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This calculator is designed to help you find how much gas to put into a high altitude balloon to achieve a desired burst altitude or ascent rate. You have to know the payload mass (including parachute) and balloon mass.

Usage is very straightforward: enter the payload mass into the first box, select the balloon mass from the second box, and type in either a desired burst altitude in meters or ascent rate in meters per second in the relevent box. Pressing enter or clicking away from the box you are typing into will run the calculations, displaying the results in the box at the bottom.

The 'Constants' box can be used to adjust constants used by the calculator. These include selecting a type of gas (or entering a custom gas density), adjusting modelling parameters or entering a custom burst diameter or drag coefficient for your balloon. Click the tick box next to the burst diameter or drag coefficient boxes to use a custom value, otherwise the appropriate value for your selected balloon will be used.

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About

Cambridge University Space Flight: Balloon Burst Calculator, SondeHub Fork
cusf-burst-calc on github

An entirely javascript based, HTML5-valid, CSS-valid calculator to determine high altitude balloon parameters.

The HTML and javascript was written by Adam Greig (CUSF) and Rossen Georgiev; the first version in 2010 and a rewrite in 2012. This code is licensed under the GPL (v3); see below.
The design (habitat-template; also GPL3) was created by Daniel Saul and uses Skeleton CSS (MIT licensed).
The underlying maths was derived from `burst1a` spreadsheet by Steve Randall and implemented by Adam.
It also contains Balloon information from Kaymont Totex sounding balloon data and Hwoyee.
Some additional modifications by Mark Jessop.
Last updated: 2023-09-13, Added additional Kaymont balloon data.

No guarantee is given for the accuracy of any data included or produced by this program, use at your own risk.

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