Hobbyists are trying out various gadgets with their high altitude balloon flights: Amateurs Fling Their Gadgets to Edge of Space - Gadget Lab/Wired.com.

Here is the website for the program Quest for stars Encouraging Kids to reach for the stars! mentioned in the article.

Check out the Ikaros 1 Near-Space Balloon Mission, which was carried out by a team of students at The Bay School of San Francisco. Below is a video of their flight:

Here's a video and press release from E-Green Technologies:



E-Green Technologies - 21St Century Airships, Inc. Successfully Completes Inflation Of The World’s Largest Airship
New massive airship to create jobs and fill critical needs in defense, homeland security, communications, surveillance, and disaster relief. Montgomery, Alabama

(May 19, 2010) – E-Green Technologies (EGT) - 21st Century Airships, the leading developers of state-of-the-art technologies for mid, high altitude and heavy-lift airships, announced today that it has successfully completed its inflation test of the Bullet 580, which is now, the world’s largest airship.

The 6-hour airship inflation took place this week inside Garrett Coliseum, Montgomery, Ala., one of the few facilities large enough to host the operation. The 235-foot long, 65-foot in diameter Bullet 580, is designed to carry payloads of up to 2,000 pounds to 20,000 feet, and a dash speed of 80 mph. Payloads are carried inside outer envelope, which is one-sixteenth of an inch thick, but 10 times stronger than steel. The material is a new type of Kevlar, which is used to make bulletproof vests. The airship's engines are mounted on the fuselage.

E-Green Technologies, which acquired 21st Century Airships in November 2009, holds 18 patents and has successfully built and flown 14 prototypes to test new inventions. The Bullet 580 is the first of the company’s airships in production for commercial use. The first flight of the Bullet 580 is planned for later this year and will carry a joint NASA and Old Dominion University agricultural and geophysical payload that will measure moisture content in soil.

Airships offer cost-efficient operations versus fixed-wing aircraft, and post great potential for vast cargo capacity, heavy lift, and the ability to take-off and land vertically with forward thrust in the air from engines for great maneuverability. The Bullet 580 is a multifunctional airship intended to fly at very high altitudes for long periods of time serving as a “stratellite” for communications relays, broadcast communications, missile defense warning, airspace/maritime surveillance and control, position and navigation (GPS), weather monitoring, battlefield environmental monitoring, electronic countermeasures, and weapons platforms as well as geophysical surveys and other military, and civilian uses.

The commercial production of the 580 will create hundreds of needed jobs for the textile industry in Alabama, where it is manufactured, as well as host the potential to create jobs for aerospace and aviation professionals in Central Florida and Northern California, the two areas E Green Technologies is considering for operational centers.

“Airships have undergone surprisingly little evolution throughout their more than 150-year history, and this is what makes our E-Green proprietary designs so desirable to government and commercial customers,” explains E-Green Technologies Chairman and CEO, Michael Lawson. “Our airships are radically different designs that move beyond the performance limitations of traditional blimps or zeppelins by combining advanced technology with simple construction and the ability to fuel with algae, protecting our environment. We have a great team which has produced an amazing product that will, most importantly, save lives.”

About E-Green Technologies
E-Green Technologies, Inc. specializes in the development, construction and marketing of manned and unmanned helium-filled airships for advertising, defense, mining, telecommunications, transportation, and multiple markets globally that can benefit from vertical airship flight operations.

Find more Bullet 580 Airship Images / Concept Art here.

Amateur near space explorer Robert Harrison gets great photos from low cost high altitude balloons, which reach as high as 35 kilometers :
/-- Journey into space with a balloon and duct tape - Times Online
/-- The Icarus Project - Robert Harrison

NASA offers high school students an opportunity to compete for a chance to sendtheir experiments to NearSpace on high altitude balloons: High School Students Can Send Experiments Flying with NASA - NASA - Jan.22.10.

The top four teams will be awarded travel expenses and up to $1,000 to develop their flight experiment or technology demonstration. Teams will participate in three flight days to release, track and recover their experiments. In addition, students will tour Glenn facilities and present their findings at Glenn's Balloonsat Symposium.

For details, see NASA Balloonsat High Altitude Flight Student Competition.

A British TV science program sends a very small spaceman to the edge of space and return him more or less in one piece: Bang Goes the Theory: Space by Balloon - Rocketeers.co.uk - Nov.15.09.

The BEAR (Balloon Experiments with Amateur Radio) project in Edmonton, Canada has recently sent a high definition camera to 107,145 ft (32.7 km):
/-- BEAR-4 Hi-Def Video from The Edge of Space
/-- Amateurs Send First HD Camcorder Into Space via Balloon - Switched - Sept.25.09
/-- New High-Def Home Video From The Edge of Space - High Definition Video space - Gizmodo - Sept.24.09

Using a helium balloon and a consumer camera, a couple of MIT students were able to get some great pictures from Near Space at 90k feet: M.I.T. students launch $150 space camera - CNET - Sept.16.09.

For additional details on their project, see their website at 1337arts : Photographs from near-space.

Update Sept.26.09: A video from this team about their flight:

Seems like every few years there is news of plans for an enormous military airship of some kind but then eventually the project is canceled. Perhaps the mission is clearly defined enough for this program to succeed: Pentagon plans blimp to spy from new heights: The giant dirigible would use radar to closely and constantly monitor activity on the ground from 65,000 feet. - Los Angeles Times - Mar.13.09

The University of Tennessee Amateur Radio Club (UTARC) in Knoxville is planning to send a Balloon Mission across the Atlantic. The launch of the UX-19:Icarus X into the jetstream is planned for this month as soon as conditions are right. The balloon will carry a transmitter to report its position, heading, etc.

Check out the CosmoCam, a LSU/NASA project involving "an internet interactive video camera system designed for use onboard satellites and stratospheric balloon missions."
CosmoCam Flight Completed - SpaceRef /LSU - Sept.7.07

Launch your own mission to NearSpace with a project designed by Make Magazine:
* DIY SPACE (PDF) - Make Blog
* DIY SPACE - Make: Video Podcast - MAKE: Blog
* DIY space, Make style - Dicks Rocket Dungeon

I posted an item back in September about an interesting Near Space student project at Cambridge University. A reader forwarded this article that contains more info about the project and several pictures: UK uni rocket payload test hits 105,600ft - The Register - Sept.18.06.

See the Near Space section for links to other university and amateur high altitude projects.

Students gain access to Near Space via the Student Hands-on Training (SHOT) program: Lofty Goals For Higher Education: Students Build and Test Near-Space Technology - SPACE.com - July.12.06.