Balloon trip to ‘near space’ coming up for military veteran
Some kids dream of becoming an astronaut one day — to fly above the Earth and explore new planets.
One Clarksville woman will come extremely close to achieving that dream.
Military veteran Amanda Blount is tentatively set to travel to “near space” in 2019. She’s using the voyage as an opportunity to inspire children and share her environmentally conscious platform.
If all goes as planned, the voyage, offered by World View, a commercial space launch provider, will take Blount and several other passengers to 100,000 feet, or about 19 miles up. That’s the edge of near space,
or the upper atmosphere.
They will travel with certified pilots in a pressurized space capsule attached to a balloon, and they will spend about two hours above Earth.
Although Blount’s deposit is paid and the cost of her ticket is set aside from anonymous donations, the time frame for the voyage is tentative, as the company is still developing the technology. But Blount is optimistic.
World View recently took on a publicity stunt to put a KFC sandwich on a test flight. Unfortunately, what was to be a four-day trip was cut short when the balloon developed a leak and floated back down after only 17 hours, according to a report on The Verge.
The company said it plans to learn from that experiment and continue pushing ahead toward a goal of sending people up on the capsules.
During the trip, Blount will have 20 minutes of WiFi access, which she said she’ll use to contact her family, supporters and schoolchildren to talk about her environmental platform.
Blount’s love for the environment began on the Albemarle Sound in North Carolina, where she grew up.
“Farming, agriculture and animals are my first love,” she said.
That love of farming launched her interest in astronomy, and she said the two go hand in hand.
“Farmers were born to be astronomers,” she said. “They used
the sun, the moon and the stars to know when to plant, harvest, and when to celebrate their life.”
She lives by the motto “Earth Day every day,” and has a platform promoting environmental education and constructive responses to climate change.
“We need to work with global changes, not against them,” she said. “Being raised in North Carolina, you see homes built on stilts. People know evacuation routes, almost everyone knows how to swim, and disaster planning isn’t just something you see in a movie, but it’s part of our everyday life.”
When asked if she was nervous about the trip to near space, Blount said not at all.
“I was born for this,” Blount said. “Some people are born to be doctors, firemen, policemen, or attorneys; I was born to be an astronaut.”
Chris Smith contributed to this report. Contact Anyssa Roberts at 931-217-1827 or aroberts2@gannett.com.
“We need to work with global changes, not against them. Being raised in North Carolina, you see homes built on stilts. People know evacuation routes, almost everyone knows how to swim, and disaster planning isn’t just something you see in a movie, but it’s part of our everyday life.”
— AMANDA BLOUNT