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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.'"
This is a very clever use of an iPhone. I would love to see this one used as a yearlong high school science project. The ROI on materials is incredible here.
19 miles is still in the stratosphere.
"Total destruction the only solution" - Bob Marley
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.
Taxation is legalized theft, no more, no less.
Nearly the same exact thing was done over a year ago for a budget of only $150 by college students from MIT.
http://www.wired.com/gadgetlab/2009/09/the-150-space-camera-mit-students-beat-nasa-on-beer-money-budget/
And this?: http://www.dailymail.co.uk/sciencetech/article-1260323/British-aerospace-enthusiast-takes-NASA-style-photographs-using-helium-balloon-pocket-camera.html
Seriously, are we going to be calling it spacecraft? What is it going to be next? The Flip based UFO?
pleaaaseee.... gimme a break...
that 19 inch helium ballon doesn't have much of a payload, so you can't stick a big model rocket in there.
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You *could* possibly stick a small model rocket, and have the iPhone fire it when they reach high enough an altitude. A small rocket with 5 seconds of thrust maybe.
You could even modify the shape of the exhaust nozzle for optimum vacuum performance since there's almost air there
while that would be cool, it's still nowhere near enough to actually get it in 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.
Isn't this some sort of aid to terrorists? Combined with the Plane Finder AR app, oooooo spooky. They should ban helium.
rewriting history since 2109
Because the craft made it so high and the fact that they put an Iphone inside it now becomes a threat to our spy staelites (read"we may not be able to spy on our own citizens")and the NSA has deemed it a security threat and removed the story from most major news outlets. Sheesh this country's gone to hell.
"We are just a war away from Amerikastan. When god vs god the undoing of man." Dave Mustaine
There is one on n900 - it measures how high can you throw you n900 and how high is the drop, using the timer and accelerometer.
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
You sure told that 8 year old. Kudos.
1. It is a balloon. Not even the people who fly these for a living call them spacecraft. Says WikiP: "A spacecraft is a craft or machine designed for spaceflight." This thing popped when it rose above too much atmosphere. It was not designed for space. It was still in the stratosphere when it failed according to design.
2. The Karman line is the generally accepted edge of space at 100 km (62.5 mi). This is where an aircraft would have to fly so fast to get lift from the thin air that it would achieve orbital velocity in the attempt and so wings would be superfluous. The US has awarded astronaut wings to pilots flying above 50 miles. This doesn't change the objective criteria of the Karman line.
3. The CSXT GoFast achieved space altitude (72 miles) on May 17 2004 and is the only unmanned civilian craft to do so to date. It was designed for a flight profile carrying it into space and so was a spacecraft. As was SpaceShip One, the only civilian manned spacecraft to date.
4. Reaction Research Society hit 50 miles in 1996. Hunstville L5 passed this 19 mile mark, but was ballooned launched and so not entirely spacecraft.
5. No amateur spacecraft made from off the shelf or home made components has achieved even a 50K ft altitude according to Tripoli records. With Tripoli and the National Association of Rocketry's recent facing down ATFE over the definition of 'explosives', the FAA et al. is redefining amateur rocketry to include power up to 200,000 lb-ft sec and a concominant (and easily achieved with this power) 93 mile altitude. Most motors in this range are "experimental" ie. home made, but there are a few commercially available motors that can be staged and/or clustered for this power, the 152mm dia + 96" Loki Research P motor at 80kN-sec each being the largest you can currently put on your credit card. 11 of these will put you just under the FAA's proposed limit. 12, and you have to apply to NASA's office of space transportation for a permit. Expect an amateur spacecraft to make the flight, because now it's a matter of qualifying for the license and buying the parts.
"I may be synthetic, but I'm not stupid." -- Bishop 341-B
At 100km in an aircraft, you need to fly at orbital velocities just to stay aloft, so effectively you need a spacecraft instead.
What??? Sorry, you need to go back and rethink that statement; it's not even close to true. Can you explain how SpaceShipOne, flying at 'only' Mach 3, was able to go higher than 100km? Thus, not only staying aloft at at 100km, but climbing? Or the X-15, which also flew higher than 100km, and also at significantly less than orbital velocity?
I like how a good authoritative sounding statement, (which happens to be false), got modded +4 informative.
And as you tread the halls of sanity, You feel so glad to be, Unable to go beyond. I have a message, From another time..
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.
I have to disagree with your statement that ARCA is doing something 'genuinely innovative' by using a balloon for the first stage. The concept is called a 'Rockoon' and was pioneered in the US in 1949 and has been used extensivly by JP Areospace, (among others), a small US company that has been working with balloons and rockets for over 30 years.
http://jpaerospace.com/rockoons.html
And as you tread the halls of sanity, You feel so glad to be, Unable to go beyond. I have a message, From another time..
The Brooklyn man was quoted as saying "it all started as a way to find out if there was really any place at all where I could get good reception on the iphone". When the phone landed there were 7 voicemail messages, 13 text messages, and 16 emails that were all sent several days prior but had managed to download at about 5 vertical miles.
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Its hard to tell how high the craft actually is because of the use of the wide angle.
When its tumbling around up high and the camera goes upside down you can see the curvature of the earth inverted. Pretty weird looking.
In fact, on its way down where you can still make out trees and stuff, there seems to be a curvature.
I'm not saying they shouldn't have used wide-angle, indeed they should have for something like this. Its just a little misleading.
Nice try, I'll give it that.
But there are about 10 dozen reasons why this can be considered fake, and that the real motive behind the video is to try and brainwash the public into thinking the Earth is round.
Like as if. For those who are still in denial, this is what would happen if the Earth was round:
http://www.lhup.edu/~dsimanek/flat/rounwrld.jpg
Well, this PROUD flat-earther will NOT BUDGE.
Thanks for playing.
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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
Actually, I think the parachute HINDERED and delayed it's return to earth, if anything. It would have been perfectly capable of returning to earth without help, as NASA scientists discovered some time ago...
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