For more than a decade, UA has been home to the Alabama High Altitude Ballooning Club, a group for those interested in researching and designing aerial balloons that can take scientific equipment into space.
“We’ve done blimp projects, ballooning projects and we’re working on a tethered aerostat project now where a payload is tethered to the ground but kept buoyant by a lighter than air blimp envelope,” said Robert Soran, a senior majoring in mechanical engineering and president of the Alabama High Altitude Ballooning Club.
Soran said most of the club’s members have technical backgrounds such as engineers and computer scientists, but anyone is welcomed to join.