HAB Book Import from Multimarkdown (link pending) #filed

[how the publication came into being, where the idea for the book came from, etc.]

At some point in college I saw the now-classic video from Luke Geissbuhler (I knew it then, as you may know it now, as the Brooklyn Space Program). Fun fact, it turns out that Luke is an accomplished cinematographer, (in)famous for movies like Borat. For years I wanted to do a project like that for myself but, for all the things I have done over the years I never did get around to it. Years later I got a job in Italy teaching MS/HS science classes at an international school in Italy. My second year there I chose to have my science elective class as one focused on designing and launching a space balloon. This turned out to be too big of a challenge despite my motivation and interest in the topic as well as wanting to teach and use my experience in Systems Engineering along with my actual Aerospace Engineering degree. Perhaps I was too ambitious, or too unprepared, or too bad of a teacher, or maybe it was the students’ fault. In fact, I think it was all of these. Although we didn’t succeed we did learn a lot. I learned many things but, surprisingly, one of the biggest findings was that there was no really good resource for anyone that wanted to build a space balloon of their own. I found that Luke planned to write one, and has written a lot, but it was not quite aligned with what I wanted. L. Paul Verhage’s book is very comprehensive but inconsistent in the level of detail, incomplete in some areas of instruction, getting quite dated, and too comprehensive in a lot of areas; I can’t fault him, writing something that large (I have found) is tough and time-consuming so it could easily be heavy in the areas he is strongest.

Years more passed after my time as a teacher and I considered doing something to documents the process beyond our informal blog posts and collections of research. I had briefly considered writing a book but decided this was too ambitious or foolish so I didn’t think too hard about that. Later, still, I was speaking to Steve Murphey about science communication and this space balloon project (we were also in communication while I worked on the project at the school) he suggested that we write a book about space balloon missions because he had also noticed there was no good resource out there. After some initial planning we had some thoughts but not much ammunition. That was until one day I just felt compelled to get going on this project and that it just snowballed and picked up momentum until it got to what you have here. I was initially shooting for about 20 pages but I just couldn’t stop!

I could not have put this together without many, many people posting their findings and their work online for me to find and distill the best elements. I have used the best information I could find and filled in many gaps with my own research and planning based on my experience as a teacher and an engineer that has built a few projects in the past.

I’m also a space nut. SPAAACE!!!