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Paper Airplane Touches Edge of Space, Glides Back
itwbennett writes "Brits Steve Daniels, John Oates and Lester Haines just became the envy of geeks the world over. The trio 'built a one-wing glider from paper, lofted it to the edge of space at 90,000 feet with a helium balloon, and posted sound and video recordings from the plane as it glided safely back to the ground,' writes blogger Kevin Fogarty. The Register newspaper sponsored the stunt and reported each step of the process. And British defense-contractor Qinetiq supplied the cameras and testing chambers, says Fogarty."
that is just down right cool
epic sig..... ya i got nothing
When you said "the edge of space" I thought you meant the border of the universe, so I was all WTF.
I found the $13,000 in funding a letdown as the synopsis led me to believe the whole thing was a more home grown affair.
Cheat.
Warning: this article may contain humor, sarcasm, parody, and perhaps even irony. Read at your own risk.
It seems the new cool thing is to take stuff up high in a balloon and drop it. I must say I'd love to do it too, but it doesn't seem very newsworthy anymore.
And I'm not trolling (honestly), but that isn't the John Oates of "Hall & Oates" is it? I ask because you never know.
When I first read that headline, I thought, "Impossible!" Then it gradually dawned on me that they meant the near edge of space. As in the boundary of our atmosphere. Not the far edge of space, as in the boundary of the universe.
"I don't care about the Constitution!" --Bill O'Reilly, November 17, 2009
I guess you are literally trolling.
The energy you save from helium lifting up is exactly the same amount of energy you need to spend to bring it back down to "reuse" it.
Not to mention, helium is really expensive. It takes about $100 of helium to lift 5 pounds (ballpark).
You'd do better just using specialized jet engines to take things up to 75,000 feet or so, even as inefficient as they are.
I've had enough abrasive sigs. Kittens are cute and fuzzy.
What's next, Slinky down side of Everest?
Table-ized A.I.
If you used hydrogen, you could use it for rocket fuel as well.
Send up a hydrogen balloon along with some solar panels and a compressor. Once it reaches altitude, it starts liquifying some of the hydrogen. It would take a while, but it's cold up there so it shouldn't be too hard.
Then send up another balloon with your rocket. Once they meet, the rocket ditches it's balloon and fills up on liquid hydrogen, then continues into space.
"I assumed blithely that there were no elves out there in the darkness"
Wouldn't this paper glider have encountered jet streams? How did it survive them? https://secure.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/en/wiki/Jet_stream
Nah, paper usually reaches terminal velocity pretty fast with its high surface area to mass ratio. It would have to go pretty fast against air friction to burn up. Now getting torn apart in the wind is another matter.
Actually, I'd prefer not only to see it happen more often, but striving for higher, and better. Competitions, and most of all, kids involved.
Experiments are a great way to get people interested in science. We don't need to see it reported all the time, but it would be great to see the concept continued and expanded upon.
Only if the stated goal is to deliver a screaming child ever higher into the atmosphere, with video and sound.
Bonus points if they come down in one piece.
Not exactly. The lift capacity of helium is how much atmosphere it can displace; Creative use of an air compressor in the lift vehicle would reduce it's volume, thus increasing density, and thus reducing lift.
Thus, to "Descend", you just turn on a solar powered air compressor, suck up the HE in the lift bag, and the whole show slowly sinks back to earth.
A balloon has some fundamental limitations, a...ceiling. To which your average helium balloon is quite close and overcoming it requires pretty high tech. Once you get the hang of proper handling (ever more difficult with higher tech), what limits you is the (lack of) atmosphere and slight manufacturing faults of the balloon.
That said - yes, it's fun. Yes, we don't need to see it reported all the time.
One that hath name thou can not otter
I am more than a bit astonished that Slashdot eds, much less the poster would refer to El Reg as a "newspaper."
.co.uk, so they're not Amurrican....
Do none of these people honestly know that The Register is one long lived, entertaining, and generally informative tech web site, and that it was the creator of the ever popular and true to life adventures of BOFH?
Oh right, their URL ends with
Three Squirrels
Yes!
Get the children involved!
THL phish sticks
After Hall and Oates broke up and now I know.
Did you know 80 to 90% of the moderators on slashdot wouldn't recognize a troll even if one dragged them under a bridge.
Re-entry heat doesn't come from friction. It comes from compressing the air in front of the thing doing the re-entering.
When our name is on the back of your car, we're behind you all the way!
..is take this technique meta.
Use a weather balloon to lift a weather balloon to the edge of space, then have the weather balloon release the weather balloon and then... ... uh, go to the pub and have a Bass Ale.
This space available.
Drop a sackful of regular paper airplanes made of some fluorescent 8.5 x 11 sheets (or A4 for you Brits), with a phone number printed on them, and see who calls.
.
Prisencolinensinainciusol. Ol Rait!
All Your Base!
Got Code?
The heat from compression is created by friction between the molecules under compression and the thing that's compressing them.
And did you exchange a walk on part in the war for a lead role in a cage? - Pink Floyd.
Also, they aren't discovering anything really new, even though they are squandering the limited resource of helium,
testing out my trending skills
Ah, this 'story' is typical Register... overblown, late, with too large an idea of its own importance and not very funny. And haven't they gone to town on it, with reports on testing etc. Why so much focus? Ah, I see, sponsored by big web host and big space contractor...
they were outside. there's no ceiling outside.
rewriting history since 2109
Sorry to burst everyone's bubble, but it has an airframe and the skin is some kind of foil. It's not a paper airplane by any reasonable interpretation.
The headline is completely accurate for large values of edge.
This sentence no verb.
How far did it fly? Where did it land?
I'm waiting for the first balloon-launched Hamsternaut. Complete with cute hamster spacesuit.
Does it make you happy you're so strange?
Oh yeah, well, in Soviet Russia, old gets YOU!
In Soviet Russia, balloon weathers YOU!
In Soviet Russia, dead horse beats YOU!
In Soviet Russia, objectivity disappreciates YOU!
In Soviet Russia, joke moderates YOU!
In Soviet Russia, dots slash YOU!
"Stratigraphically the origin of agriculture and thermonuclear destruction will appear essentially simultaneous" -- Lee
Also, they aren't discovering anything really new, even though they are squandering the limited resource of helium,
Which brings us to how efficient it is to have people conserve resources by shaming them. These people might not even have known helium is somehow scarce since the prices are so (relatively) low. Let the helium prices become market prices or even tax them and people will use less right away. At the same time we remove any unnecessary stigma from using money. The same could work for oil etc.
I'm not one of those hardcore free market believers, but even Stalinists will buy less if the prices are higher.
At that altitude, there is a possibility the plane could have become supersonic for a brief period of time (owing to very low air density). I wonder if it did.
I've only been able to find photo stills on the link provided (goes to flickr). Has anyone else found the video or sound recordings provided at that link?
It's true no man is an island, but if you take a bunch of dead guys and tie 'em together, they make a good raft.
Agreed.
testing out my trending skills
To which your average helium balloon is quite close and overcoming it requires pretty high tech.
Hydrogen?
Unity? Screw that: XFCE. Slashdot Beta? Screw that: SoylentNews. Australis? Screw that: Pale Moon. UX developers DIAF
Hydrogen is actually the norm for weather balloon usage (because it's much cheaper). But makes only few percent of difference (in the absolute terms of buoyancy, and this means even less than it sounds like due to the rapidly dropping air density), and only theoretically - because what actually kills the balloon is disintegration due to structural failure (after being greatly expanded).
I just used "helium balloon" because the term seems to have become customary in EN (I don't call them like that in my language), especially in the case of amateur launches.
One that hath name thou can not otter
I usually have lots of satirical rhetoric and other such mumbo jumbo to such stories but in this case I only have two words to say: WOW COOL
"Computers are a lot like Air Conditioners" "They both work great until you start opening Windows"
The edge is defined as 100Km or 100,000m or rougly 300,000feet.. So it was launched from a third of the way there. Not bad.
Yeah, the replies saying "That's not space!!" are always correct, it's just funny to see them over and over. It's almost like the /. editors post these things on purpose just to get readers' goats.
"I don't care about the Constitution!" --Bill O'Reilly, November 17, 2009
I thought they *really* meant the edge of space, and I thought that was a bit crazy. Then I saw the pictures. I guess they mean the edge of the earth's atmosphere, not actually space.
I am not devoid of humor.
Old message I know, but the energy you put into compressing the helium is probably more than you think.
The real first law of thermodynamics, there's no such thing as a free lunch.
I didn't even bring up the question of orbital mechanics. The simple version is that "being up high" doesn't actually get you much closer to being in orbit if your velocity in relation to the earth is still nearly zero. Getting into orbit requires a certain amount of delta V.
I've had enough abrasive sigs. Kittens are cute and fuzzy.