The Aviation Week article below helped to confirm some of my worst fears about the balloon thing. For a long I've wanted to launch one of these balloons. Recently I've been thinking about doing it from SolderSmoke Shack South (in the Dominican Republic -- they are BIG on party balloons down there!).
Check out Hans's site about the circumnavigators:
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It's quite a remarkable feat that we are able to detect such small objects and shoot them down. That being said I think these hobbyist better start reporting their balloons with their callsign so NORAD can track and confirm them. Great free practice material for them. Should help preventing waisting millions of dollars on scrambling a couple of jets and refueling plane to their target and waist an expensive rocket on it.. Unless they need something cheap for target practice ;-)
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