Alternately hasty and shy about sharing these messy roads on the way to the sublime and obscure landscape of “art”, I forge on, mixing metaphors like asphalt and setting the steamroller on full ahead.
1. Armelle, at Esrange Space Center, Sweden
Armelle Frenea-Schmidt is a young French program manager for the Rexus/Bexus program at Esrange, the Swedish Space Agency’s launch site way up above the Arctic Circle, right where Norway, Sweden, and Finland meet.
I got in touch with Armelle after sending an email to the general account of the Swedish Space Agency. After a couple of hours, the head of the entire agency wrote back and gave me several names of people to contact. So I emailed some more.
I’ve been interested in Esrange and Rexus/Bexus for several years now. The program encourages students at universities throughout Europe to form teams and design experiments to be launched either in rockets (hence the R) or balloons (the B).
I thought it would be great to meet young people trying to figure out their ideas and launch them way high up. I also expected it would be easier to get access to Esrange by filming students rather than trying to infiltrate some super secret mission paid for by mysterious institutes.
Armelle and I talked for a long time about interdisciplinary work in the sciences, what kinds of balloons they use for the program, and how she got interested in aerospace engineering. “Well, like everyone else, I got my start in the usual way, setting off rockets in my family’s garage,” she told me. I couldn’t help but grin.
After talking about the creativity of science and the strangeness and beauty of launching things into space, Armelle desribed one of her previous university projects. During that time she designed and built a rocket she dubbed The Doppelganger.
“All my fellow students thought I was crazy, why would you do this, it’s so complicated, and so unnecessary,” Armelle smiled. “But I told them, I am doing this because it’s possible and I can.”
Armelle launched The Doppelganger at a public event with all her fellow students and professors and onlookers present. When the rocket got to a certain height the capsule opened and formed the shape of a flower, petals and all. The audience was astonished. “One of my professors once told me that science can be beautiful and I always believed that,” she said.
Armelle will ask the team of current students if I can come up to Kiruna and film them. If they agree, then I’ll go meet them in August as they begin preparing for their experimental stratospheric balloon launch, scheduled for September 2023.
A brief note on Kiruna. It’s a place that has fascinated me for years, ever since I read a Guardian article about how the entire town has been moved two miles from its original site because the original town (in a heavy mining area) is at very real risk of being swallowed by a massive sinkhole. The subterranean and the stratospheric once again come full circle.
2. Ilan in Clermont-Ferrand
A conversation with Ilan Raphael, formerly of Zephalto, now temporarily unemployed. Runs the Twitter account @BalloonArchives.
I’ve learned a lot from Ilan. He is great at researching primary texts about ballooning from all over the world and he does this simply because he finds it fascinating and wants to share his discoveries. Ilan’s a deep-diver, a digger in a field that usually prizes empty words and lots of hot air. I spoke with him Friday via Zoom.
He was sitting in his apartment in Clermont-Ferrand, France. Until a few months ago he was a materials engineer at Zephalto, a French company trying to get into the competitive world of stratospheric balloon tourism. But he quit. I won’t go into details, but it didn’t sound so nice.
I asked Ilan if he was going to look for another job in the balloon world and he said no. He plans on finding a different engineering job, more focused on materials. He will keep running Balloon Archives because it’s fun.
“And I’m just finishing up my license to become a hot-air balloon pilot.”
I made him promise to take me up over the Puy-de-Dôme volcano.
3. Bunkers and Balloons
Over the course of these conversations I come to understand that all these people know each other or, at the very least, have been in touch over social media.
When we talk, they always mention the same companies, the same launch locations: Esrange in Sweden, Timmins in Canada.
They talk about the balloon tourism companies who are going to make it to the big money first: World View, Space Perspective, etc.
They talk about each other on a first-name basis, even though they’ve never met: Dan, Ilan, John, Jane, Luis.
This already feels so much like the world of bunker people I’ve been exploring over these last few years. Everyone’s keeping tabs. Checking out how their projects are going. They compete, they admire, they disbelieve, they desire. They float in speculative futures.
Thanks for reading.
littleredted loves the landscape of The Beyond Place, and the fact you’ve made/found/ retrieved a special place where wandering and wondering can get along, apparently without effort, because the effort (taken) is so seamlessly woven into and out of your discoveries as you share them. Thank you @petitoursrouge