Stratopedia

Stratopedia (a contraction of the terms Stratospheric and Encyclopedia) is devoted to offer listings and a brief overview of those individuals, organizations and programs that had contributed to some extent to the development of scientific ballooning, or merely were part of it. This includes not only those people directly involved in the field, but also those scientists whom were protagonists of important advances in science through the use of balloons.

Additionally, we will offer information on the most important balloon-borne experiments and on the main places and sites in which this activity was developed. Finally, we will try to explain in simple terms those technical elements or basic concepts used in ballooning that appear repeatedly throughout the various articles and news published on this website.

Our attempt to refer to this initiative as "an encyclopedia" might sound pretentious, but the idea behind our effort is to create a repository that could cover all elements able to be classified and explained in this field. A secondary intention is to serve as a remembering of the individual and collective progress of this unique techno-scientific activity.

Of course, many of the topics are so broad or the lives of people we write about are so rich that in honor of brevity, we will try to make focus on those aspects directly related to the scientific ballooning. Therefore, whenever possible, we will provide links to other reference sources for you to further deepen each topic.

Finally, note that as occurs in almost every section of this website, this "Stratopedia" is a project in constant development, which begins with a few entries (in no particular order of importance) and that we hope to complete and expand gradually, as time allows.

As allways, suggestions, contributions, corrections and clarifications are very welcome