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Talk:Solar balloon

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Efficiency

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Which type, tube, tetrahedron, or tear, is the most efficient?Mister Mormon (talk) 05:32, 5 February 2011 (UTC)[reply]

This site matches several criteria listed under links normally to be avoided:

1. Any site that does not provide a unique resource beyond what the article would contain if it became a featured article.

4. Links mainly intended to promote a website.

11. Links to blogs, personal web pages and most fansites, except those written by a recognized authority.

Additionally, it appears to have been poorly translated from French, perhaps by software. Is there some compelling reason why this site should be listed? -AndrewDressel (talk) 18:49, 8 April 2011 (UTC)[reply]

On your points:

1.: I do not understand. Should this be so: there is very little information on this subject, and this stub includes so little information that the filter has to be set coarser.

I see your point, but I do not see it anywhere in the EL guidelines. -AndrewDressel (talk) 15:16, 9 April 2011 (UTC)[reply]

4.: Disagree that this is that (and I am not associated with the website, so I can not have that intention).

There is no real way to know, but I see few of the usual signs of a single purpose account -AndrewDressel (talk) 15:16, 9 April 2011 (UTC)[reply]

11.: Disagree that this is that.

You may disagree, but the site describes itself as being about the personal project of "Patrick and Patricia" to promote their "journey of several years around the world." -AndrewDressel (talk) 15:16, 9 April 2011 (UTC)[reply]

(Poorly) translated from French: irrelevant, it is content that matters.

To a point. I find the text unreadable. -AndrewDressel (talk) 15:16, 9 April 2011 (UTC)[reply]

Compelling reasons why this website should be listed:

a. It gives more and more detailed (textual) information than this stub.

b. It includes additional photos and videos

c. It points to several other sources

A visitor of the current stub wants to be pointed to more information, now only the "French site with English content" gives this, and several useful links, but it gives no history, and it is one-sided in that it only describes one method. The "Make your own" link is a "How to" and spam (but gives some information), The two links on Lotte (are intended to promote that product, and) are not relevant to this subject. —Preceding unsigned comment added by 94.213.120.209 (talk) 00:57, 9 April 2011 (UTC)[reply]

I do not know what a visitor to the current stub wants, but I concede to your other points. Since this subject has so few other sources, I guess you are correct that we should include what we can for now. Thanks for taking the time to make your point. -AndrewDressel (talk) 15:16, 9 April 2011 (UTC)[reply]

Thanks for your patience ^-^ —Preceding unsigned comment added by 94.213.120.209 (talk) 17:34, 9 April 2011 (UTC)[reply]

I don't know much about heat loss, if you want to join in, please do! —Preceding unsigned comment added by 94.213.120.209 (talk) 22:46, 11 April 2011 (UTC)[reply]

For one thing, the picture in the heat loss section includes heat loss terms for radiation and CONDUCTION, while the text references heat loss through radiation and CONVECTION. There are lots of problems with both statements.

Regarding the terms in the picture for the conductive losses: - they don't include the balloon's surface area, and should have an "A" term next to the h. - its wildly inaccurate anyway, since the temperature of the boundary layers of gas on both sides of the plastic will be very different than Ts or Tf. - due to the above, this equation would vastly overestimate the conductive losses

Regarding the convective heat transfer that would be much more useful: - its nearly impossible to calculate with a simple equation, as it requires simulation of a flow field - external parameters like wind and humidity can cause order-of-magnitude errors in the prediction 23.24.128.178 (talk) 19:42, 24 June 2015 (UTC)[reply]

“The lift generated by 100,000 ft³ (2831.7 m³) of dry air heated to various temperatures may be calculated as follows.” I recommend a volume figure that is metric, or rather, a nice round value in metric. Especially since this is a physics article English Wikipedia is probably often used by non-native English speakers.--Solomonfromfinland (talk) 00:12, 11 September 2013 (UTC)[reply]

This article should be added to WikiProjects, such as Aviation or Physics or Thermodynamics; with importance and quality ratings.--Solomonfromfinland (talk) 00:16, 11 September 2013 (UTC)[reply]

"The radiant power is distributed across the entire electromagnetic spectrum, although most of the power is in the visible light portion of the spectrum" -- This statement is incorrect. Whilst the power density of the solar spectrum does indeed peak in the visible region, the region itself is quite narrow. Hence visible light accounts for only 38.3% of extraterrestrial solar radiation power, and the majority is in the near infrared. That's for extraterrestrial radiation: the statement may be true for irradiance at the Earth's surface (I don't know), but the text is clearly referring to the whole solar spectrum. I think the statement needs to be clarified. — Preceding unsigned comment added by 212.159.112.119 (talk) 11:09, 28 June 2015 (UTC)[reply]

This might possibly explain the mysterious objects I saw floating past in the distance a few months ago. I watched them with binoculars as well as I could, and they looked like a pair of billowing dark bags drifting several miles away, at about 6,000ft altitude. I don't think they were black, more of a strange metallic greyish color, but they were definitely nothing I could identify. I watched them for a couple minutes, apparently being blown on the wind past the hill I was on, until I lost them from the binoculars field of vision and couldn't re-aquire them. A couple of solar balloons someone had released nearby (so they haven't drifted apart yet) is the most plausible explanation I've heard yet. Although you'd think that black would have been a more ideal color. It's possible I was mistaken though; they were quite some way away, and at first the sun was behind them so I couldn't see anything but their silhouettes. It wasn't until they had passed and were moving away that I made out that they were changing shapes and looked like flying, greyish metallic trash bags blowing in the wind.AnnaGoFast (talk) 07:40, 14 January 2016 (UTC)[reply]