Rob Skiba: second high-altitude balloon launch (YouTube) and testingtheglobe.com (Wayback Machine)

Visit: 2026-10-10 (STEP I run 1).

YouTube: "Rob Skiba (Nov 15, 2017) Testing The Globe's Second High Altitude Balloon Launch"

Query (Google, Chrome): Rob Skiba high altitude balloon 2017 footage results "Skiba" balloon launch Hummer Brewer URL: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=B0-J7OhcQUk (upload date 2017-11-15; duration 10,656 s, about 2 h 58 min; channel @robskiba). Metadata and YouTube auto-captions fetched with yt-dlp. Captions saved: research/pages/skiba-balloon2-B0-J7OhcQUk.en.vtt; a de-duplicated transcript is in research/pages/skiba-balloon2-transcript.txt. Auto-captions: numbers and speakers may be misheard, and the speaker is often not identifiable.

What the transcript contains [web: auto-captions]: - Payload: two gimbals. The top one carries a "standard GoPro" (wide angle); the bottom one carries a camera with a lens chosen to give a "human line-of-sight" view and less barrel distortion. The aim is to compare fisheye and non-fisheye views of the horizon. - An earlier launch is mentioned with an image "at 92 thousand feet". During this flight a burst altitude near "127 thousand feet" is mentioned, but that may be another team's figure; the captions do not make it clear. - Part of the video is an edited segment by a team member. The narrator says the raw footage of both cameras is on "the explosive truth YouTube channel". The narrator's assessment: "I do see a very slight curve but between the barrel distortion of the camera lens and the clouds honestly it's hard to tell what the true horizon really is". The narrator also says "both flat-earthers and [globers; auto-caption 'Globus'] will be seeing what they want to see in this footage", and that the team had "showed the true differences between what is seen with a fisheye lens versus what is seen with a non fisheye lens". - A separate planned test is described: two people with Nikon Coolpix P900 cameras "a couple inches off the water" at opposite ends of a stretch, expecting "over six feet of curvature" if the globe holds. - Bearing: claim 1 and the single-source flag in claims.md ("the 2017 balloon result is not reported in the transcripts"). This is the team's own report of the second launch. It keeps the verdict inconclusive and names lens distortion and cloud as the obstacles. The raw footage is said to be on the "Explosive Truth" channel (not checked).

testingtheglobe.com (Wayback Machine CDX)

Query: CDX listing of testingtheglobe.com*, status 200 (352 captures). Captured pages include /, /3dmodel, /angels.html, /apollo1-3.html, /bible.html, /conclusions(.html), /enoch.html, /flatearthstuff.html, /flatearthvideos.html, /geocentricity.html, /globeearth.html (2015), and FE testimonies images (2018). No page with "balloon", "launch", "experiment", "result" or "data" in its URL was captured. Result: partial; the site's text parts are already in the folder as "Testing the Globe" Parts 1-9.

Not reached

The "Explosive Truth" channel raw footage; the first balloon launch video (June 2017); the "Ships Do Not Go Over Any Curve" P900 test write-ups.