Stop the countdown!

Here at Mission Control, we’re really excited about launching our noble spacecraft, Spayce McSpaceface. We’ve tested the electronics, we’ve ordered the helium, we’ve prepared people’s memories of Andover to put on the memory stick, we’ve planned our launch day event, we’ve prepared Mission Control, and we’ve decorated the spacecraft itself. Everything’s ready to go.

There’s just one problem
– the weather. 

The thing about balloons is, you can’t steer them. Once Spayce McSpaceFace goes up, it’s going to go wherever the wind takes it. And right now (Thursday morning) the forecast for the morning of Sunday 1^st December is a fairly strong breeze blowing from the north-east. So Spayce McSpaceface would take off from outside the Guildhall, and take a trip to the south-west – right over the English Channel.

Once Spayce McSpaceFace goes up, it’s going to go wherever the wind takes it. And right now (Thursday morning) the forecast for the morning of Sunday 1^st December is a fairly strong breeze blowing from the north-east. So Spayce McSpaceface would take off from outside the Guildhall, and take a trip to the south-west – right over the English Channel.

One thing I’ve learned while working on this project is that there are different winds at different heights. So at lower altitudes, Spayce McSpaceface will be blown south-west. But as it gets higher – and we’re aiming for a maximum height of 36km above the Earth’s surface, which is really high – it’ll start to be picked up by higher-altitude westerly winds, which will blow it directly East.

 Stratoflights, who are the people we bought the balloon from, have a really cool online tool that allows you to predict the flight of your balloon. Combined with our onboard GPS systems, that will allow us to work out where Spayce McSpaceface will land, and head over there to pick it up. 

But we can’t really go and pick it up if it lands in the middle of the sea. And right now, our predictions show that Spayce McSpaceface would land off the coast of France – a few miles offshore from the pleasant coastal town of Fort Mahon-Plage.

This would be totally fine if we were NASA and we had the assistance of the US Navy’s Underwater Demolition Team, but as we’re a community arts project our resources are a little bit thinner. As much as I’d love to head over to France, we really need to be able to pick Spayce McSpaceface up from somewhere in the UK.

So, it looks like Spayce McSpaceface is going to need to wait a little longer to join the space race. We have a backup launch day pencilled in for the following Sunday, 8^th December…and we have permission from the authorities to launch any time in the week between the 1^st and the 8^th.

So when the weather looks right, we’ll be ready to go – we’ll keep you posted!

#casAIRspace @CASartists @UpstartTheatre