While it contributes modestly in the quantity caught, I would not discount the contribution to publicity and awareness on the subject. And the example of doing something about a problem instead of producing just talk.

Sorry to say that Nobel prizes are not awarded posthumously..

Surprising in terms of power requirement.Numbers I read for turbopumps in rockets are 10's or 100's of MW. 50hp=0.04MW. The (admittedly larger) Saturn V F1 engine had 55.000 hp turbopumps (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rocketdyne_F-1)

It is notable that their engine uses electrically powered pumps for fuel and oxidizer. Most rocket engines use turbo pumps that burn fuel to spin a turbine that is connected to these pumps, which require a respectable amount of power. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/... Here, they use LiPo batteries to power DC electric pumps (2x 50hp), which reduced complexity and cost. I was quite surprised that this is a feasible approach.

That disk had better be really black. I can imagine light coming up from the sun or earth or the moon giving a nasty background to the image one tries to obtain.Does anyone know how this works? Is the detector somehow focused on the edge of the disk?

No need for skillz, there are websites [flightradar24.com] that track stuff for you. (At least their coverage for non-US flights is ADS-B based, real time, and collected from private contributing scanners AFAIK, US flights go through FAA)

The brilliant fireball objects tend to have an orbital velocity, ie a significant horizontal component to their speed. I have not done the math, but if you get out of a balloon with 0 ground speed I can imagine it is less likely to hit fireball speeds before the atmosphere gets denser.

Moreover, ISS orbits with an apogee of 405 km above ground according to Wikipedia, while earths radius has a minimum of 6,357 km according to the same source. Not sure where the asteroid flew, but unless you mean that ISS orbits ~1 earth radius from the center of the earth, 1 earth radius does not equal the the orbit of the ISS.

And so did Germany at Kalkar http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/SNR-300

No need to take it back. Medical radiation sources can be quite mobile and far from hospitals. http://environment.newscientist.com/article/dn3150 Get used to black cars trailing you if you happen to have a thyroid problem....