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Skyhook balloons were
high-altitude balloon High-altitude balloons are crewed or uncrewed balloons, usually filled with helium or hydrogen, that are released into the stratosphere, generally attaining between above sea level. In 2002, a balloon named BU60-1 reached a record altitude of . ...
s developed by Otto C. Winzen and General Mills, Inc. They were used by the
United States Navy The United States Navy (USN) is the maritime service branch of the United States Armed Forces and one of the eight uniformed services of the United States. It is the largest and most powerful navy in the world, with the estimated tonnage ...
Office of Naval Research The Office of Naval Research (ONR) is an organization within the United States Department of the Navy responsible for the science and technology programs of the U.S. Navy and Marine Corps. Established by Congress in 1946, its mission is to plan ...
(ONR) in the late 1940s and 1950s for
atmospheric An atmosphere () is a layer of gas or layers of gases that envelop a planet, and is held in place by the gravity of the planetary body. A planet retains an atmosphere when the gravity is great and the temperature of the atmosphere is low. A s ...
research, especially for constant-level meteorological observations at very high altitudes. Instruments like the
Cherenkov detector A Cherenkov detector (pronunciation: /tʃɛrɛnˈkɔv/; Russian: Черенко́в) is a particle detector using the speed threshold for light production, the speed-dependent light output or the speed-dependent light direction of Cherenkov radi ...
were first used on Skyhook balloons.


Project Skyhook

In the late 1940s, Project Skyhook was conceived of as a means by which plastic balloons could be used to transmit or send instruments into the
stratosphere The stratosphere () is the second layer of the atmosphere of the Earth, located above the troposphere and below the mesosphere. The stratosphere is an atmospheric layer composed of stratified temperature layers, with the warm layers of air ...
to conduct research. This project carried forward work from an earlier project, Helios, that
General Mills General Mills, Inc., is an American multinational manufacturer and marketer of branded processed consumer foods sold through retail stores. Founded on the banks of the Mississippi River at Saint Anthony Falls in Minneapolis, the company orig ...
and
Jean Piccard Jean Felix Piccard (January 28, 1884 in Basel, Switzerland – January 28, 1963 in Minneapolis, Minnesota), also known as Jean Piccard, was a Swiss-born American chemist, engineer, professor and high-altitude balloonist. He invented clustered ...
initiated to use arrays of giant plastic balloons to carry humans aloft. Balloons, long used for collecting meteorological data, now offered the opportunity of collecting highly specialized information and photographs. The first Skyhook balloon was launched on September 25, 1947. The balloon was developed by the Aeronautical Division of General Mills. It carried a payload of
nuclear emulsion A nuclear emulsion plate is a type of particle detector first used in nuclear and particle physics experiments in the early decades of the 20th century. https://cds.cern.ch/record/1728791/files/vol6-issue5-p083-e.pdf''The Study of Elementary Partic ...
to over . At low level immediately after launch, the lifting gas (
hydrogen Hydrogen is the chemical element with the symbol H and atomic number 1. Hydrogen is the lightest element. At standard conditions hydrogen is a gas of diatomic molecules having the formula . It is colorless, odorless, tasteless, non-toxic, an ...
or
helium Helium (from el, ἥλιος, helios, lit=sun) is a chemical element with the symbol He and atomic number 2. It is a colorless, odorless, tasteless, non-toxic, inert, monatomic gas and the first in the noble gas group in the periodic table. ...
) in the balloons formed a small bubble at the top of the envelope, resulting in the balloon having a "limp" look. At the lower air pressure at higher altitudes, the gas expanded and eventually filled the whole envelope forming a
sphere A sphere () is a Geometry, geometrical object that is a solid geometry, three-dimensional analogue to a two-dimensional circle. A sphere is the Locus (mathematics), set of points that are all at the same distance from a given point in three ...
or
ovoid An oval () is a closed curve in a plane which resembles the outline of an egg. The term is not very specific, but in some areas (projective geometry, technical drawing, etc.) it is given a more precise definition, which may include either one or ...
. In some models the balloons could reach diameters of more than 30 m. In the succeeding 10 years, over 1,500 Skyhook flights were made for investigations supported by the ONR and for European scientists. These flights were made from locations in the
United States The United States of America (U.S.A. or USA), commonly known as the United States (U.S. or US) or America, is a country primarily located in North America. It consists of 50 states, a federal district, five major unincorporated territorie ...
,
Canada Canada is a country in North America. Its ten provinces and three territories extend from the Atlantic Ocean to the Pacific Ocean and northward into the Arctic Ocean, covering over , making it the world's second-largest country by tot ...
, and naval vessels in the
Atlantic The Atlantic Ocean is the second-largest of the world's five oceans, with an area of about . It covers approximately 20% of Earth's surface and about 29% of its water surface area. It is known to separate the " Old World" of Africa, Europe an ...
,
Pacific The Pacific Ocean is the largest and deepest of Earth's five oceanic divisions. It extends from the Arctic Ocean in the north to the Southern Ocean (or, depending on definition, to Antarctica) in the south, and is bounded by the continen ...
,
Caribbean The Caribbean (, ) ( es, El Caribe; french: la Caraïbe; ht, Karayib; nl, De Caraïben) is a region of the Americas that consists of the Caribbean Sea, its islands (some surrounded by the Caribbean Sea and some bordering both the Caribbean Se ...
, and
Arctic The Arctic ( or ) is a polar regions of Earth, polar region located at the northernmost part of Earth. The Arctic consists of the Arctic Ocean, adjacent seas, and parts of Canada (Yukon, Northwest Territories, Nunavut), Danish Realm (Greenla ...
waters. Both
Winzen Research Winzen Research Inc, Minneapolis, Minnesota, created balloons in the 1950s and 1960s that were used by the United States Navy in its Projects Helios, Skyhook, and Strato-Lab. Balloons were also sold to the United States Air Force for use in Proje ...
and
General Mills General Mills, Inc., is an American multinational manufacturer and marketer of branded processed consumer foods sold through retail stores. Founded on the banks of the Mississippi River at Saint Anthony Falls in Minneapolis, the company orig ...
participated in these launchings, and in later years, the Atomic Energy Commission joined ONR in support of Project Skyhook. Among significant flights, Project Skyhook launched the first successful three-balloon cluster in 1948. Then in 1949 the first shipboard Skyhook launch took place. It was followed by nearly 300 shipboard launchings over the next 10 years. The first manned plastic balloon flight under ONR contract took place in 1949. Project
Rockoon A rockoon (from ''rocket'' and ''balloon'') is a solid fuel sounding rocket that, rather than being immediately lit while on the ground, is first carried into the upper atmosphere by a gas-filled balloon, then separated from the balloon and ign ...
, in 1952, featured a Skyhook balloon that released small Deacon rockets at about above arctic waters. One of the first known attempts to carry out an astrophysical measurement from a plastic balloon occurred under the Skyhook program on June 30, 1954. During the solar eclipse on that date two Skyhook balloons were launched by Winzen Research with camera gondolas employing simple orientating systems. The objective was to photograph the eclipse from high altitude. Varied photographic equipment was carried and aimed at the Sun to obtain full coverage for the total period of totality. On September 7, 1956, the
University of Minnesota The University of Minnesota, formally the University of Minnesota, Twin Cities, (UMN Twin Cities, the U of M, or Minnesota) is a public university, public Land-grant university, land-grant research university in the Minneapolis–Saint Paul, Tw ...
launched a giant
Mylar BoPET (biaxially-oriented polyethylene terephthalate) is a polyester film made from stretched polyethylene terephthalate (PET) and is used for its high tensile strength, chemical and dimensional stability, transparency, reflectivity, gas and aro ...
balloon (developed by the G. T. Schejeldahl Corporation of Northfield, MN) to set an unofficial balloon altitude record of for unmanned balloons. In 1957 the US Navy began an operational aerology system known as Transosonde (trans-ocean sounding), consisting of almost daily balloon flights across the Pacific Ocean from
Japan Japan ( ja, 日本, or , and formally , ''Nihonkoku'') is an island country in East Asia. It is situated in the northwest Pacific Ocean, and is bordered on the west by the Sea of Japan, while extending from the Sea of Okhotsk in the north ...
.


Project Stratoscope

On August 19, 1957, an unmanned Skyhook balloon lifted the first Project Stratoscope telescope. Project Stratoscope I was a program developed to research the
Sun The Sun is the star at the center of the Solar System. It is a nearly perfect ball of hot plasma, heated to incandescence by nuclear fusion reactions in its core. The Sun radiates this energy mainly as light, ultraviolet, and infrared radi ...
. Instruments included a 12-inch (30-centimeter)
telescope A telescope is a device used to observe distant objects by their emission, absorption, or reflection of electromagnetic radiation. Originally meaning only an optical instrument using lenses, curved mirrors, or a combination of both to observe ...
with a special light-sensitive pointing system and a
closed circuit television Closed-circuit television (CCTV), also known as video surveillance, is the use of video cameras to transmit a signal to a specific place, on a limited set of monitors. It differs from broadcast television in that the signal is not openly t ...
camera that was guided by the scientists on the ground. This was the first balloon-borne telescope. The telescope took more than 400 photographs of
sunspots Sunspots are phenomena on the Sun's photosphere that appear as temporary spots that are darker than the surrounding areas. They are regions of reduced surface temperature caused by concentrations of magnetic flux that inhibit convection. ...
. These were the sharpest photographs taken of the Sun up to that time. The photographs increased scientists' understanding of the motions observed in the strong magnetic fields of the sunspots.


Project Churchy

In 1948 Skyhook balloons were used to show that in addition to
proton A proton is a stable subatomic particle, symbol , H+, or 1H+ with a positive electric charge of +1 ''e'' elementary charge. Its mass is slightly less than that of a neutron and 1,836 times the mass of an electron (the proton–electron mass ...
s and
electron The electron ( or ) is a subatomic particle with a negative one elementary electric charge. Electrons belong to the first generation of the lepton particle family, and are generally thought to be elementary particles because they have no kn ...
s,
cosmic ray Cosmic rays are high-energy particles or clusters of particles (primarily represented by protons or atomic nuclei) that move through space at nearly the speed of light. They originate from the Sun, from outside of the Solar System in our own ...
s also include high energy atomic nuclei that are stripped of their electrons. Thirteen stratospheric plastic Skyhook balloons were launched in September 1953 as part of Project Churchy, an Office of Naval Research funded
cosmic ray Cosmic rays are high-energy particles or clusters of particles (primarily represented by protons or atomic nuclei) that move through space at nearly the speed of light. They originate from the Sun, from outside of the Solar System in our own ...
expedition at the geomagnetic
equator The equator is a circle of latitude, about in circumference, that divides Earth into the Northern and Southern hemispheres. It is an imaginary line located at 0 degrees latitude, halfway between the North and South poles. The term can als ...
. Project Churchy was conducted at the Galápagos because high-energy cosmic-ray particles can only be collected at the geomagnetic equator without accompanying low-energy particles found at higher latitudes. Balloons carrying scientific instruments rose to between and and encountered temperatures as low as -80 °C (-112 °F). Aircraft from Patrol Squadron (VP) 45 ‘Pelicans’ took off an hour after the launch of each balloon and visually tracked the balloon until it released its cargo and deflated. The instruments were observed until splashdown, and marked for destroyers to retrieve.


Skyhook as UFO

Skyhook balloons may have been the origin of some UFO observations. The most famous case possibly involving a Skyhook mis-sighting was the
Mantell UFO incident On January 7, 1948, 25-year-old Captain Thomas F. Mantell, a Kentucky Air National Guard pilot, died in the crash of his P-51 Mustang fighter plane near Franklin, Kentucky, United States, after being sent in pursuit of an unidentified flying objec ...
.The First Air Force Pilot to Die Chasing a UFO Was Actually Chasing a Secret Balloon
/ref> (The script of the film ''
Earth vs. the Flying Saucers ''Earth vs. the Flying Saucers'' (a.k.a. ''Invasion of the Flying Saucers'' and ''Flying Saucers from Outer Space'') is a 1956 American science fiction film from Columbia Pictures. It was produced by Charles H. Schneer, directed by Fred F. Sears, ...
'' (1956) mentions "Project Skyhook").


See also

*
Gas balloon A gas balloon is a balloon that rises and floats in the air because it is filled with a gas lighter than air (such as helium or hydrogen). When not in flight, it is tethered to prevent it from flying away and is sealed at the bottom to prevent t ...
*
Mantell UFO Incident On January 7, 1948, 25-year-old Captain Thomas F. Mantell, a Kentucky Air National Guard pilot, died in the crash of his P-51 Mustang fighter plane near Franklin, Kentucky, United States, after being sent in pursuit of an unidentified flying objec ...
*
Project Genetrix Project Genetrix, also known as WS-119L, was a United States Air Force program designed to launch General Mills manufactured surveillance balloons over Communist China, Eastern Europe and the Soviet Union to take aerial photographs and collect ...
*
Project Moby Dick Project 119L was a Cold War reconnaissance operation by the U.S. Air Force in which large espionage balloons floated cameras over the Soviet Union. Operations The spy balloons would photograph sensitive Soviet sites and either hang in the air o ...
*
Project Mogul Project Mogul (sometimes referred to as Operation Mogul) was a top secret project by the US Army Air Forces involving microphones flown on high-altitude balloons, whose primary purpose was long-distance detection of sound waves generated by Soviet ...
*
Project Strato-Lab Project Strato-Lab was a high-altitude manned balloon program sponsored by the United States Navy during the 1950s and early 1960s. The Strato-Lab program lifted the first Americans into the upper reaches of the stratosphere since World War II ...


Notes


Bibliography

* Freier, P., Lofgren, E. J., Ney, E. P. and Oppenheimer, H. L. 1948. Evidence for heavy nuclei in the primary cosmic radiation. ''Physical Review'' 74:213-17 * United States Centennial of Flight
Otto C. Winzen
*


External links


''Skeptical Inquiry'' article
- The cold war's classified Skyhook program, a participant's revelations

- Historical recopilation project on the use of stratospheric balloons in the scientific research, the military field and the aerospace activity
Office of Naval Research
{{DEFAULTSORT:Skyhook Balloon Balloons (aeronautics) General Mills Military research of the United States