4 ms·

Can we stop referring to these high altitude balloon payloads as going "into space"? At 91000 feet up, he is over 70 km from the official edge of space, and 13

Can we stop referring to these high altitude balloon payloads as going "into space"? At 91000 feet up, he is over 70 km from the official edge of space, and 130 km from lowest satellite orbits. EDIT: The soon to be MIT student correctly refers to it as a "near space" flight, but the context was changed to increase the link bait factor.

drostie 15y ago
Even worse, the reporter says "She took her admissions letter and then rocketed it into space." As if there were a rocket involved. I mean, I like high-altitude ballooning, don't get me wrong. I'm just saying that this sentence primed me to expect something an order of magnitude cooler, someone strapping 250 grams of aluminum-based rocket fuel to their acceptance letter and watching it blast off.
unreal37 15y ago
It's still impressive. Jets fly at 35,000 feet, so her balloon went 3 times higher than a jet. I want to do this. Anyone have a link to a set of instructions? It looked like she was following some printed instructions in the video.