D. Launching Services
During the course of the project balloon flights were split into two general classifications, (a) research and (b) service.
Research flights were made to test balloon controls and telemetering systems developed under the contract. A full report of these research flights has been made in "Technical Report 93.02 (1), Section III, Summary of Flights"
Service flights were carried out by New York University personnel in conjunction with technical personnel from the sponsoring agency to test geophysical equipment developed in Air Force laboratories. The requirements for these flights were launching and tracking of balloons to float at specified altitudes for short periods of time (6 to 8 hours). Because of this short flight duration, simplified plastic balloon systems were used. Balloons were maintained aloft by use of constant fixed ballast flow, or ballast was excluded entirely from the system. A typical flight using constant ballast flow at a rate slightly exceeding leakage losses is shown as Fig. 8.
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