon, with the goal of launching in the early morning hours (3 AM-6 AM) Friday local time in Saga (Thursday approximately 11 AM - 2 PM MST or 1800-2100Z). The first part of the balloons track will take it over land, which will give Bradley and Tiukhtyaev time to check out their equipment and make sure the balloon is performing as expected before venturing out over water. Early forecasts are that the balloon will pass north of the Hawaiian Islands approximately three days into the flight, with landfall in North America in about five days. The goal of the flight is to set a new distance record for straight gas balloons (balloons solely using a lighter-than-air gas like helium for lift). The current record of 8,382.54 km / 5,208 mi was set by the Double Eagle V Albuquerque-based team of Ben Abruzzo, Larry Newman, Ron Clark, and Rocky Aoki in 1981 during the only previous manned gas balloon transpacific crossing. The team would also like to best another hallowed world record: the gas balloon duration record set in 1978 by Abruzzo, Newman, and Maxie Anderson aboard Double Eagle II. They stayed aloft 137 hours, 5 minutes and 50 seconds during their history-making flight, the first successful transatlantic crossing by balloon.
Posted on: Wed, 07 Jan 2015 20:48:11 +0000
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