reported its last position on Feb. 10 at 38,910 ft. off the west coast of Alaska
Oh neat, I always wanted to be a litterbug and a floating aviation hazard at the same time. If you launch something into the sky, be it a drone or a balloon, you should be responsible for retrieving it.
Even the NWS has a return rate of 20% for the radiosondes they attach to weather balloons.
Not saying a rules change can't be considered, but the current rules are "n'ah." No more than people are expected to retrieve their plain-old helium balloons from birthday parties (and we know those do ecological damage).
Amateur science is still science and woe betide the free people that moves towards reserving science to professionals disproportionate to risk of harm.
More environmental damage was likely done fabricating the plastics in the balloon than crashing it into the sea.
I don't think I've seen an apostrophe there before. Was that intentional?
Should I be parsing it as N/A rather than the word "nah"?
But it's basically impossible to search because none of the major browsers hold that apostrophe in their tokenization.
Why not? If I throw a "research baseball" through someone's window I'm still liable for replacing the window. Pick up your shit.
That's a difference in kind from having a balloon come down on someone's property.
Why? Because the law is path dependent and arbitrary.
It's not hard to find a dead endangered tortoise in the Mojave Desert because of people in Los Angeles letting their mylar Happy Birthday balloons float away.
It's usually on purpose, because they can't think of anything farther than the end of their noses.
I have noticed, however, in some other parts of the country and the world (Australia), that people have started to realize that they are polluting in ways they didn't think of before.
Right now it would be a fools errand to launch a balloon and actually expect it wouldn't be shot down.
My local school district launched a balloon. It's made four trips around the world. What good would registering the launch site have done?
I guess you know more than almost every single aviation regulator in the world, since they don't usually consider that type of usage to be dangerous to airplanes?
Exactly. We're worried about plastic pollution in the wilderness unless it's floating in the air, got it.