Comments on: Up, Up, and Away

Up, Up, and Away

digaman — Tue, 17 Mar 2009 18:46:12 -0800

The 56-Euros-and-a-balloon teenage Catalonian space program.

By: limeonaire

limeonaire — Tue, 17 Mar 2009 18:51:14 -0800

Augh. Why didn't they link the Twitter feed? This is a good example of what someone (can't remember who) was blogging just the other day re: failures of online news media.

By: These Premises Are Alarmed

These Premises Are Alarmed — Tue, 17 Mar 2009 18:52:23 -0800

Make Article. More pictures. The Telegraph article says they use twitter as well, but don't provide a link.

By: Uppity Pigeon #2

Uppity Pigeon #2 — Tue, 17 Mar 2009 19:02:53 -0800

I'm more impressed when people do amazing thing with 19th century technology than when they do amazing things with 21st century technology. Sure, the Victorians never piloted a hot air balloon into the ether, and, sure, launching a mecha-droid through a wormhole is totally great. But that doesn't mean I can't be impressed that balloons are still able to do things that are awesome.

By: ob

ob — Tue, 17 Mar 2009 19:06:15 -0800

This is great. I can't stop being even more happy with this as I'm half Catalan, but nevertheless this is damn cool stuff.

By: DU

DU — Tue, 17 Mar 2009 19:09:40 -0800

Love balloons. Love amateur science. Would really love to do this myself. But 20 miles isn't space. There is no altitude reachable by balloon that would qualify as space.

By: digaman

digaman — Tue, 17 Mar 2009 19:16:23 -0800

Next time you get a balloon 21 miles into non-space and take gorgeous pictures of what can be seen from up there, DU, you can put these naive teenagers in their place.

By: DU

DU — Tue, 17 Mar 2009 19:17:37 -0800

The kids didn't claim to have been to space. Neither did the news article. But "space program" here implied it. Just a nit. Remain calm.

By: signal

signal — Tue, 17 Mar 2009 19:26:29 -0800

They do graphs, too.

By: Science!

Science! — Tue, 17 Mar 2009 19:35:51 -0800

By: jamstigator

jamstigator — Tue, 17 Mar 2009 19:52:55 -0800

The density of the atmosphere at the height that their balloon reached is probably much more similar to the atmospheric density at the height where the space station orbits than it is to the density of the atmosphere at sea level. The price was a little misleading though -- I mean, do they know some place that gives away free Nikons? If so, why didn't they provide a link to *that* in the article? In any case, rock on, young scientists, rock on.

By: shii

shii — Tue, 17 Mar 2009 19:56:24 -0800

A lovely comment about this on Reddit:

How is this not illegal!!?!?!?

First they took away the chemical sets, and everyone said it was to keep our kids safe...

By: dunkadunc

dunkadunc — Tue, 17 Mar 2009 19:57:11 -0800

As a Nikon owner, I can't say I would volunteer my ~~baby~~ camera for this project.

By: pravit

pravit — Tue, 17 Mar 2009 20:02:30 -0800

Neat! UC Boulder hosts a workshop called SHOT where you do the same thing - here are some in-flight pics. When I went back in 2004, we rigged up disposable cameras with auto-timers, strung them up, and attached them to a high-altitude baloon. Then we drove around in vans tracking the baloon on GPS and picking it up when it landed out in some field. Fun stuff.

By: dr_dank

dr_dank — Tue, 17 Mar 2009 20:04:28 -0800

I'm surprised they didn't buy a bag of balloons with the money they've got. Any little toy shop should carry them.

By: digaman

digaman — Tue, 17 Mar 2009 20:12:40 -0800

DU, the mention of "space" in the headline of the story might have prompted me. But to be totally transparent, as they say, I was riffing on one of my favorite jazz albums title ever: African Space Program, by Dollar Brand. First they took away the chemical sets, and everyone said it was to keep our kids safe... Indeed. I actually wrote the Wired story in 2006 about that, "Don't Try This at Home," which is why I have a soft spot for amateur science.

By: MikeMc

MikeMc — Tue, 17 Mar 2009 20:27:31 -0800

I don't know if I'm more impressed by the photos or the fact that they were able recover the camera intact. This reminds me of when I was a kid and I always wanted one of those model rockets with the camera in the nose.

By: jimmythefish

jimmythefish — Tue, 17 Mar 2009 20:30:37 -0800

This is awesome. I was surprised to read that they only had to travel 10km to get the equipment back. That's not far.

By: aerotive

aerotive — Tue, 17 Mar 2009 20:38:18 -0800

Looks like space to me.

By: finite

finite — Tue, 17 Mar 2009 21:00:39 -0800

From google's translation of their blog: During the first few minutes the nerves were so high they tend to infinity faster than an exponential!

By: Uppity Pigeon #2

Uppity Pigeon #2 — Tue, 17 Mar 2009 21:03:21 -0800

I can't decide if that translation is terrible or amazing. "Faster than an exponential" is actually sort of genius, in a clunky way.

By: Curry

Curry — Tue, 17 Mar 2009 21:58:30 -0800

The kids didn't claim to have been to space. Neither did the news article. The news article I read was headlined "Teens capture images of space."

By: Xezlec

Xezlec — Tue, 17 Mar 2009 22:27:01 -0800

I can't decide if that translation is terrible or amazing. "Faster than an exponential" is actually sort of genius, in a clunky way. Genius? Clunky? It looks like the exact translation to me. What's weird about it?

By: sexyrobot

sexyrobot — Tue, 17 Mar 2009 22:42:29 -0800

"The balloon we chose was inflated with helium to just over two metres and weighed just 1500 grams," said Gerard. "It was able to carry the sensor equipment and digital Nikon camera which weighed 1.5kg." ? aahhh...mainstream media science coverage...god, i'll really try to miss it once it's gone.

By: kliuless

kliuless — Tue, 17 Mar 2009 23:36:25 -0800

I'm more impressed when people do amazing thing with 19th century technology than when they do amazing things with 21st century technology. otoh, viz.

By: codswallop

codswallop — Tue, 17 Mar 2009 23:37:39 -0800

I wonder how much would chopping off the first and atmospherically thickest 100,000 feet be a boost to a model rocket (weighing, say, 1.5kg)'s maximum altitude? Be pretty neat to make a 3 balloon platform to fire a high-powered, lightweight fiberglass rocket with that sort of head start.

By: Orb2069

Orb2069 — Wed, 18 Mar 2009 01:31:14 -0800

Be pretty neat to make a 3 balloon platform to fire a high-powered, lightweight fiberglass rocket with that sort of head start. Well, since - Ideally - You wouldn't want to fire until just before the balloon popped, you could just rig the rocket into some sort of carrier that would orient it the right way and fire it once it started falling... Or you could fire the rocket at an angle like The DaVinci X-prize entry was going to do....

By: Iosephus

Iosephus — Wed, 18 Mar 2009 02:16:06 -0800

If their nerves just grew as fast as an ultraexponential, or an Ackermann function, it's just suitably geeky for some guys getting ballon-views of almost-space.

By: DU

DU — Wed, 18 Mar 2009 03:08:26 -0800

The news article I read was headlined "Teens capture images of space." And they did. You can capture images of space from the ground. I realize it seems pedantic, but they are claiming to be amateur scientists. Scientists need to use a little precision in terminology. Which they seem to have done, in fact, but then it got diluted. We hate science "journalists" who screw up basic facts in other stories, this is just another (mild) example of the same thing. Additionally, there's the constant, annoying problem of...well, I don't know what the term would be. There was a post on Make a few days ago about a guy who took some small solar panels, some wire, some misc electronic components and made a motor. For simplicity, he mounted the whole thing on a Lego base. Make's title: LEGO MOTOR. If I glue a brick to a car does that make it a "LEGO CAR"? The point is, if someone ever does build a "true" lego motor, they'll be unable to popularize it because the mindshare has been taken by fakes. Similarly, calling this (cool and amazing!) feat a "space program" is a disservice to any future kids with an actual space program. What they really did is cool enough, there's no need to exaggerate.

By: Molesome

Molesome — Wed, 18 Mar 2009 04:22:29 -0800

Finally some independant verification that the world is not flat. Like I would trust NASA after all those fuzzy moon landing videos!

By: mattoxic

mattoxic — Wed, 18 Mar 2009 05:35:55 -0800

Being able to use a freely available ground tracking station in the form of google earth really says something about the society the internet is enabling. Fantastic stuff.

By: kliuless

kliuless — Wed, 18 Mar 2009 08:43:02 -0800

bat... in... spaaaaace

By: cmoj

cmoj — Wed, 18 Mar 2009 11:48:58 -0800

There is no altitude reachable by balloon that would qualify as space. All I know is that if I were at the altitude pictured, I would say: "Holy shit. I am in space."

By: jfwlucy

jfwlucy — Wed, 18 Mar 2009 12:42:37 -0800

EVERYONE knows you need NINETY-NINE luftballoons, duh.

By: neuron

neuron — Wed, 18 Mar 2009 21:11:08 -0800

How is this not illegal!!?!?!? PART 101—MOORED BALLOONS, KITES, UNMANNED ROCKETS AND UNMANNED FREE BALLOONS

By: Chrishartley

Chrishartley — Thu, 19 Mar 2009 09:25:42 -0800

Near Space is defined as between 23km and 100km. There are a couple groups and tens of people around the US who launch weather balloons with tracking gear that get to around 100k feet (30km) before the balloons burst and the payload parachutes back to earth. Balloon Track is a software program that attempts to predict the flight pattern of such balloons to help in payload retrieval. A rocket being carried aloft by a balloon before firing is called a rockoon. There is a whole heck of a lot less air resistance at 30km than at sea level so the idea is very attractive because it could dramatically lower the barrier of entry for putting things in space, perhaps even in orbit above 200km. I don't know of any amateur groups that are currently working on such a project but I've often dreamed about it. Amateur scientists rock.

By: Xezlec

Xezlec — Thu, 19 Mar 2009 23:41:51 -0800

A rocket being carried aloft by a balloon before firing is called a rockoon. Really? So is this. Note the similarities! Sorry.

By: kliuless

kliuless — Sat, 21 Mar 2009 13:11:48 -0800

up in the big pic