[Lady Jag]

What I’m calling the gondola is 4’ across with a door. It needed nothing else for holding whatever weather equipment was planned.

Also it was intened to be no more than 20’ off the ground.

I don’t see any reason for another basket.

[AFPhys]

Thanks for the diagram.

I’m still not clear of the story: was this meant to be a tethered balloon, for a party... or an instrumented balloon for some type of weather investigation.

My guess right now is that they built it for the former purpose and that batteries and instrumentation would have been carried in the compartment. However, there may have been thoughts of a tethered flight for kids to ride in for fun before using it for the science flight.

If so, that would clearly have been intended to be done under strict supervision, and may be that the kids jumped the gun, and the balloon got away from them.

I also heard one thing about “ballast” ... and if there was ballast in the compartment of some type, that could have been taken out by the older child (or the younger) and the tethers didn’t hold. All will eventually be clear, but right now it is very murky.