The modern stratospheric balloon was invented in the late 1940’s in Minneapolis Minnesota. Collaborative efforts between General Mills and the University of Minnesota, sponsored by the Office of Naval Research, advanced the state of the art rapidly in the 1950’s. The technology was rapidly accepted and applied to a variety of science disciplines through the 1960’s. The NSF sponsored National Scientific Balloon Facility in Texas was a focal point in this rapid acceptance and hosted literally hundreds of flights per year. In a classic case study of the product life cycle curve, scientific ballooning has entered a v ery mature and stagnant stage. As the technology has matured, initiatives to advance the technology have foundered due to situations that have been beyond the control of the innovators. This creates a unique situation in the technology life cycle in which extinction can occur due to lack of users rather than the rise of a superior disruptive technology. A well-known principle of the technology life cycle is that the incumbent technology owner often does not realize that a disruptive technology has emerged to cause the demand for the existing technology to dry up. An analysis of the market climate with respect to the existence of potential alternates to stratospheric balloons will be presented. A frank analysis of the state of scientific ballooning in the United States and abroad will be presented in the context of the technology life cycle. Strategic shifts in the acceptance and operation of stratospheric balloon systems must take place for the technology to survive. Suggestions for these shifts will be presented both on a broad and specific scale.