Michael and I attended the Academic High Altitude Ballooning Conference June 25-27, 2014 at Grand Forks, North Dakota. We made some good contacts and got a tour of the UND Aerospace department facilities.

They have a Lunar/Mars Habitation Module Prototype.

They had some impressive flight simulators.

And a nifty space suit lab.

They have a cool 360 degree control tower simulation that was hard to capture in a picture.

 

One interesting talk by Angela Des Jardins of Montana Space Grant Consortium was about developing a network of mature high-altitude balloon programs across the country to all launch during the total solar eclipse in 2017.

Don Day, meteorologist for the Red Bull Stratos jump, gave the keynote talk at the banquet.

On the last day of the conference, after two days of postponements because of weather, the UND students really wanted to launch a high-altitude balloon.

Don Day giving his weather status. If conditions were favorable, they would launch in about an hour.

After the allotted hour, they decided that conditions seemed favorable.

There it goes!

Thanks to UND for hosting the conference! We are looking forward to collaborations with the Stratospheric Ballooning Association in the future.