Home made spacecraft documents it's flight

[Bob in a quantum-state-of-faith]

http://vimeo.com/15091562

A father-son team (plus others-- he gives credits at the end) created a home-made craft using a weather balloon, which flew high enough to video the roundness of earth's shape.

They used a cell phone's GPS and some "where am I" software to track it's progress, and recovery.

The video was recorded on a solid-state HD camera-recorder.

[Sibling Zono (anon1mat0)]

I'm speechless. 

Proof that good planning can do incredible things even on a budget. I wonder what they'll do next.

[Swatopluk]

Now imagine that not that long ago anything similar would have taken a rather big rocket (or special jet plane) and lots of $$$.
The weight of the camera equipment alone would have precluded such a 'simple' scheme.
I am still suprised that camera and battery were able to cope with the temperatures for so long.

I vaguely remember (or at least believe to) that there were ideas about actual spacecraft carried up to that height by ballon/dirigible before igniting the engines. That would save a lot of fuel and thus 'dead' weight

[Bob in a quantum-state-of-faith]

The concept of launching a rocket from a balloon goes back to at least the 50's-- I well remember various agencies doing exactly that, including some who had the system launch through the balloon (piercing and subsequently destroying the balloon).

In 2007, Cambridge U apparently was successful at launching 5 such rockets http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/CU_Spaceflight

In 2008, NASA made a proposal http://academy.grc.nasa.gov/y2008/group-project/proposal-for-a-balloon-assisted-launch-system on their website.

Alas, I could not locate historical references to the 1950's and 1960's experiments.   keep reading the search results ....

Most recently, a Romanian team has plans to not only get a rocket into space via balloon, but to actually hit the moon with it's payload.  http://www.universetoday.com/74983/moon-balloon-has-mostly-successful-test-flight/

Hmmm.... here we go:  Google books has a Popular Science magazine entry from 1954, here.  The name of the program was "Project Skyhook" which I remembered as soon as I read the caption.   I recall reading about these in National Geographic, during the 1960's as 1954 was 4 years before my time (m'bdate is 1958).

[Sibling DavidH]

What a result for individual initiative and enterprise!  I bet that boy will remember it for the rest of his life.  He should be very proud.