X-Message-Number: 14399 From: Date: Sat, 2 Sep 2000 06:42:47 EDT Subject: Back to 21st century: Big Balloons Assume you live in New-York, Moscow, London, Berlin or Paris. We are in November and the sky is dull grey. Where to go to sun bath if you have 4 hours free? The suborbital rocket for the caribean beaches is not the solution. 12 km above your head there is plenty of sun, so go to the tethered balloon floating 15 km above the suburb.You have an ascenter every ten minutes. The one tenth cubic kilometer balloon has a 10 000 tons capacity, sufficient for 3 000 users at a time. At $10/hour it is a cheap way to get some sumer time in a tropical green house when the wind wip the snow on the ground. The technology could be exploited from the start of the century. Yvan Bozzonetti. Rate This Message: http://www.cryonet.org/cgi-bin/rate.cgi?msg=14399