Amazing Space Photo

[RazorDingo]

What was the total budget for the mission that took the photograph above?

A) $1.5 billion

B) $220 million

C) $148

If you guessed "C" - you'd be right. According to a story in Wired's Gadget Lab a couple of MIT students filled a weather balloon with helium, and mounted a cheap Canon A470 compact camera inside a styrofoam beer cooler.

Instant hand warmers kept things from freezing up and made sure the batteries stayed warm enough to work.

Of course, all this would be pointless if the guys couldn’t find the rig when it landed, so they dropped a prepaid GPS-equipped cellphone inside the box for tracking. Total cost, including duct tape? $148.

Read the rest of the story for more details. But it is absolutely amazing what these guys were able to accomplish.

 

[Swampfox]

I remember seeing that a few months back. Maybe NASA and the US gov't needs to take a $$$ saving tips! LOL

 

[jazzman]

Thanks. I just came up with an idea for my kid's science fair experiment!

 

[cricky101]

The line that got me in that article was that the cooler they floated up went so high, it took 40 minutes for it to fall back to the ground after the balloon popped.

Crazy!

 

[Emmett]

They're MIT kids. Just imagine what they'll be able to do with a NASA budget when they graduate!

 

[RazorDingo]

The story gets more interesting the deeper you look into it.

One thing some of you may be wondering about: FAA regulations and restrictions apply to balloons with a payload greater than 4 pounds. (Obviously anything larger than that is going to pose a potential collision hazard for any airplanes that cross its flight path.) So keep the weight on any kids science projects low.

Secondly, even though this balloon got up to more than 93,000 feet - it isn't actually classified as "space" - the term they use is "near space."

The world record for powered flight, set by a SR-71 Blackbird reconnaissance aircraft is just over 80,000 feet - or two miles lower than the balloon got to. (Obviously, the SR-71 may - if not certainly can - fly a lot higher than that, but the limits are still classified.)

People have been taking very high altitude pictures from weather balloons for a long time - since the 1920s. The thing that is remarkable about this is the fact that by using readily available, off-the-shelf electronics, how cheaply they were able to accomplish the mission.

For people looking to a project for their schoolkids: I'd actually recommend they stick to a tethered balloon - using a couple thousand feet of fishing line on a reel. Not having to deal with the complications of using GPS to track and recover the balloon greatly simplifies matters. It also means you can "reel in" your project for reuse - in case the pictures don't work out quite the way you planned. Just use common sense where you do this sort of project - make sure you aren't in the flight path of any local airports.

 

[ouch]

$148

Big deal. I have the same picture, and it didn't cost me a nickel. See?

 

[Cheech]

Its things like this, and the Archimedes heat ray experiment, and the tin foil helmet study; that make me imagine MIT is not a real place. It is a never-never land where dreams come true. And they share them with us... And they have grad students instead of fairy Godmothers.