Slashdot Mirror

Anybody remember this Slashdot article from last year? http://hardware.slashdot.org/story/09/09/23/1958212/HD-Video-From-the-Edge-of-Space-On-the-Cheap

And from his site (http://bear.sbszoo.com/) he's been sending stuff into the stratosphere for over a decade now with current launches done for high schools to send their "projects" up.

Love reading the write ups.

Slashdot has

http://science.slashdot.org/story/07/10/24/1813205/Huge-Balloon-Lofts-New-Telescope

reported on this

http://science.slashdot.org/story/06/12/21/1328206/BLAST-Telescope-About-To-Launch-From-Antarctica

several times

http://science.slashdot.org/story/06/09/19/2312240/Space-On-a-Shoestring

over the past

http://hardware.slashdot.org/story/05/05/16/1845220/DIY-High-Altitude-Ballooning

few years.

http://science.slashdot.org/story/09/03/18/1645216/DIY-Space-Photography

And each time

http://www.sbszoo.com/bear/sable/sable3.htm

people are surprised. Maybe I read Slashdot too much. Yeah, that's the problem...

This has bee done for year by amateurs. I have been following these people for atleast a couple of years: BEAR

They have some AWESOME video of their attempts.

I wonder why NASA is just now finding about about this stuff???

Thank you. I blame YouTube in part for the jerky video, as well yes, there were MANY things we COULD have done in order to try to stabilize the camera, Gyro's, Fins, etc..etc..etc... Don't think that many wern't considered (you don't go sending a $1000 camera & spending the time/money doing this on a whim) but when it comes down to it KISS won out. at 107K feet fins don't help, no real air to push against, a gyro might have helped though, but the package was kept small for a reason. External fins might also have gotten tangled in the parachute lines after burst, so we kept this one nice and simple. Looking at the video after recovery, I never knew the decent was so rough! I'm actually suprised it survived. Some of our previous launches have gone higher, some lower, each one is a little different and unique. The next one will have more stable video, the wings will help with that... More into on this and our other flights at: http://bear.sbszoo.com/bear3-4/bear4.htm and http://bear.sbszoo.com/

Thank you. I blame YouTube in part for the jerky video, as well yes, there were MANY things we COULD have done in order to try to stabilize the camera, Gyro's, Fins, etc..etc..etc... Don't think that many wern't considered (you don't go sending a $1000 camera & spending the time/money doing this on a whim) but when it comes down to it KISS won out. at 107K feet fins don't help, no real air to push against, a gyro might have helped though, but the package was kept small for a reason. External fins might also have gotten tangled in the parachute lines after burst, so we kept this one nice and simple. Looking at the video after recovery, I never knew the decent was so rough! I'm actually suprised it survived. Some of our previous launches have gone higher, some lower, each one is a little different and unique. The next one will have more stable video, the wings will help with that... More into on this and our other flights at: http://bear.sbszoo.com/bear3-4/bear4.htm and http://bear.sbszoo.com/

shhhhh! If you read over our website http://bear.sbszoo.com/bear3-4/bear4.htm you'd see thats allready in the works... ;) The thought of adding a tail for stabilization was there, just never implimented, its always shoulda/coulda after the fact lol, next time will be different/better/bigger! Gyro's may have been a option, but powering one over the full 4.5hr flight, and having one that would work at -30C and at that altitude would be another challenge. We were just happy to have the camera work the whole time!

Okay:

"a 10-minute HD video taken on August 24th with a Canon Vixia HF20 HD camera suspended from a 1500g hydrogen balloon and launched near Edmonton, Alberta. This is the first known amateur video taken from this height â" 107,145 feet."

for those who are interested, this bear project has a twitter page : https://twitter.com/BEAR_HAB. (linked twice)

"SABLE-3 was launched on Saturday, August 11th, 2007, at 9:31 AM with a payload, consisting of a Nikon Coolpix P2 digital camera set to take 1 image every minute and a Byonics MicroTrak 300 APRS Tracker, that the Kaysam 1200 gram balloon carried to over 117,597 feet. The last payload camera photo from the ground was just before it was launched, at 9:31 AM, and the last photo before the balloon burst was the photo above, at 12:01 PM, exactly 2.5 hours or 150 images later." link - more info here

Southern Alberta Balloon Launch Experiment did that in August 2007.

There are other groups doing it.....
Its been a few years since our last launch, but I've (we've) sent up 2 packages so far. one hit 104,205ft the other hit 99,482ft.
http://bear.sbszoo.com/
One thing we did, was not just send up balloon packages to track, but we also sent up a cross-band repeater on each balloon to see how far we could talk at 100,00ft. (we're central Alberta, and had check-ins from south of the boarder).

Who says a ham radio needs to be a huge tube powered WWII relic? Our entire balloon package, with APRS, a cross-band repeater, batteries, the whole bit came in at only 3.5lbs!

Ham radio's come a long way in the last few years, APRS (who needs onstar?), ATV, IRLP, many different projects and technologies in the works. Nice to see others doing interesting stuff as well.
sd