Slashdot Mirror
Balloon and Duct Tape Deliver Great Space Photos
krou writes "With a budget of £500, Robert Harrison used cheap parts, a weather balloon, some duct tape, a digital camera, and a GPS device to capture some great photos of the earth from space that resulted in NASA calling him to find out how he had done it. 'A guy phoned up who worked for NASA who was interested in how we took the pictures,' said Mr Harrison. 'He wanted to know how the hell we did it. He thought we used a rocket. They said it would have cost them millions of dollars.' The details of his balloon are as follows: he used 'an ordinary Canon camera mounted on a weather balloon,' 'free software' that 'reprogrammed the camera to wake up every five minutes and take eight photographs and a video before switching off for a rest.' He also ensured the camera was 'wrapped in loft insulation' to make sure it could operate at the cold temperatures. The GPS device allowed him to pinpoint the balloon's location, and retrieve the camera when it fell down to earth attached to a small parachute."
This is awesome, kudos to the guy who pulled it off.
Its also pretty sad that the engineers at NASA never thought of it...
when you can just push the shutter button from your lawn chair.
Nullius in verba
... can be found here: http://www.robertharrison.org/icarus/wordpress/?page_id=36
'If Christ had tweeted the sermon on the mount, it might have lasted until nightfall.' - John Perry Barlow
Yeah, of course NASA is too stupid to think of using balloons.
There are pictures, and even nice videos that come out every few months from folks playing around with high altitude balloons. It seems kind of unlikely to me that NASA would have just suddenly discovered this and been amazed. Until there is confirmation from NASA, I'm just going to assume this is BS, either made up by the guy, or some prankster called him.
It will require more than duct tape and £500 to resurrect his server after a slashdotting.
Well, there's spam egg sausage and spam, that's not got much spam in it.
Slashdotted, pics here:
http://www.flickr.com/photos/30721501@N05/collections/72157621244472915/
Hey, Windows users, there is no such thing as "forward" slash, there is only slash and backslash.
He should send a complimentary set of plans to the Flat Earth Society. They could use the perspective.
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???
a balloon-mounted camera that can travel up to 21.7 miles (35km) above the surface of the Earth
According to most people, space starts at 100km. It's impossible for a balloon to get that high, because there is no atmosphere at that height - and balloons require atmosphere. Even the blog specifically states:
...pictures of the Earth from near space...
So, there it is. Not space. Only near space. Summary is wrong.
Umm a couple of college kids fom MIT did this last year for $150 dollars. http://www.wired.com/gadgetlab/2009/09/the-150-space-camera-mit-students-beat-nasa-on-beer-money-budget/
You are entitled to your own opinions, not your own facts.
...this guy could be a leading US space pioneer for the next decade or so.
Actually, thats a myth.
http://www.snopes.com/business/genius/spacepen.asp
The "space pen" was developed independently from NASA and NASA did in fact use pencils on several early missions.
If sharing a song makes you a pirate, what do I have to share to be a ninja?
I mean... whats the big deal here that NASA would care?
It has its own high altitide balloon program - where they do real science - for weeks at a time - not just cool pictures for a few hours...
http://astrophysics.gsfc.nasa.gov/balloon/
http://www.csbf.nasa.gov/
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...
Most folk'll never lose a toe, and then again some folk'll...
Shows how much thinking "out of the box" goes on in top engineering circles today...
Why are you surprised? NASA spent millions to develop a pen that could write in space... the Russians used a pencil. Sometimes people look for a really complicated solution instead of going for something cheap and cheerful that gets-the-job-done.
To be fair, though, NASA saved billions by faking the moon landing.
Now that I think about it, I'm pretty sure everything I just said is completely wrong.
FA is a troll and the article likely would not have been published if it wasn't a UK news outlet and didn't include a jab at NASA. NASA funds Spacegrant Consortiums doing high altitude balloon research at several US universities. The one I worked on was very similar except we had a license amateur radio operator so we could legally use an APRS system for tracking the balloon. Back then where was no CHDK to use for a cheap Canon camera so camera was controlled by a 555 timer circuit wired to the shutter button. The highest cost was the helium when you figure in the cost of storing large tanks of compressed gas. Our system was slightly more expensive because the payload usually also contained a logging system that stored additional sensor data like temperature and pressure.