When it comes to getting into space, well we've been pretty much doing it one way.
Each year nearly 300 smaller rockets are used in scientific studies of near space.
Rockets have taken animals into space to prepare for the day when man himself will make the trip.
But this woman thinks the way we should be getting there is balloons.
If you're going to do something really different
you cannot have the word 'impossible' in your vernacular.
And some people might have thought it was impossible for a balloon to safely transport
things into space and back.
Things like research tools, chicken burgers and a Google executive.
But they were all made possible here in Tucson, Arizona at the World View headquarters.
So what's really kind of awesome about ballooning technology, it is so completely different
to the way people have thought about accessing space before.
There's no noise, it's completely silent and you're using gravity.
So what we've done is created this vehicle that can stay continuously over a location.
How we do that is the magic.
The "magic" starts with a Stratollite, a giant balloon filled with a gas like helium
which helps it float upwards.
Below that are smaller balloons filled with air which act as a ballast.
If there's more air inside them they get heavier and the Stratollite sinks down,
if there's less air the craft is lighter and moves up.
All of this allows the Stratollite to sail the winds of the stratosphere
and unlike traditional satellites, hold its position for days or even months at a time.
We have launch, all the instruments, the landing, all in the same vehicle.
That's completely revolutionary.
And we can fly just about any instrument on it,
whether it's communications, weather instrumentation
cameras
any kind of device you can imagine.
So in the years to come, we're imagining that we can help millions, let's think big, billions
of people get online who currently can't be online.
We envision being able to transform
the way we work with hurricanes and other severe storms, so that we can actually get
much better warnings of what's happening with these storms than we currently have now
so that people can get out of the way.
And then we can even help the first responders
with communications and eyes in the sky and do this all around the world.
Poynter's space ambitions began with an earthbound adventure, Biosphere 2.
Living for two years and 20 minutes with seven other people inside a sealed-off dome,
designed to simulate life in a space colony.
One of the seminal experiences was being viscerally part of my biosphere, in a very literal way.
So we drank the same water over and over again.
We breathed the same oxygen over and over again.
So we were very literally part of our biosphere.
That gave us this incredibly powerful
perspective of the planet that we live on.
It's very akin to the kind of experiences that astronauts have when they see the Earth
from the blackness of space.
We wanted to find a way to really give that to ourselves
but also to everybody else.
So while governments and companies are using Stratollites to launch remote sensors and
cameras into the stratosphere, Poynter's ultimate goal is to send us all out there too.
If we can take people to space I think it's going to change many people's idea
about this planet that we live on.
The idea that we are all on this same planet together, and then what are people
going to do with that experience?
In my mind, that's the important part.
Coming back from space
and taking that experience and doing something great with it.
Wow! How awesome that would be
to be able to make that change in the world.