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HD Video From the Edge of Space, On the Cheap

Posted by timothy on from the commendably-few-casualties dept.

SoundDoc75 links to a page describing the motivations and problem-solving behind "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 — 107,145 feet."

12 of 205 comments (clear)

  1. Re:DUP by frovingslosh · · Score: 1, Interesting

    http://hardware.slashdot.org/article.pl?sid=09/09/13/1712216

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  2. Kind of cool, but it made me dizzy by swb · · Score: 3, Interesting

    Can they control or limit the camera spin? It makes sense they can't right after the balloon bursts, but I would think there might be some kind of tricks they could do in the atmosphere on ascent and descent.

  3. Before the days of HD ... by Skapare · · Score: 5, Interesting

    ... and memory cards, ham radio operators did this one in 1989, which was just standard definition, but it went further (from Illinois to nearly Indianapolis) and higher. It just transmitted the signal back via the UHF transmitter on board.

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  4. Valve by l0b0 · · Score: 2, Interesting

    IANAAE, but I can't help thinking that a valve on the balloon would enable it to survive longer, siphoning off gas when the inner pressure gets too high. What other cheap improvements are available to these guys?

  5. now I know by Luyseyal · · Score: 3, Interesting

    Now I have some idea of what it was like for Joe Kittinger, a guy who sky-dived over 102,000 ft. back in the Fifties.

    -l

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  6. They could add a rudder... by t0qer · · Score: 4, Interesting

    Watching the video I thought the same thing about controlling the spin. All it would take is a rudder mounted on a boom (no elevator).

    Then again, why not add an elevator, wings, ailerons, etc? They could add a pico pilot

    http://www.u-nav.com/picopilot.html

    And have the camera always pointed towards home. Then when the balloon bursts, instead of an out of control fall, they could have a nice controlled glide back to earth.

    By giving the wings a ton of dihedral, it would automagically keep the camera steady on descent.

    1. Re:They could add a rudder... by SoundDoc75 · · Score: 2, Interesting

      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!

  7. Re:There's a reason this doesn't happen often by Jeff+DeMaagd · · Score: 4, Interesting

    Just a motor attached to a spinning disk would have halped a lot, two of these mounted perpendicular to each other should be enough to greatly dampen the spinning and oscillation.

  8. Re:Questions for Someone who knows this stuff... by Geoffrey.landis · · Score: 2, Interesting

    Almost identical to a ground launch. Getting 100 km up is the easy part (note: they didn't, they got less than 33 km up), getting over 7 km/s of horizontal velocity is the hard part. It's so hard that most boosters start accelerating as soon as they leave the ground.. that makes them supersonic in the low atmosphere, which means they need a fancy aeroshell or they'll burn up.

    Right. To be fair, though, although getting to orbital velocity is the hard part, you do gain a bit by starting from outside (the dense part of) the atmosphere. Turns out that, for a SSTO, that's significant (mostly because SSTOs are so sensitive to small variations to start with). Ages ago I calculated that starting out above the atmosphere would give a typical SSTO about a 20% gain in mass to orbit. Interestingly, a significant fraction of this is due to the increased performance of rocket engines in vacuum compared to operating under pressure.

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  9. Different Perspective by gone.fishing · · Score: 4, Interesting

    For those of you complaining about the jerky video: STFU!

    For those of you saying it isn't practical: So What!

    I want to take my hat off to these dudes and give them a hearty round of applause and say "Great job guys!"

    My point here is these guys had a vision, that led to an idea, that lead to an exparament where a couple of pretty normal folks did something extrodinary. It is the same kind of curiosity that Ben Franklin had when he flew the kite and "discovered" electricity.

    Those of you who have offered criticisim, I ask you to reply to this post and tell me what you have done without backing that approximates or bests their very cool accomplishment.

    Those of you who have a vision share it, maybe someone will help you make it an idea so, I invite you to share your vision.

    For those of you who have an idea, share it and maybe someone will help you make it real.

    We don't need government, business, or universities to make the world a better place; just a few ordinary folks who try to do extrodinary things!

    Those of you who think this is just very cool, use this thread to virtually offer your applause and (real) encouraging comments!

  10. Re:How misleading! by kimvette · · Score: 3, Interesting

    It was mechanically coupled to the styrofoam enclosure, so there is a good deal of surface area to respond to sound waves. Most of the sound at that altitude seems from the enclosure anyhow - that would be picked up by the non-isolated mic even in a vacuum with that setup.

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  11. Re:How misleading! by Ksevio · · Score: 2, Interesting

    Yeah, if you read the article (kind of weird to do) they say that it did stop picking up sounds and only picked up vibrations directly connected to it like the balloon popping.