If this sort of thing becomes a growing trend, I fear our metahuman citizens that zoom through the upper atmosphere to stop evil madmen from destroying the earth will have a serious issue with debris.
Yeah, but wait for Homeland Security to pay them a visit. Just musing, but with the cheapness, and the ability to move a payload 20 miles, don't you think that this could be a viable method for drug trafficer's to move small loads of coke or other valuable cargo across the border. They could track the shipment, and have people in place to retrieve it. No need for chancing the border inspections. Come to think of it, rocketry would have its uses also.
That is wicked cool! It occurs to me that if you were willing to use disposable parts and sacrifice picture quality, you could strip down a pay-as-you-go camera cellphone and hack it (java app) to MMS or email photos back to a server. Strip off the case and extra stuff to save weight. You could probably add some cheap telemetry like temperature and pressure through the accessory port... take a look at www.sparkfun.com for sensors. Just sacrifice the phone... if anybody finds it and tries to make calls you are only out whatever the cost of the phonecard. That idea eliminates GPS and the recovery cycle to make the whole thing cheaper. You might get away with conventional balloons for a test flight given the reduced payload, but I expect you'd need a weather balloon for the kind of altitude these guys achieved. Anyway, just a sketch of an idea for any aspiring middle-schoolers out there. :)
I've done two or three of these kinds of launches, I'm president of a club at the University of Kansas that does these. We are going to be launching a rocket from a balloon hopefully by the end of this year. It's nice that they did it for cheap, but the only real place they save much money is radios. We use insulating foam and mylar to build our boxes.
Hm, I actually do feel like dumping $150 on this. I can print the pictures and put them in my bathroom. Then when people use the bathroom and come back and wonder what website I got those awesome space pictures from...I can tell them they were mine.
@ELPARTO: good call but why the bathroom? Perhaps over the fire place would be more of a conversation starter. I wouldn't want people making bathroom faces at my hard work. Although I do see me putting my diploma in the bathroom just for kicks.
@Mess Yo Self!: Oh, if I've found anything it's that sticking pictures in the bathroom is a great conversation starter.
For instance, I have a creepy picture of Thomas Edison currently in there. It used to sit on my desk while I was in college, but when I moved into this place there was a nail in the bathroom wall...and I just happened to be holding the picture at the time.
Everyone asks me about it when they're done doing their business. Especially women since it faces opposite the toilet.
We loaded a Canon A470 camera (bought used on Amazon) with CHDK open source software to enable a feature which allowed the camera to take pictures continuously (intervalometer). Using this feature, we set the camera to take a picture every 5 seconds at a 1/800 second shutter speed. With an 8GB card, the camera was able to chronicle the whole journey of the balloon from launch to retrieval. (~5 hours)
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@UgoKliker: They already smuggle drugs and cash this way.
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@NurseDave: pffft. yeah, like it's going to make a diff.
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/sacasm
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For instance, I have a creepy picture of Thomas Edison currently in there. It used to sit on my desk while I was in college, but when I moved into this place there was a nail in the bathroom wall...and I just happened to be holding the picture at the time.
Everyone asks me about it when they're done doing their business. Especially women since it faces opposite the toilet.
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@Mess Yo Self!: It's this picture BTW
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