I found a really fun story yesterday on Facebook [thank you Roger Weiss!] about a kid who launched a weather balloon into space from his driveway recently.
He even got it back:
” The balloon, which landed on August 25, is the brainchild of a 14-year-old student named Jack Miron from Bedford, New Hampshire. ”
As I was browsing around, I found out that, holy mackerel, LOTS of people have launched stuff from their yard into space, usually by weather balloons.
Most often, it seems they do it for fun. Jack Miron launched his for a science project. A toy robot was launched for a music video. A boy and his dad launched a toy train. JP Aerospace launched a chair for a commercial – OK, that was a business launch for Toshiba!
These guys claim they launched the first ‘Light Beer’ into space. Who knew?
What would you like to launch into space? I said ‘what’ not ‘who’ come on now…
In the video, JP liked the idea of the chair – as long as no person was aboard. I started wondering, with the right equipment, lots more balloons and a thrill seeker – could that really work? The hardest part would probably be coming back down. Apparently, the chair broke apart upon reentry. Not good for humans.
I’m sure I just scratched the surface of ‘amateur spacers’ here. If you find any others, please post them in the comments. The world is so beautiful from space and I just love that view.
If you figure it out and get all the right equipment, as well as permissions, this is certainly doable for most of us. Just Ask Jack.
NOTES:
*Requires some equipment, knowledge and permission
*The boy who owns Stanley is only 4 years old (OK, his dad did the ‘heavy lifting’)
*Yeah, this will cost unless you can scrounge or get donations
Sources
*http://lightyears.blogs.cnn.com/2012/09/22/14-year-old-gets-photos-from-space/?hpt=hp_t3
*http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_00eZtsuJ9M&feature=related
*http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CzTxR9YoIQ8
*http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5VdhZ2r6lvs&feature=related
*http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_00eZtsuJ9M&feature=related
*http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MQwLmGR6bPA
The ride down is pretty rough. If you can keep the camera operating, you get to see just how much things spin in uncontrolled ways. Take your preferred motion-sickness remedy first, then run the video on a big screen TV if you want to risk it. 8)
This is really nice. Amazing! I think I will start pulling my resources together to try this in Nigeria too; and possibly teach high school students how to do the same. Thanx for this eye opener.
I’ve been thinking about doing this – need to pool resources here too – so thanks for the info Alfred.
When you do Idowu, please let us know and we’ll do a story on your students on Everyday Spacer! Can you get video of the process and the launch? We could post that here and let everyone know.
Great to hear from you, thanks for writing!
Pam Hoffman
How funny that I saw this post. I’ve been brainstorming top bar federes lately as well. I was thinking a plank of wood, the size of a few topbars with a round hole cut in the top so that you could insert a upside down jar with tiny holes poked in the top and not have to open the hive to check the amount of feed. The only problem I’ve been thinking about is how to make the cover fit over mason jars.