History and Scientific Information
 

Aerostar, as our parent company Raven Industries, has been involved in the design, fabrication, and operation of both free and tethered aerostatic vehicles for almost fifty years.  Raven Industries was formed in 1956 as a supplier of high altitude research balloons to the U.S. Navy. The expertise developed in scientific ballooning has allowed for expansion in the areas of plastics, plastic fabrication and processing, sewing, electronics, and engineering.

Launch from the USS Valley Forge

Tethered Logging Balloon

Our history includes sport hot air balloons, tethered logging balloons, high performance parachute systems and medium sized tethered aerostat systems of up to nine thousand cubic feet.  You'll note as you look through the other areas of the web-site we still manufacture most of these product lines.

The Sulphur Springs Aerospace Balloon Engineering and Manufacturing Facility is a modern, climate controlled facility.  In this building we manufacture the massive aerostats of up to sixty million cubic feet in volume which is 1 ½ times the air-conditioned volume of the Houston Astrodome. If you are interested in visiting our plant, here are the driving directions

Sealing table in the 800' long plant

Typical applications range from light weight ozone sondes to massive cosmic ray detectors weighing as much as four tons. Modern scientific balloons are routinely used a precursors to orbital space flights to qualify astronomical observation equipment. Most of what is visible with the naked eye in the night sky is a collection of extremely hot stars and luminous gas clouds. Much of the matter in the universe is cold (like the Earth itself) to study these objects, astronomers use infrared telescopes.

In addition to observation in the infrared, experimenters make observations from balloons in X-ray, gamma ray, and Ultraviolet bands. These instruments, if used on the surface of the Earth, would have the same view of the universe that a scuba diver would have of the night sky from 100 feet under the water. At altitudes that are above 99.5% of the atmosphere (by mass) the instruments are provided an unobstructed view of the universe when suspended under a scientific balloon.

The most active area of interest in scientific ballooning recently has been in the area of high energy physics. High-energy cosmic rays are atomic nuclei that have been stripped of their electrons and accelerated to almost the speed of light. These energy states are up to 10,000 times higher than those possible in the largest ground bases accelerators. These high energy particles are theorized to be the result of supernovas which happened in other galaxies. In order to observe high energy cosmic rays, scientists must send their instruments above the atmosphere so that the particles are not destroyed when the enter the atmosphere.

Scientific balloons are also used  for atmospheric science research. Instruments are sent into the stratosphere to measure the chemical makeup at various levels of the atmosphere. The chemicals of interest are those that contribute to ozone depletion, and global warming.

Some of the most technologically interesting uses of balloons take place in the area of aerospace testing. Stratospheric balloons have been used through the decades as carrier vehicles for drop tests of parachute systems and for launching platforms for high altitude sounding rockets.

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