Abstract
Over the course of a 15 month period, a team comprised of middle school, high school, and college students designed, built (and rebuilt), practiced and prepared to launch payloads to collect data during the total solar eclipse on August 21st, 2017. After five launches, including the day of the total eclipse, ETHAB presents the best practices and lessons learned for coordinating a large and diverse team to be successful in stratospheric ballooning.
The Eclipse Ballooning Project was a complex and extremely visible project to leap into as a first time ballooning team; as a result, the insight from our challenges faced and solutions devised as well as best practices could be invaluable to saving time, energy and effort for other novice teams seeking explicit guidance for successful launches.
Overcoming Murphy's Law: Lessons Learned By a Novice HAB Team
Over the course of a 15 month period, a team comprised of middle school, high school, and college students designed, built (and rebuilt), practiced and prepared to launch payloads to collect data during the total solar eclipse on August 21st, 2017. After five launches, including the day of the total eclipse, ETHAB presents the best practices and lessons learned for coordinating a large and diverse team to be successful in stratospheric ballooning.
The Eclipse Ballooning Project was a complex and extremely visible project to leap into as a first time ballooning team; as a result, the insight from our challenges faced and solutions devised as well as best practices could be invaluable to saving time, energy and effort for other novice teams seeking explicit guidance for successful launches.