to release the lifting balloon from the lower part of the system and the armored vessel fell the short remaining distance, perhaps fifty feet, to the ground. Usually the recovery crew was at the landing site and immediately began the process of transferring the air sample from the armored vessel into high-pressure bottles for transfer to another laboratory for analyses. A series of six test flights were carried out in the Grab Bag development program in which various system elements were examined. The seventh flight would be the first attempt to capture the first air sample at in the Minneapolis area in mid-August 1953. The six test flights carried out tests of various system components, and included: tests and further development of the launching procedure for this complex system; an evaluation of the system controller; adequacy of the power supply and the autopilot function; a study of the blower function at altitude to evaluate both its function and the volume of air delivered into the sample balloon as compared to the laboratory results; evaluation of the process in which the axial fan transferred the air sample from the sample balloon into the armored vessel and the vessel was sealed; and in each case, further development of logistics for system launching and recovery. Fortunately, the first flight of the complete system occurred at a time that corresponded well with the above-ground test in the USSR. This first flight was successful and we were subsequently informed that the air sample provided information that was of vital interest to those assessing fission/fusion reactions and test activities around the world. We also learned that of the three approaches developed to capture air samples, the high-altitude balloon system was the only one to successfully accomplish this objective, and the sample was collected within the desired window of time. As before, there was no specific or definitive information. Photographs, films and notebooks further describing the development of the Grab Bag system and the platform launching process are contained in the archives of the International Balloon Museum, Albuquerque, New Mexico. Some years later more information became available related to the fundamental observations that were being made of the air samples that were gathered in the Grab Bag program. This information was related to the presence and distribution of isotopes of inert gases, particularly isotopes of xenon and krypton. The fission of a nucleus produces two different nuclei,