Father and son film outer space, do-it-yourself style

[irishspirit]

Like many youngsters, and those young at heart, seven-year-old Max Geissbuhler and his dad dreamed of visiting space -- and armed with just a weather balloon, a video camera, and an iPhone, in a way they did just that.

The father-and-son team from Brooklyn managed to send their homemade spacecraft up nearly 19 miles, high into the stratosphere, bringing back perhaps the most impressive amateur space footage ever. The amazing footage starts at 2:35 minutes in the video below.

http://green.yahoo.com/blog/guest_bloggers/73/father-and-son-film-outer-space-do-it-yourself-style.html

That is just unreal. Look at the video at the link, AMAZING!

Well done them. And NASA would spend millions to do that!

[fifi]

Amazing, and very impressive.

[Operator]

Pretty soon we'll see the first private projects which will bring people into space ... maybe it's hard but still less difficult than we're told ;)

I've done some calculations years ago about what was needed to launch a small rocket into the upper atmosphere. I was amazed how simple it was.
The part where it gets difficult is when you want to add a useful payload to it or when you start pondering what's needed to bring something into orbit.

It's not by accident that rockets are launched as close to the equator as a country can get it done (ESA launches in French Guiana). The rotation of the
earth provides lots of extra velocity to sling it into orbit.

[shadowstalker]

It would be cool if someone did that at night time, lord knows what you could catch.