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Comment by dev2point0 | Hacker News Reader

This is awesome, how do you manage climbing and descending with a balloon. Are you compressing the gas on board or using thermals?

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How we make it go up and down is the secret sauce :) I'm a hangglider guy, so I'd love to be using thermals, but I can say that's not how we do it right now

Do you plan to sell to hobbyist consumers? As another thermal-rider I realize this would be amazing if it could do short term soundings at a launch site, or to have a fleet that can navigate back to a designated site for pickup and redeployment.

I'm picturing having a few dozen at launch site containers, launching them at the start of a day of flying, having them programmed to land in a rural area that a member can pick them up from and return to the launch sites.

This might be the coolest use case I’ve heard suggested. We’re not quite at the level where all of this is user friendly enough, but let’s catch up in 9-12 months

That’s what I figured :) Being able to control it with a one pound payload is very impressive.

I’d love to know, too. If it was me I’d use a small piezo plate on the side of the balloon to do it the same way hot air balloons do. Heat the gas in the balloon = go up, reverse the polarity to cool it = go down. That would be pretty energy inefficient, though, so hopefully their secret method is better.

Loon used pumps and an interior air ballast like blimps do. So clearly there are a few ways.

Did you mean Pelletier?

It's Peltier.

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Thermoelectric_effect#Peltie...

Ah yes, got my P plates mixed up. Thanks.

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