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Teens capture images of space with £56 camera and balloon
- jibiki 18y agoWould this be legal in the US?
- rms 18y agoLooks like it is legal, against my intuition on the matter. From http://vpizza.org/~jmeehan/balloon/ http://vpizza.org/~jmeehan/balloon/: Part 101 of the FAA Regulations covers balloons, kites and rockets. The first section of Part 101 spells out exactly which kinds of devices the rest of Part 101 applies to. Regarding "unmanned free balloons," Part 101 applies if the balloon: (i) Carries a payload package that weighs more than four pounds and has a weight/size ratio of more than three ounces per square inch on any surface of the package, determined by dividing the total weight in ounces of the payload package by the area in square inches of its smallest surface; (ii) Carries a payload package that weighs more than six pounds; (iii) Carries a payload, of two or more packages, that weighs more than 12 pounds; or (iv) Uses a rope or other device for suspension of the payload that requires an impact force of more than 50 pounds to separate the suspended payload from the balloon.
- DanielBMarkham 18y agosure people do this all of the time -- its a neat experiment for kids of any age EDIT: It's even more fun with a lawn chair and a person in it http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Larry_Walters http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Larry_Walters
- rjurney 18y agoThere is no limit to the karma you should receive for introducing me to my new hero, Lawn Chair Larry. 'He was immediately arrested by waiting members of the Long Beach Police Department; when asked by a reporter why he had done it, Walters replied, "A man can't just sit around."' What a quote!
- DanielBMarkham 18y agoLawn Chair Larry is the man. What a brilliant yet completely insane idea! I especially like the part (not sure if it was mentioned in the Wiki article) where commercial airliners were reporting a man in a lawn chair at 15,000 feet. I would have loved to be eavesdropping on some of those cockpit discussions. Hey Bob! Say! Is that a man in a lawn chair over there next to that cloud? Whah? If I'm not mistaken, they've started an annual race or something in his name.
- rjurney 18y agoNot only that... but a man in a lawnchair at 16K feet... with a GUN. hahahaha
- donaq 18y agoHe committed suicide at the age of 44 by shooting himself in the heart in Angeles National Forest in 1993. This is a story with a sad ending. I wonder why he did it?
- rjurney 18y agoVietnam Vet, quit his job as a truck driver to be a motivational speaker which didn't work out, girlfriend of 15 years left him, only part-time employed as a security guard. Looks like it was the 'Nam.
- cousin_it 18y agoIllegal in Russia. We can't even buy aerial photography services - no online map of Russia has them. It's sad when your government denies you access to the skies.
- Edinburger 18y agoGoogle Earth provides satellite photography. What am I missing?
- cousin_it 18y agoI said aerial, not space. Of course there's satellite imagery, e.g. our site http://kosmosnimki.ru http://kosmosnimki.ru has it.
- msbmsb 18y agoA lot of google earth imagery is aerial and not from satellites.
- deleted 18y ago[deleted]
- cousin_it 18y agoRepeating for the third time: No online map has aerial imagery of Russia. Note I said online map, not Google Earth which is a desktop application. (Although it's still true for Google Earth.) Also note I said aerial rather than satellite, and Russia rather than e.g. San Francisco. It amazes me that such a simple sentence has been misunderstood on all three points. A sign of the changing times?
- msbmsb 18y agoEvidently so. Sorry.
- bprater 18y agoAnybody know how they got the images back down to earth?
- deleted 18y ago[deleted]
- carlosrr 18y agoLooks like gravity helped: "At over 100,000ft the balloon lost its inflation and the equipment was returned to the earth. "We travelled 10km to find the sensors and photographic card, which was still emitting its signal, even though it had been exposed to the most extreme conditions."
- dkokelley 18y agoI'm surprised that it didn't travel farther than 10km. There must have been 0 wind that day.
- kirse 18y agoSeriously. I ran a little experiment back one high school summer when I had a helium tank laying around and was bored/curious to know how far your typical lost-to-the-sky "Walmart" helium balloon would travel. I launched about 50 balloons of varying inflation levels and groups (i.e. 1,2, and 3 balloons) and attached ribbons to them and tied laminated index cards with a numeric-ID and my email address. I ended up getting a few responses and I believe one of the single balloons traveled over 76 miles before setting down in someone's backyard. The average was something like 50 miles, and that was on a warm night with <5mph wind.
- Gibbon 18y agoI found a similar balloon in a tree once. It had been launched at a birthday party for an 85 year old woman and travelled about 250 kms. We launched thousands of baloons with index cards, once a year, in primary school but I never received a reply from any of mine. It's definitely fun though!
- d0mine 18y agoHere's their Flickr photostream http://www.flickr.com/photos/meteotek08/ http://www.flickr.com/photos/meteotek08/ And the blog in Catalan (see photos) http://teslabs.com/meteotek08/ http://teslabs.com/meteotek08/
- noonespecial 18y agoThis image showing the flight and altitude path was particularly well done. http://www.flickr.com/photos/meteotek08/3337008176/in/set-72157614847488964/ http://www.flickr.com/photos/meteotek08/3337008176/in/set-72...
- critic 18y agoHate to be a party-pooper, but if you can send a balloon there, it's not outer space yet.
- jws 18y ago"of" != "from"
- danielzarick 18y agoThat is true, but it still doesn't demerit what they did. I find this to be pretty amazing, especially since done by students just a year or two younger than me.
- arnorhs 18y agoThe article mentions a twitter account with no link to it. Can anybody provide that?
- 10ren 18y ago"At over 100,000ft the balloon lost its inflation" wonderful euphemism. Oblig. Hack: Quite often I want to refer back to a particular phrase or word in a book, and I have a devil of a time finding it. At times I've methodically re-read 10 or 20 pages in failing to find it. I've wished I could just google the damn book. I can. By using Google Books or Amazon's search facility. I mention this here, because I wanted to use an expression of Gladwell's in Outliers, about someone "customizing their environment", and then saying " "customize" -- using Lareau's wonderful term" on page 105. I'd misremembered it as "lovely euphemism".
- danw 18y agoI would love to see an instructable of this
- ars 18y agoSo the balloon descended because it popped. If they put a pressure release valve on it (one designed to work by relative pressure differences, not absolute, and I think most are anyway), how high could you get? I'm guessing to the point where the difference in mass between the helium inside the balloon and the air outside is not enough to loft the camera. But with a light camera that has to be just about outer space, no? Edit: And despite the risk, I think they should use hydrogen. If I'm not mistaken, it's 1/4th the mass of helium. I don't know how much higher that will take them though, but it has to make some difference.
- noodle 18y agohydrogen would probably be tougher to get their hands on for your average schoolkids.
- jrockway 18y agoYou can make hydrogen with a glass of water and a battery. It is not hard to get.
- noodle 18y agowhile true, its probably easier/safer to go buy a tank of helium. and easier to get the approval of a school
- nradov 18y agoThat gets you hydrogen at ambient pressure. To get the hydrogen into the balloon you have to compress it at least a little bit. Running hydrogen through a compressor can be extremely dangerous if you don't have the proper equipment.
- ars 18y agoWell you could always simply make it _inside_ the balloon. And it couldn't be that hard to buy a canister of compressed hydrogen. But, it's probably much much more expensive (I'm guessing 10x more), so probably not practical for students.
- debt 18y agoI wonder if you could strap a large rocket to it and have it launch once the balloon pops. How feasible is that? EDIT: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rockoon http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rockoon