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Brooklyn Father And Son Launch Homemade Spacecraft
Adair writes "A father and son team from Brooklyn successfully launched a homemade spacecraft nearly 19 miles (around 100,000 feet) above the Earth's surface. The craft was a 19-inch helium-filled weather balloon attached to a Styrofoam capsule that housed an HD video camera and an iPhone. The camera recorded video of its ascent into the stratosphere, its apogee where the balloon reached its breaking point, and its descent back to earth. They rigged a parachute to the capsule to aid in its return to Earth, and the iPhone broadcast its GPS coordinates so they could track it down. The craft landed a mere 30 miles from its launch point in Newburgh, NY, due to a quick ascent and two differing wind patterns. The pair spent eight months researching and test-flying the craft before launching it in August. Columbia University Professor of Astronomy Marcel Aguera said, 'They were very good but also very lucky.'"
Seriously, it only goes up 30km. And there is no improvement that can possibly be made to a helium balloon that can make it actually go any higher than Earth's atmosphere. It's a good accomplishment but calling it a spacecraft is a bit disingenuous.
The other reasons it won't be in the press: It didn't make it to space and it seems like everyone else is doing it too. Yeah, its a nice accomplishment, yeah, they should be proud of it but its not unique in the least, it seems like the past year everyone has been doing essentially what they have done.
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It's not even a matter of trying to draw a fuzzy boundary. This was a balloon, with no propulsion. By its very nature there's no way it can go above the atmosphere regardless of how you define the boundary of space.
I remember many similar stories already making the headlines here. I don't want to downplay their achievement, it's cool, but it's not really new or exciting anymore for anyone but them. I was hoping a real heavier-than-air craft, not another weather balloon.
Actually, my childhood definition of "reaching space" was reaching escape velocity.
I do not believe in karma. "Funny"=-6. Do good and forbid evil. Yours, Oft-Offtopic Flamebaiting Troll.
To be fair, atmospheric pressure at 19 miles is just a little under 1% of what is at sea level and about equivalent to the atmosphere of Mars.
But we've seen these kinds of cheap high altitude balloons cover by Slashdot for about a year now and every time it happens, it seems to be picked up as a "new" event.
The thing that is really annoying though is that they all are doing the same thing without any improvement. Next time I have to read this story, please say someone floated a model rocket with an M engine up to 20 miles and got it the golden suborbital height.
If slashdot ever allows real article moderation (and not that firehose abortion), in addition to 'flamebait' and 'troll', can we have a '-1, pedant bait' article? Seriously, at the time of this comment, of 35 articles, at least half are arguing over whether or not this is truly a spacecraft. It's really easy to shit on others from the safety of your parents' basement. Whether it has been done before is also irrelevant. This father and son is doing something. There's too many complainers to call someone else out specifically, but what have you people done lately? I don't claim to have done anything interesting of late, but I also am not shitting on what others have done.
Jesus was all right but his disciples were thick and ordinary. -John Lennon
But its 19 mile ascent showed the plucky determination of the American family unit, and as such it may as well have reached the moon! That's what really counts here, and it's important that people are told about this feat so they feel better about things.
Meanwhile, the Chinese are sending an actual spacecraft to the moon. But, whatever... .
May the Maths Be with you!
Apples to Apples, cynic.
Why can't people ever be happy when enterprising amateurs do something cool?
Isn't this at least the third time /. has had an article about somebody who has stuck a camera to a weather balloon?
What exactly is newsworthy about this?
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Even better is you can use a $30 Boost phone to do the same thing.
Way better than risking a $1000+ iPhone that may not be recovered.
This is cool, but not original, The Register has something a little cooler in the works.
Still, major kudos to this Father/Son team.
_
Let me know when China's society has enough disposable income that an average family can send a camera 19 miles into the atmosphere as a family science project - "for fun".
I'm happy for the enterprising amateurs. I'm not happy for the guy that stuck a blatantly false headline on this.
I agree, I don't know why slashdot (and other "news" outlets) keep running stories of this kind. 100,000 feet ain't space. It ain't even CLOSE to space (Usually defined as above 100,000 meters-- over three times as high), and it sure as hell ain't orbit, which is the kind of space people usually *think* of as being spaceflight.
And it isn't even unusual-- basically, this is nice, but the bottom line is that these guys flew a weather balloon, which reached the kind of altitudes that such balloons usually reach. High school students do this routinely-- hundreds of them do it every year.
Congrats, guys, good work, and all that, but it's not news.
It contained the magic phrase "iPhone" and is therefore automatically cool and stuff.
To have a right to do a thing is not at all the same as to be right in doing it