would you like to fly in my beautiful balloon?

JP
Aerospace is the only company I know of that is
seriously looking at this multistage-balloon idea.
Their plan is as follows:

1) an airship carries passengers and cargo from the
ground to 140000 feet

2) once there, the airship meets up with a much larger
airship (2 miles long) that permanently floats at
140000 feet (the Dark Sky Station). Passengers and
cargo move to the second airship, and the first
airship returns to earth carrying return passengers
and cargo.

3) a large airship - over a mile long - meets up with
the DSS, and passengers and cargo move between the
two. This very large airship has enough buoyancy to
climb to 200 thousand feet. Once it has reached its
maximum altitude, it turns on electric (ion) engines
and builds up to orbital speed over a period of
several days.

JPAerospace has already tested all of the components
for their system at an altitude of 100 thousand feet.

Ed

--- Lucio de Souza Coelho wrote: