Slashdot Mirror

← Back to Stories (view on slashdot.org)

High School Students Send Lego Man 24 Kilometers High

Posted by samzenpus on from the some-science-projects-are-better-than-others dept.

First time accepted submitter AbilityLiving writes "Two high schoolers have launched a Lego Man to 80,000 feet — three times the height of a jet — in a homebrew project that involved a few Ebay-purchased cameras, a giant helium balloon and a star-ship full of ingenuity."

5 of 115 comments (clear)

  1. Three times the height of a jet? by mark-t · · Score: 5, Funny

    I'm pretty sure that jet aircraft are only something like 15 or 20 feet high, measuring from the base. 80,000 feet is considerably higher than three times that distance.

    If you mean to say 3 times the maximum altitude of most jet aircraft, say so.

    --
    File under 'M' for 'Manic ranting'
    1. Re:Three times the height of a jet? by badboy_tw2002 · · Score: 5, Funny

      Irregardless, for all intensive purposes its the same thing. We knew what he mint.

  2. Re:It's been done by flyingsquid · · Score: 5, Informative
    Do I really have to explain this to you guys? When you play Lego, everything's in Lego scale. So for instance, if you send the cat rampaging through your Town sets, he's like a godzilla-sized monster. And the drop off the sofa to the carpet isn't a foot or two off the ground, it's like a huge cliff, and will totally kill your dude (and he totally will NOT survive that, no matter what my so-called-friend Brian Schwarz says, and that is why I don't play Lego with Brian anymore, because he's just really stupid). So are we clear now on how Lego scale works then?

    OK, so let's do the math. Low earth orbit is 200-500 miles up, and a minifig is 1.5 inches tall, which is 1/44 the height of an average person. So in Lego scale, 88,000 feet is 3,872,000 feet, or like 733 miles, and so he's totally in space.

  3. Re:It's been done by Digital+Vomit · · Score: 5, Funny

    You could use a balloon to cover much of the altitude, but you'd need some other means of propulsion to get it to leave the atmosphere entirely.

    Hmmm... What if you attached the whole thing to another helium balloon?

    --
    Modern copyright is theft of culture from everyone and it retards the progress of the useful arts and sciences.
  4. Re:It's been done by Mabhatter · · Score: 5, Funny

    Well, they're still in high school... They gotta start somewhere.

    Frankly, they were irresponsible not to give their Lego dude (or girl) a helmet and air tank. Not to mention the OSHA violations being forced to stand on a ledge at 80k feet with no seatbelt or railings! I think the minifigures need some kind of union against these dangerous experiments.

    Lastly, did they make sure their guy wasnt on a no-fly list. He looks European... But with those foreign sounding names national security should have been contacted... They even took pictures of how many people they put in danger!!! At least they didn't attach the balloon to any sharks... Teens and science are just irresponsible.