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the extra pressure of sunlight
heating, but light-weight enough
to give you a good altitude, there
is no final design for super pressure balloons as the research is
on-going as material technologies develop.
The weight of the balloon
material is also a factor which I’ve
estimated to be around 1000kg
for the Big Space Balloon.
The balloon will have a surface
area of approximately 32,000
metres square, each square metre
of balloon material will need to
be no more than 32g in weight, (
a £1.00 weighs 7.5g ).
The Science Capsule
This allows fairly complex and
bespoke structures to be manu-
The total payload including factured straight from the comthe science capsule is approxi- puter, avoiding wastage of raw
mately 1 metric tonne, (1000kg)
materials and additional fabrica-
this is made up of around 500kg
tion jigs or molds.
for the science capsule itself with
the other 500kg for scientific
equipment.
The German company Voxljet
have developed a 3D printer
capable of producing objects up
The material for the science
to 2 metres in diameter using a
capsule is yet to be finalized, but Nylon based powder printer.
I’m very interested in using the
manufacturing process known
These machines work by
as Additive Layer Manufacturing
adding a thin layer of powder to
(ALM) or 3D Printing.
a platform which is at the top of
Single products can be created
container box, a laser then fuses
from a fine powder of metal (such
the powder together to form a
as titanium, stainless steel or alu-
thin section of the object you
minium), nylon or carbon rein- wish to print.
forced plastics.
The platform is then lowered
ICY SCIENCE | WINTER 2013- 2014