5 ms·

Space Selfie

160 points by rossdavidh 1y ago

rossdavidh 1y ago
Website has a link to a YT video that explains it, but basically free service to upload your pic, get a selfie taken on satellite in space, sent back to you. Free.
iambateman 1y ago
This is pretty cool. We uploaded ours a few days ago and still waiting. My five year old son is pumped
- layer8 1y ago
  From the FAQ it sounds like it may take a few months: “The first batch of selfies should be returning mid-summer and we will email you ahead of time. If you want to jump closer to the front of the queue and not wait a few months, please make sure you are an active CrunchLabs subscriber (Build Box, Hack Pack). Or, if you're an educator, send an email to help@crunchlabs.com and let us know that your selfie is a class photo and we'll take your selfie first!”
  - pinoy420 1y ago
    [dead]
  - ElijahLynn 1y ago
    Yup, got that same message! Still an amazing thing though! My son and I watched the launch video where they sent it up to space. Highly recommend watching that with whoever you're going to take the selfie with!
aerophilic 1y ago
My kids have loved watching Mark Robers videos, have the subscriptions (one of both the backpack and crunchpack), and we uploaded our video for SatGus. If you have young kids (6-15) these are perfect educational tools. Highly recommend. Only downside is some of them are a bit “mischievous”. For example a “Bobbie trap” that launches balls at whomever tripped the wire. Good times…
- schmichael 1y ago
  Same! Mark Rober is what changed my mind about YouTube for kids. He's a wildly popular creator that's even shilling a product and yet... I'm ok with all of it? He seems to very legitimately care about sharing getting kids excited about STEM, and if he gets rich doing it: great! The product is less offensive than the sugary cereal I watched commercials for while watching Saturday morning cartoons as a kid. Definitely one of the few YouTube channels I let my kids watch unattended.
  - hlfshell 1y ago
    There's shilling a product because someone handed you a bag, and then there's building a product you believe in. You feel okay with it because it's clearly the latter versus another NordVPN commercial. Even if the product ends up failing (and I am under no predilection to believe this will) he has presented nothing but honest enthusiasm towards his goal that you can't help but root for it.
- Aurornis 1y ago
  We just started watching Mark Rober videos. I started with some random old videos and they were great. Nice educational content in the middle of an entertaining video. Then the algorithm handed us some more recent videos and they felt like a pivot to Nickelodeon style content: We watched Mark Rober run through a green slime obstacle course with a lot of loud noises and action, but basically zero educational value. So as someone new to this: Any tips? Should I be sticking to old videos only if I want some educational value? My kids only watch with me as an activity we do together, so I’m always looking for good videos that can keep us away from the content farm stuff.
  - hlfshell 1y ago
    He's gone all in on the Crunch Labs brand, which is kind of built around the younger audience. This isn't a bad thing, but it does mean that older edutainment enjoyers kind of age out of his stuff. Not to say there's no value in them, but there will be more of an entertainment focus than prior edutainment focused videos. I recommend checking out Stuff Made Here; great build videos of engineering principles in an entertaining fashion to show building cool complicated stuff. Xyla Foxlin, a wonderful maker, also posts educational videos between her projects, like an in-depth look at how plane wings work.
sdeframond 1y ago
[flagged]
- dylan604 1y ago
  At this point, couldn't that just comp the selfie with automation? Who would ever know if it was actually displayed in spaaaaace or not?
- GuB-42 1y ago
  SATGUS is a 12U CubeSat, I don't know the mass, but it seems that 20kg is a reasonable assumption. As with all CubeSats, they didn't use a rocket just for it, it is an auxiliary payload to a big satellite mission. According to Wikipedia the Falcon 9 has a payload ratio of about 4%, and assuming everything else is propellant (not that far off), that's about 500kg of propellant to launch that satellite. But propellant is mostly oxygen, let's say between 2:1 and 3:1 oxygen:fuel, it means about 150 kg of kerosene to launch that satellite. That's your fossil fuel usage. Similar to what it takes to bring a passenger across the Atlantic on a typical airliner. It means that taking these pictures from space burns less fossil fuel than overseas vacation pictures. Of course, there is probably a lot more fossil fuel burned during the process than by the launch itself: building and transporting the parts, business travels, powering the servers, etc... But the same can be said of most endeavors at this scale.
  - sdeframond 1y ago
    > It means that taking these pictures from space burns less fossil fuel than overseas vacation pictures. That's comparing grapes to watermelons. It doesn't take getting on a plane to have a picture of a picture of oneself taken from an oversea country.
- tgsovlerkhgsel 1y ago
  Historically, space has always also been a tool to get people, especially kids, excited for science.
jayknight 1y ago
Is there a limit to what you can upload? I figure they're not just going to let people upload a million pictures, but can I do one per kid?
- roydivision 1y ago
  It seems from my own upload that you are limited to one / email address. So yes you could just use a bunch of aliases, but I guess they're banking on most people only having access to a few addresses.
encoderer 1y ago
My 7 year old got into rober videos about a year ago. Really hope she always prefers this kind of stuff to junk food like Mr Beast.
ElijahLynn 1y ago
SatGus launch party (great watch) https://space.crunchlabs.com/livestream https://space.crunchlabs.com/livestream https://www.youtube.com/live/6Zqe3SJVjUM?si=CB7_3YCQTx6GqZ1x https://www.youtube.com/live/6Zqe3SJVjUM?si=CB7_3YCQTx6GqZ1x (direct) *SatGus is named after Phat Gus from Mark Robert's squirrel obstacle course.
icameron 1y ago
Shoot it’s getting a 504 Gateway timeout. Must be trending!
Brajeshwar 1y ago
A few years back, my co-founder and I thought we should try something outside of work, something interesting but that may not be useful but fun. But we disbanded after a few discussion round without building it. A mobile app that will help you time and position yourself along the path of your "order" where a satellite flyby and take a selfie of earth with you in it. We realize that even at an expense it might not be able to make a person out of the bigger picture and the cost would be too high. Even after enhancement (our ML Model), it won't still make significant difference of value or fun.
glassofbees 1y ago
I'm really curious about the technical constraints they're working with - how much bandwidth do they have in each direction, how many images does that allow for, what resolution/format/quality are they using, how many images are in the queue, etc
quelup 1y ago
I sent a selfie when the YT video came out. Even though it's basically a picture of a picture, I can't help but be excited that it's being taken from actual space. Great for getting the kids excited about what engineering can do.
mickey475778 1y ago
[dead]
curtisszmania 1y ago
[dead]

160 points by rossdavidh 1y ago

Website has a link to a YT video that explains it, but basically free service to upload your pic, get a selfie taken on satellite in space, sent back to you. Free.

iambateman 1y ago

This is pretty cool. We uploaded ours a few days ago and still waiting. My five year old son is pumped

layer8 1y ago
From the FAQ it sounds like it may take a few months: “The first batch of selfies should be returning mid-summer and we will email you ahead of time. If you want to jump closer to the front of the queue and not wait a few months, please make sure you are an active CrunchLabs subscriber (Build Box, Hack Pack). Or, if you're an educator, send an email to help@crunchlabs.com and let us know that your selfie is a class photo and we'll take your selfie first!”
- pinoy420 1y ago
  [dead]
- ElijahLynn 1y ago
  Yup, got that same message! Still an amazing thing though! My son and I watched the launch video where they sent it up to space. Highly recommend watching that with whoever you're going to take the selfie with!

aerophilic 1y ago

My kids have loved watching Mark Robers videos, have the subscriptions (one of both the backpack and crunchpack), and we uploaded our video for SatGus. If you have young kids (6-15) these are perfect educational tools. Highly recommend. Only downside is some of them are a bit “mischievous”. For example a “Bobbie trap” that launches balls at whomever tripped the wire. Good times…

schmichael 1y ago
Same! Mark Rober is what changed my mind about YouTube for kids. He's a wildly popular creator that's even shilling a product and yet... I'm ok with all of it? He seems to very legitimately care about sharing getting kids excited about STEM, and if he gets rich doing it: great! The product is less offensive than the sugary cereal I watched commercials for while watching Saturday morning cartoons as a kid. Definitely one of the few YouTube channels I let my kids watch unattended.
- hlfshell 1y ago
  There's shilling a product because someone handed you a bag, and then there's building a product you believe in. You feel okay with it because it's clearly the latter versus another NordVPN commercial. Even if the product ends up failing (and I am under no predilection to believe this will) he has presented nothing but honest enthusiasm towards his goal that you can't help but root for it.
Aurornis 1y ago
We just started watching Mark Rober videos. I started with some random old videos and they were great. Nice educational content in the middle of an entertaining video. Then the algorithm handed us some more recent videos and they felt like a pivot to Nickelodeon style content: We watched Mark Rober run through a green slime obstacle course with a lot of loud noises and action, but basically zero educational value. So as someone new to this: Any tips? Should I be sticking to old videos only if I want some educational value? My kids only watch with me as an activity we do together, so I’m always looking for good videos that can keep us away from the content farm stuff.
- hlfshell 1y ago
  He's gone all in on the Crunch Labs brand, which is kind of built around the younger audience. This isn't a bad thing, but it does mean that older edutainment enjoyers kind of age out of his stuff. Not to say there's no value in them, but there will be more of an entertainment focus than prior edutainment focused videos. I recommend checking out Stuff Made Here; great build videos of engineering principles in an entertaining fashion to show building cool complicated stuff. Xyla Foxlin, a wonderful maker, also posts educational videos between her projects, like an in-depth look at how plane wings work.

sdeframond 1y ago

[flagged]

dylan604 1y ago
At this point, couldn't that just comp the selfie with automation? Who would ever know if it was actually displayed in spaaaaace or not?
GuB-42 1y ago
SATGUS is a 12U CubeSat, I don't know the mass, but it seems that 20kg is a reasonable assumption. As with all CubeSats, they didn't use a rocket just for it, it is an auxiliary payload to a big satellite mission. According to Wikipedia the Falcon 9 has a payload ratio of about 4%, and assuming everything else is propellant (not that far off), that's about 500kg of propellant to launch that satellite. But propellant is mostly oxygen, let's say between 2:1 and 3:1 oxygen:fuel, it means about 150 kg of kerosene to launch that satellite. That's your fossil fuel usage. Similar to what it takes to bring a passenger across the Atlantic on a typical airliner. It means that taking these pictures from space burns less fossil fuel than overseas vacation pictures. Of course, there is probably a lot more fossil fuel burned during the process than by the launch itself: building and transporting the parts, business travels, powering the servers, etc... But the same can be said of most endeavors at this scale.
- sdeframond 1y ago
  > It means that taking these pictures from space burns less fossil fuel than overseas vacation pictures. That's comparing grapes to watermelons. It doesn't take getting on a plane to have a picture of a picture of oneself taken from an oversea country.
tgsovlerkhgsel 1y ago
Historically, space has always also been a tool to get people, especially kids, excited for science.

jayknight 1y ago

Is there a limit to what you can upload? I figure they're not just going to let people upload a million pictures, but can I do one per kid?

roydivision 1y ago
It seems from my own upload that you are limited to one / email address. So yes you could just use a bunch of aliases, but I guess they're banking on most people only having access to a few addresses.

encoderer 1y ago

My 7 year old got into rober videos about a year ago. Really hope she always prefers this kind of stuff to junk food like Mr Beast.

ElijahLynn 1y ago

SatGus launch party (great watch) https://space.crunchlabs.com/livestream https://space.crunchlabs.com/livestream https://www.youtube.com/live/6Zqe3SJVjUM?si=CB7_3YCQTx6GqZ1x https://www.youtube.com/live/6Zqe3SJVjUM?si=CB7_3YCQTx6GqZ1x (direct) *SatGus is named after Phat Gus from Mark Robert's squirrel obstacle course.

icameron 1y ago

Shoot it’s getting a 504 Gateway timeout. Must be trending!

Brajeshwar 1y ago

A few years back, my co-founder and I thought we should try something outside of work, something interesting but that may not be useful but fun. But we disbanded after a few discussion round without building it. A mobile app that will help you time and position yourself along the path of your "order" where a satellite flyby and take a selfie of earth with you in it. We realize that even at an expense it might not be able to make a person out of the bigger picture and the cost would be too high. Even after enhancement (our ML Model), it won't still make significant difference of value or fun.

glassofbees 1y ago

I'm really curious about the technical constraints they're working with - how much bandwidth do they have in each direction, how many images does that allow for, what resolution/format/quality are they using, how many images are in the queue, etc

quelup 1y ago

I sent a selfie when the YT video came out. Even though it's basically a picture of a picture, I can't help but be excited that it's being taken from actual space. Great for getting the kids excited about what engineering can do.

mickey475778 1y ago

[dead]

curtisszmania 1y ago

[dead]