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Australian Student Balloon Rises 100,000 Feet, With a Digital Camera
hype7 writes "An Australian student at Deakin University had a fascinating idea for a final project — to send a balloon up 100,000ft (~30,000 metres) into the stratosphere with a digital camera attached. The university was supportive, and the project took shape. Although there were some serious hitches along the way, the project was successful, and he managed to retrieve the balloon — with the pictures. What's really amazing is that the total cost was so low; the most expensive part was buying the helium gas for approximately AUD$250 (~USD$200)."
Didn't some kids at MIT send a balloon out of the atmosphere for less than $150 USD recently? What's so special about this?
Duh. Are you serious? That was an expensive project with plenty of manpower. This was one guy and his girlfriend spending a few hundred dollars.
I don't see why that's a big deal. Neil Armstrong went to the MOON in and made it back in one piece with cameras rolling. OK, they weren't digital cameras and the whole job cost a lot more than $200 but it was back in the 60s...
Brain surgery - it's not rocket science!
Wow - what a complainer. Sure it's not that novel, but still cool and you just have to shit all over it. He built his own microcontroller system - that's not that trivial.
As for your suggestions:
1) a stabilizer would either drain the batteries or freeze up with the low temperatures. Adding complexity with little benefit does not make it better
2) might be interesting. IR might just show that the earth is warmer than space. Ooooo now there's science!
3) sure, put lasers on a balloon that can fly into airline flight paths. Now that's safe.
4) real time image analysis. You do realize what the computing capabilities of a microcontroller are, don't you?
5) why implement the complexity of a wireless grid? Just launch several balloons all time stamped and you can process the data later. Again, needless complexity doesn't make it better, it just makes the probability of failure much higher and drives up the cost exponentially.
6) something useful? How about a big floating sign saying ACs don't have a freaking clue what they are talking about?
Tesla was a genius. Edison however was a overrated hack who liked to torture puppies.