[DAlperin]

> we can steer them to an area that's easy for us to drive out and pick them up.

What does this look like in practice? As you mentioned I know you don't really have any lateral control, but I imagine you can wait for it to overfly somewhere convenient to descend?

[shagie]

I believe it is along the line of...

Pull up https://www.pivotalweather.com/model.php?m=nam&p=sfct-mean-i... and pick some point (note the 'click for point sounding'). You can see the wind direction at that location as a function of altitude.

Using this as a vector field, you can do "the balloon is here now, 30 minutes from now it will be there, if it is at altitude Z at that time, it will be follow the wind in this direction" which in turn allows you to predict where it will be in 30 minutes and take the forecast for that location at that time and determine what altitude you want to be at.

Saying I want it to be at X,Y at some time is solving this backwards. Which isn't necessarily easy, but it's computable.

[tndl]

Pretty much this. We add the data the balloons themselves are collecting to make things more precise as well

[ImPostingOnHN]

Due to the rotation of the earth, wind current direction rotates based on altitude. If you want to go in a particular direction, you ascend or descend to a altitude that has winds blowing in that direction.

At least, that's how I understand hot air balloons "steer".