High altitude affects on electronics. Advice?

[deleted-200534]

I would like to start off and say that I have been bouncing around ideas ranging from weather tracking to chemistry to astronomy but I think I've come up with something that I really would enjoy. My plan is to send a weather balloon into near space while carrying an electronic(s). Some issues I can see are temperature affecting the electronics but i plan to control the temperature the best I can. Also, the electronic short circuiting and catching on fire. I know that the higher we go up the pressure drops and so does air density. I think that, that will play a big role in affecting the electronic. Now another issue would be what electronic to actualy send up there, laptop computers seemed very interesting but a little too advanced for me. Maybe a simple circuit? A watch? Parallel circuit? Series Circuit? I would also like to measure it while it is in the air but I'm not sure what I should measure. I apologize if this is kind of just a ramble but I have a lot of ideas and would like to really focus on since my deadline is in march. Thank you for your time. Any advice at all to improve my project woulld be greately appreciated.

[deleted-249560]

This is an ambitious idea and might make for an interesting project. The first thing you need to consider though, is whether it's possible to send a craft like this out into the stratosphere. Imagine if you were flying a plane and saw hundreds of Science Buddies readers' projects floating about! You would need to contact the FAA and find out the procedure. At least a few years ago it was allowed, but you had to work with them on a schedule, file a flight plan and give them tracking information so that they could make sure that no one was put in harm's way.

What you're planning to test is a good question. What makes electronics fail? If the parts on the board aren't designed for weather extremes that could be a problem. Poor assembly methods might make a device fail as parts expand and contract. Many years ago I received a wonderful radio as a gift and I asked my father (an EE and the then-head of audio engineering at a major manufacturer) about reliability. I then learned how car radios are designed (and tested for) extremes that might kill normal AM/FM radios. It was news to me then and I've always considered when designing things.

So what to send up? You need some way of finding your payload when it comes back down. Are you planning to track it yourself? A GPS with some ability to send its position seems like a good idea. Some students do that with phones (although it's prohibited by the FCC). Will you include things that you know will fail to see if they do? Or rugged things that are designed to not fail? A laptop, especially a running one is likely to fail if not protected from the temperature. If you want to send one to see *how* it fails, that might be a reason to choose one.

Since your idea is so broad it's a very big topic to discuss in a forum like this. I'd suggest you start with a little research. What equipment do you need for a near space launch?, where do you get it?, how much does it cost?, what procedure do you have to follow to launch one? I'd get the basics down first. If it turns out that you need a huge expensive balloon to launch a full sized laptop and some tracking equipment, then maybe that will dictate what you send. Look around the web and see what other people have done.

http://jeffpfaller.com/2012/06/sending- ... near-space is a really nice site, as is https://blog.hartleybrody.com/in-space. Both groups sucessfully launched light payloads of a camera and a tracking device. Their experiences may give you some specific ideas.

Good luck, and please write back after you've done some more reading.

Howard