The Race to Near Space

Over the last decade, global aerospace giant Airbus has been developing Zephyr -- a stratospheric flight vehicle with the wing span of a passenger plan but weighing less than the average adult. After years of successful flight tests, Airbus in 2023 spun out the Zephyr program into a new company called Aalto HAPS, with the goal of commercializing this ground-breaking piece of technology. Aalto HAPS CEO Samer Halawi is now in charge of building that business. He joins the Race to Near Space to discuss his plans and how Zephyr can help revolutionize connectivity and the way we see our planet. 

Russ Van Der Werff is a self-described stratospheric evangelist -- it's even in his business title. He serves as Vice President and Chief Balloon Evangelist at Aerostar -- a world leader in the design and manufacture of highly technical aerospace and defense solutions. For more than 65 years, Aerostar has been advancing the field of stratospheric ballooning and reimagining what balloons are capable of. The company has had a hand in some of the most interesting uses of stratospheric balloons over the past half century, many of which you have probably never heard of, like a military project that took Air Force pilots by balloon to the middle layers of the stratosphere and then cut them loose; flying telescopes to look deep into space for NASA; and building an 800 foot in diameter balloon that can carry a Chevy Suburban 70,000 feet in the air. Get ready to find a new respect for the humble balloon. 

In October 2014, Alan Eustace donned a specially-designed space suit and strapped himself to a balloon filled with 35,000 cubic feet of helium. Over nearly two hours, he ascended to just over 135,000 feet above the ground. Then he cut himself loose. Listen to our conversation with Alan Eustace -- the world altitude record holder for skydiving and one of the few humans to have physically experienced the stratosphere.

The first man-made object was sent into space in 1957, kicking off a space race that changed our world. In the decades since, we’ve sent humans hundreds of thousands of kilometers away from our planet. We’ve kept satellites in orbit for dozens of years. We’ve even sent probes billions of kilometers into deep and interstellar space. But one region of near-space remains underutilized and under-explored, presenting our teeming world with a rare green field for innovation: the stratosphere. Meet the entrepreneurs, technologists, and companies behind the next space race – the one happening 20km above us in near-space. The Race to Near Space is a podcast brought to you by the HAPS Alliance, a group of like-minded people, companies, and organizations working to harness the power of the stratosphere to better connect our world.