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HD Video From the Edge of Space, On the Cheap
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."
The title made me think we had finally reached the outer edge of the Universe, where God lives!
That's not the first amateur video from that height, I've seen the quality of the video astronauts shoot. If they're not amateur cameramen, who is?
In SOVIET RUSSIA... erm...NSA AMERICA, the Internet logs onto YOU!
No, they're professional astronauts with a hobby. I was a professional fireman for years, and sometimes at night I played Pokemon. That doesn't make me a professional Pokemon Trainer.
In SOVIET RUSSIA... erm...NSA AMERICA, the Internet logs onto YOU!
The boundary of space is conventionally defined at 100 km, or about 260,000 feet. Sending a weather balloon to 107,000 feet is nice, but it's only 40% of the way to the "edge of space."
Which, of course, you could have realized just by thinking about it. We define "space" as meaning "above the sensible atmosphere," and if you get there in a balloon, it couldn't be above the atmosphere.
editors are cracksmoke
And I'm glad. You see, this information comes from Edmonton. To get it to Slashdot, brave Canadian Voyageurs and their faithful Eskimo sidekicks must trek through millions of miles of frozen wastelands filled with polar bears, undead elk that thirst for dwarven blood, and the occasional crazed Frenchman. It is only the far and distant beacon of crack smoke billowing from the obsidian tower of Slashdot HQ that prevents them from getting lost in the soul-destroying wilds and eaten by madding tundra, a close cousin to the dread gazebo.
... 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.
now we need to go OSS in diesel cars
It's a shame they didn't put some gyros and a free mount to get better video. If you're going to bother buying a new HD video camera, fly from Japan to Canada and (presumably) help pay for this balloon launch it seems it would have been worth it to put at least one gyro on there. It would have added to the weight (both due to the gyro and due to the extra batteries needed to power it), but it would have dramatically improved the video quality.
(I'm not referring to expensive professional, bulky gyro mounts like http://www.camerasystems.com/rentals.htm -- any gyro would have been better than nothing -- heck, even a spindle mount with a wind vane on the styrofoam cube would have been a big improvement).
Yeah, it's the same thing.
Except that the other story was about different people. And they were from MIT, not Sherwood Park, Canada. And they used a still camera, not a video one.
So yeah, except for the fact that everything is different, it's completely the same.
Who cares? What matters is that they did something that was awesome to do. Imagine yourself lifting up a baloon with a camera attached to it, wondering what will happen. Later on you find your camera back. You wait for what seems to be like forever for the 32GB to get transfered onto your computer. You watch the video from when you were standing in a grass field and watch what happened when you were there on the ground. You watch your camera fly into outer fscking space. You feel like "WOW! Dude that's beautifull... we freakin done it! We actually did it! It worked!".
And then you feel awesome for a complete month, figuring out what to do next, while the world gets to see what you saw.
You're suppose to like this, given the fact that you are on /. What's wrong with you?
Here be signatures
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.
Weight restrictions vs performance. The envelope is filled to 25% capacity with helium, then released. As the balloon ascends, the gas expands, filling the envelope completely. Once it reaches altitude, it will stay there until either the membrane fails or programmed cutter severs the the tether, letting the payload descend back to the ground. A release valve would prolong the flight, but with amateur rides like this, they usually let it ride up until it bursts at a calculated altitude from the overpressure. 100K feet is impressive and the video is stunning.
First rule of holes; When in one, stop digging.
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.
The Apollo astronauts were trained by a professional photographer on how to use the custom (Hasselbak or something close to that.) cameras for use on the moon.
They were modified Hasselblad cameras (a very nice medium format film camera). They brought the film back but left the cameras on the moon.
I am a member of the Tennessee Balloon Group. We had a parachute failure on one of our flights. TABEL-5 if I remember correctly. It burned in at a whopping 55 MPH and landed in a tree. We only launch if the predicted burst and landing is over a rural area.
--fatboy
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!