> “It was amazing,” he said. “It was beautiful. You could see the darkness of space and you could see the layers of atmosphere, which I had never seen before.”
I want to experience this before I die.
I want to experience this before I die.
This gets a lot cheaper when you remove the survival constraint.
I have no idea how much this one jump used nor what that looks like in comparison to world stocks.
Any hydrogen leak would rapidly rise away so it's actually quite safe. Certainly much safer than gasoline and we use that every day - including sparks.
The fire and fuel is much lighter than air and would quickly rise away from you, so there is no hazard there.
See the UFL for the numbers: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Flammability_limit
I think the amount used for balloons is a tiny fraction of that used for welding and industrial processes.
The only good reason I can think of, discounting the fire hazard, is the poor reputation of high pressure hydrogen tanks for the reverse Joule-Thomson effect (i.e., unlike most gasses, hydrogen heats up when expanded out of a nozzle), but according to [1] it is not enough to cause ignition.
[1] Health and Safety Executive. 'Spontaneous Ignition of Hydrogen'. Research Report RR615, 2008. URL: www.hse.gov.uk/research/rrpdf/rr615.pdf