Swedish Engineer's RC Plane Gets a Balloon Lift To Space

mask.of.sanity writes "A Swedish engineer has sent his radio controlled airplane to the edge of space using a weather balloon. It reached 33,100 metres before the balloon popped. The trip is captured on film and he has detailed the project in a blog. Amazing stuff."

Comments

Published on Mar 7, 2013

[Internal Modem]

Total flight time was 108 minutes. Total distance between launch and landing site was 101km.

cool

[Anonymous Coward]

Pretty sure we Americans cant do this without written permission from the FAA.

Re:cool

[Anonymous Coward]

Don't be so sure. I remember the twin-fan personal "thing" the Mythbusters built, they had some guys from the FAA look at it and catalog it and they determined that, because of the weight, there wasn't a license requirement to fly it.

A small project like this, I guess depending on weight, altitude, motors, source of power/fuel and a couple of other factors that I have no idea... might not need permission from the FAA to get off the ground. If you've got a project in mind, it never hurts to check.

It's like asking a hot girl out to dinner. Before you even start you already have the "no", just need to work to turn it into a "yes"...with lesser or greater degree of difficulty

Re:cool

[serbanp]

Hmmm, it's been done many times before, the oldest I recall seeing dates from the early 2000s: http://www.canuck-boffin.net/sonde/

It's still an amazing project and I wish I could pull off something like that - maybe next life...

I've always wanted to do this

[MetalliQaZ]

I wonder how he tested the radio link. That would be the main technical challenge, I would think.

Re:I've always wanted to do this

[nametaken]

But, from reading his blog, it sounds like he didn't do much if anything in the way of testing, he mostly just hoped.

He did a fair bit of research for a hobby project. He used someone else's published results on the performance of the radio equipment.

He also had to test the effects of temperature on the servos, and determined he had to remove most of the grease, as that's the part that locks up at lower temperatures.

He tested the line cutting method (resistor and match head) on a previous project of his, that was good fun... a quadcopter shooting balloons like a video game.

He's done quite a lot of work with all the other stuff from his other FPV video projects. He's done a lot of really interesting stuff and knows what he's doing, so he wasn't just gluing a bunch of rc plane parts together and crossing his fingers.

Old school

[wonkey_monkey]

The trip is captured on film

ORLY?

Re:Old school

[wonkey_monkey]

I've got a [sarcasm] sign, but I didn't think I'd ever need a [pedantry for comic effect] sign.

Re:Old school

[wonkey_monkey]

Tip: other people are different to you and enjoy different things. The classy thing is just to let them get on with it rather than sneer at them in public in attempt to look superior.

Of course here on Slashdot we have this wonderful moderation system which lets you get a whiff of public opinion, which, while not an objective measurement, would seem to suggest that on this occasion I am, in fact, funny. Unfortunately there's no "-1 condescending snob" option, so we may never know what the world thinks of HornWumpus.

Re:all these balloons

[Anonymous Coward]

End up somewhere, usually in the stomachs of marine mammals.

Marine mammals? Like US Marines? I knew they were tough, but eating weather balloons?! Damn!

Edge of space?

[Somebody Is Using My]

Not to dismiss this guy's accomplishments, but saying his model plane reached the "edge of space" is sort of like saying I've reached the "edge of the ocean" when I'm at Times Square in New York City.

Typically, the "edge of space" is 100km up (the United States is a bit more lenient, and puts it at at around 80km up and you get astronaut wings if you make it that high).

He hasn't even made it a third of the way there.

Still neat, but it could have done without the hyperbole.

Re:Edge of space?

[SternisheFan]

Makes what we did as kids with Estes rockets seem rather dull and mundane. Shoot rocket, hope parachute deploys. Chute didn't deploy? Save paper route money up for next rocket.

That is a real neat project. And the video captured from 30,000+ feet is damn clear.

Re:Edge of space?

[Somebody Is Using My]

Related question - what would make a good fundamental "minimum altitude" to say "space"?

From SpaceWatch(the website I linked to in my parent post):
"The Fédération Aéronautique Internationale (FAI), formed 107 years ago and widely recognised as the governing body for aeronautics, astronautics and related activities, puts the beginning of space at 100km. This is now sometimes dubbed the Kármán line after the person who calculated that aerodynamic lift was impossible at higher levels without attaining orbital velocity. "

Also see
"The Kármán line, or commonly simply Karman line, lies at an altitude of 100 kilometres (62 mi) above the Earth's sea level, and is commonly used to define the boundary between the Earth's atmosphere and outer space."

I think these are both workable definitions.

Mind you, none of this pedantic bickering is to take away from Windestål's accomplishment; it's great and he should be proud of what he has done. I eagerly await hearing about further successes from him. It's just that he's nowhere near space, by any accepted definition of the word.

Re:Edge of space?

[draconx]

It just happens to be such a convenient number in their preferred units?

Obviously the number 100 was chosen for its convenience. From Wikipedia (Kármán line):

Although the calculated altitude was not exactly 100 km, Kármán proposed that 100 km be the designated boundary to space, since the round number is more memorable, and the calculated altitude varies minutely as certain parameters are varied. An international committee recommended the 100 km line to the FAI, and upon adoption, it became widely accepted as the boundary to space for many purposes.

Re:Edge of space?

[2short]

"It just happens to be such a convenient number in their preferred units?"

No, they just don't engage in spurious precision. They could have said 107.2527 Km (or whatever the calculation came to exactly), but that would imply their calculation was that precise, and it isn't.

Picking a value for something that doesn't have an obvious definition but people would like to agree on the definition of is what old, official-sounding (because they are) standards orgs are for. If you want to argue with their choice, feel free, but attacking it for not supplying unwarranted precision doesn't make much sense. Better arguments can be had by questioning their definition of "space". But then you're going to be arguing that 100Km is too low (which I might agree with), or arguing a balloon can take you to space (which I find ridiculous).

Re:all these balloons

[h4rr4r]

Perhaps they should stop flavoring them like fish?

What do you base this on? Most of them likely are not eaten by mammals of any sort as they are not likely to be identified as food nor available to the animals since they both not exactly covering every inch of the Earth.

All hobbyist should consider using hydrogen

[slacka]

"Where I live helium is ridiculously expensive. So I went with the much cheaper alternative, hydrogen. It’s also more buoyant, about 8% more. Which means a higher burst altitude as you can use less gas."

Bonus points for using hydrogen instead of helium. Hydrogen is not dangerous if handled properly and helium is a scarce resource needed for many medical uses like MRIs.

Re:All hobbyist should consider using hydrogen

[Anonymous Coward]

Funny how we call helium a scarce resource... it's the 2nd most common element in the Universe.

Hey Mr Spaceman, for those of use here on Earth, helium is a scarce resource. Sure, I can see the sun, which is huge and 27% helium (by mass), but what good is that to me here on Earth?

Re:All hobbyist should consider using hydrogen

[Reality Man]

Shush. Reality is not welcome in any story to do with space. Let the nice man think space is like a giant IKEA just a balloon ride away.

Re:All hobbyist should consider using hydrogen

[Rene S. Hollan]

Well, compared to dioxygen diflouride (a.k.a. FOOF, which explodes on contact with just about anything above -300 F), or chlorine triflouride (which can set sand and asbestos on 'fire'), hydrogen is quite safe, yes.

Re:all these balloons

[g0bshiTe]

Never stand between a hungry Marine and a food source.

Hydrogen, helium, and payloads

[spaceyhackerlady]

Funny how we call helium a scarce resource... it's the 2nd most common element in the Universe.

In the universe, yes. On Earth, no. All the helium on Earth has been here from the beginning, and no process on Earth is creating more. Once it's released in to the atmosphere, it's gone.

I'm always envious of stuff like this. Where I live (southwestern British Columbia, Canada), it would be very difficult to retrieve a payload that came down 100 km away, in just about any direction. A steerable RC glider is an option I've thought about. Live video, GPS and telemetry would make me even more motivated to get the aircraft back.

...laura

Re:Sad.

[Anonymous Coward]

Also, in the U.S. lowly citizens aren't allowed to use those types of radios and power levels in order to have the range for remote control, video and telemetry. FCC regulations ban them.

No, they ban them from unlicensed use. But getting a license has been getting easier and easier every year...

Heaven forbid some work is done toward managing common resources like airspace used for travel and radio spectrum, so they don't suffer from tragedy of the commons.