WEATHER, BALLOON AND REEFED PARACHUTE SYSTEM Don Day, Edmund Coca Red Bull Stratos set a new mark for the largest helium balloon ever launched with a human aboard: 29.47 million cubic feet in capacity. Balloons of such size are rarely launched even for scientific equipment payloads, let alone with a human life on the line, and weather must be near perfect for a safe takeoff. Another important aspect of the mission’s safety and success was payload recovery, which pioneered use of a reefed parachute system. This paper summarizes information presented by Mr. Don Day, Jr., meteorologist and owner of DayWeather, Inc., with Mr. Edmund Coca, Crew Chief for ATA Aerospace High-Altitude Balloon Projects. For every Red Bull Stratos stratospheric flight, manned and unmanned, Day provided the weather information vital not only for launch, but also for plotting trajectories and confirming records; and he stayed in close contact with the Federal Aviation Administration to confirm airspace. Coca was the crew chief responsible for directing launch operations on the flightline, in close collaboration with Day and ATA Aerospace project lead Tracy Gerber in Mission Control.
LAUNCH CHALLENGES AND SOLUTIONS Plotting weather patterns was critical to the success of the program. Day began by explaining the particular challenges of launching Felix Baumgartner’s balloon on October 14, 2012, in comparison to his previous stratospheric test launches on March 15 and July 25 of the same year.
Red Bull Stratos Scientific Summit
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