What to Fill the Balloon With, Hydrogen or Helium?

I have gone down several roads with this, and have come to one conclusion.  There is no option but hydrogen at this point.

I originally started with the intent of using hydrogen for a number of reasons.  I know that Helium is a finite resource, and it is becoming in fairly short supply.  Essentially all the helium that was on the Earth from its being created has now floated off into space.  It is to stable to react into a compound that will keep it around, and too light to stay down where it can be protected.

What helium is around is actually mined from the ground.  It is formed as a product of the natural decay of uranium.  This means that there will be more, but it will take a 100,000 years to rebuild what there once was.  So, for practical purposes, what we have is all we will have for the foreseeable future, and we need it desperately.  It is used as a coolant for medical machines such as MRI scanners, it is used extensively in research, and is vital for chip manufacturing.  Essentially, party balloons are going to become a thing we long for wistfully in our later years, and our grandchildren will never have the experience of letting a small balloon go and just watching it float to oblivion.

Well as I went down this path, everyone kept telling me at every turn that hydrogen was dangerous, and that I needed to move to helium.  I finally made the decision based on safety concerns to go with helium for this first launch.

When I started making calls the laughter was chilling.  Not only did they not have it, but what they could get was strictly for high priority purposes.  I would not be able to buy it, period.

So now I was questioning the safety and sanity of this whole project.

I then began doing research about hydrogen for HAB projects, and found that in fact almost all of the launches in Europe are done with hydrogen, that NOAA has move to primarily using hydrogen as their gas of choice, and domestically the HAB groups are really starting to take this seriously.

So not only are others using hydrogen, but it is being done regularly without issue all over the world.  I now moved back to hydrogen as the gas for this project.

In doing this there are some considerations that need to be taken into consideration that I will deal with in later posts.

1. Static charges and grounding the balloon, equipment and personnell
2. Sourcing hydrogen
3. The regulator
4. Filling the balloon
5. Other safety precautions such as attire and site safety.

But in our case, hydrogen is not only the preferred choice, it is the only choice.