Sharon's Job Page

SHARON'S INTERESTING EX !!! JOB PAGE

I USED TO work for the National Scientific Balloon Facility. I was able to quit that lunatic job on 31 December, 1998. Thank you Lord! It was an incredibly interesting job, in that I got to go all over the world. I have a degree in Engineering Technology from New Mexico State University, in Las Cruces, New Mexico. I called Las Cruces home for about 11 years, and still consider it home in many ways. I miss the people and the weather a lot.

I was a "Fabrication specialist", which means that I built all the pieces that we flew on our "SIP". A SIP is a Scientific Instrumentation Package. They are a "Poor mans' taxi", when scientists can not afford space Shuttle time. They will come to NSBF and ask to fly their payload, or experiment, below one of their balloons. The balloons are from 4 to 49 MILLION cubic feet of helium. You can put the LA Colosseum inside at 130,000 feet, where these balloons do their traveling. They are an average of 800 feet long and about 250 feet around. There are crews of "riggers" who's' jobs it is to do all the mechanical work and checks on the balloon, the parachute below the balloon and the payload, and all the steel cabling that holds all the pieces together. Some of the payloads are as heavy as 8,000 pounds, and can be almost 40 feet long and about 12 feet square! They have their own weather department, since they are always looking for perfect weather, and they must know the wind conditions, since the balloons have no navigation, they are at the whim of the upper level winds. They have an electronics department, they do all the SIP work on the "conventional" ballooning, which is flights that last less than 3 days and don't need external power other than batteries.

I USED to work for the "Long Duration Ballooning" (LDB) department, along with 3 other engineers. They do flights that last up to a month, and require solar panels hung below the payload, to supply power for the batteries during the longer flights. They fly around the South Pole, from McMurdo, Antarctica, in December and January. 1996 was my first year home for the holidays in 5 years!!! They fly TDRSS satellite, Inmarsat, and HF signals for location, science, and housekeeping data. They run computers that I build from a commercial board. I had to build most of the system components that LDB flies, except what little they buy commercially. I also built all the cabling, and did all the documentation and drawings and schematics for the group. They have to pack all their equipment (almost 20,000 pounds of it) to go to these remote sites, sometimes as much as 5 months ahead, for Antarctica. So they live out of suitcases a lot of the year.

They also fly from Fairbanks, Alaska, trying to circumnavigate the northern hemisphere, and they fly test flights from Fort Sumner, New Mexico. Fort Sumner is where the conventional balloon group flies in the spring and fall. They have also flown from Lynn Lake, Manitoba, and tried to fly from Inuvik, Norththeyst Territories. There is talk of a flight from Alice Springs, Australia, all the way around and back to Alice Springs.

Except for being away from my family at the holidays, and summer when my daughter is out of school, and the absolute, utter and complete BS of working for the government, it is a great job!

I HAVE to tell you that that line was written, after the base MADE me move my website off the base server, and told me I could not say anything derogatory about the job or organization. I do NOT work there anymore, and can tell you that the waste, stupidity and unsound decision making is rampant and unchecked there. Your tax dollars at work folks...

Send me some e-mail ! Thanks for dropping by.