Send your own stuff to space

[Ghoulish Delight]

The launch date is a bit unclear from these postings, but some dudes with a website are building a rig that they're going to send into space via weather balloon that will hopefully take a series of panoramic pictures on the way up.

It's all that technologically breath-taking, but these guys are really just doing it themselves. It can't be cheap (4 high end digital cameras and a whole host of electronics, for starters), but they must be having a blast designing and bodging this thing together.

I highly recommend watching the video here (http://www.imakethings.com/2007/03/03/diy-space-make-video-podcast). Pretty freaking cool.

[DreadPirateRoberts]

That is very cool. I can't wait to see the video when they do it. I wonder how high they expect it to go? they never really say what altitude they expect it to attain.

[Ghoulish Delight]

Well, according to wikipedia (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Weather_balloon), "Weather balloons may reach altitudes of 40 km (25 miles) or more". Of course, it also says, "The instrument package is usually lost." Uh-oh.

[Cadaverous Pallor]

Yeah, sending it up, no prob, but finding it again will be the real feat.

[Ghoulish Delight]

Oh hey look, "We’re using weather balloons to go up to approximately 100k feet".

It also says, "Cloud cover, snow, and mechanical failure may postpone the launch, but we’re ready to give it our best shot this weekend." That was posted last Friday. No update since. Grrr.

Aha, their wiki (http://balloon.pbwiki.com/) has more info. Seems their launch window is sometime between yesterday and tomorrow. Meanwhile, they had a successful tethered test.

Hehe, also from their wiki

"[a fill diffuser?] diffuser determined unnecessary because gas output not strong enough to damage or shred test balloon (condom)"