Researchers switch from helium to hydrogen weather balloons | Hacker News Reader

Researchers switch from helium to hydrogen weather balloons

phys.org

15 pointsPaulHoule8 comments

I once worked a short stint at a company here in Toronto that was making weather probes for an airport in Japan. I did calibration, testing, and sealing little holes in the styrofoam enclosures. These probes had sensors, battery, microcontroller, and a radio. We made many thousands of these things that would be sent up on weather balloons and would eventually be e-waste landing in the Pacific. The whole time, as I saw boxes of these probes stacking up I was thinking about this constant stream of e-waste. It blew my mind that these sophisticated little devices were single use electronics, and I kept thinking that there really must be a better way to do these measurements.

Not sure I can believe they wrote that long of an article without explaining how the electricity to do the electrolysis was produced.

Probably natural gas: https://www.arm.gov/capabilities/observatories/nsa/locations...

I know people have filled balloons with hydrogen that they made by mixing an acid with a metal.

'cause that would be irrelevant if the objective is to minimize the use of limited helium resources on earth.

Or so I thought, yet they seem to be concerned about the transportation cost and greenhouse gas emission of transporting helium containers to the station.

Baffled.

Unless they have a power purchase agreement then that would depend entirely on whatever the local grid mix is at the time. Bear in mind researchers aren't usually the ones running the physical facilities in big labs. There will be a whole ops department leading that, folks build a career on that.

Isn’t that like a giant bomb though?

Not really. The dangers of hydrogen are exaggerated. The famous one is really more about burning fabric than burning hydrogen. It's no more worrisome than large quantities of gasoline, which we deal with all the time.

And even if there is a problem, it's a weather balloon. It's designed to be disposable. It floats away from people. If it is anywhere near people, it's because there's a leak -- which means the gas is already escaping, and will rapidly be gone.

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