MIT Students Take Pictures from 93,000 ft on $150 Budget. | Hacker News Reader

MIT Students Take Pictures from 93,000 ft on $150 Budget.

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125 pointsedw51927 comments

Over at Slashdot, there are some interesting comments pointing out that this has been done for over 30 years.

http://science.slashdot.org/comments.pl?sid=1367009&cid=...

http://hardware.slashdot.org/comments.pl?sid=1367009&cid...

One amusing quote, whether you agree or disagree:

The reason why no one has heard of this before is because no one thinks it's interesting enough to tell the press about; except MIT students, who apparently think that everything they do is hot shit.

This is pretty cool. Something similar was done about a year or so ago by some secondary school students in Spain.

Also, there is a cool video floating around somewhere (can't find the link right now) of how to build your own balloon based satellite that incorporates off the shelf cameras and a computer. I think it was a make magazine project.

Last spring: http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/newstopics/howaboutthat/5005... ...which made news at the time because of the extreme low cost, off-the-shelf hardware and so on.

Yeh stressed the groundbreaking nature of their work. “The fact that we were able to accomplish space photography on such a low budget and with minimal electronic modifications proves that it’s really possible for anyone—anyone at all—to do. Imagine how many students might be inspired if their high school science teacher took the time to give his students an out-of-this-world experience.”

...or indeed, vice versa. I can't help noticing that the reports of European high schoolers correlate strongly with the time that Mr Lee stopped posting on his short-lived cancer-reporting blog, correlatingcancer.com, which is the host for 1337arts.com.

Well, at least Mssrs Lee & Yeh have a superior understanding of marketing and self-promotion.

Direct link to the pictures:

http://space.1337arts.com/flight

direct link to the ingredients:

http://space.1337arts.com/hardware

$148 is not bad at all. I could rotate some of those pictures for them for the other $2.

They aren't the first to do something like this.

Here's a very similar project made in 2007:

http://www.natrium42.com/halo/flight2/

i think the cost is the surprising factor about this story. taken from the site you posted:

Q:How much did it cost? A:The system that is presented is a little over-engineered for historical reasons as well as for future expansion and test purposes. It's possible to build a system for $500 with just a cellphone link and a microcontroller, but make sure that coverage is good where you intend to launch and use a good cellphone antenna.

True. But consider also that this has been made two years ago, with 2007 technology.

Edit: Take the camera for instance. The MIT students used a Canon PowerShot A470 (they bought it used from ebay) which costs $120 new and is 7 mega pixels. This guy used a similar camera (Canon PowerShot A70) which was only 3.1 mega pixels and costed $350 when it came out.

Oregon State University launched a balloon to commemorate 100 million downloads of Firefox. They used a disposable camera with a simple timer wired to it. They didn't include a GPS unit though because it was "too expensive", the camera has yet to be found. The cannon would take better pictures, just pointing out that its not the cheapest route.

http://lug.oregonstate.edu/events/firefox/sky

Also a Cambridge, UK project started 2006: http://www.srcf.ucam.org/~cuspaceflight/nova.php

As well as taking photos, they've taken passengers: http://www.srcf.ucam.org/~cuspaceflight/images/nova9selected...

It's a bit of a stretch to call 20 miles up "space".

Yes: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Outer_space#Boundary

Come on. The sky is black, the ground is blue...

And its farther from the ground than I ever was.

Let them brag. If more people build simple affordable stuff that go higher than common aircraft and give them a taste of what space is, I am fine with it. It's a step in the right direction.

With no formal training, Ron Meadows, a pool service guy from San Jose, built a stratospheric balloon package and took photos at 100,000 feet. http://cbs5.com/watercooler/stratosphere.balloon.launch.2.11...

Does anyone know how hard it'd be to send up a proper digital SLR and/or a proper digital hd camcorder on a similar contraption?

Assume you already have the fancy camera or camcorder.

I can't find information about the balloon. What kind of balloon did they use and where can I buy one?

http://www.kaymont.com/pages/sounding-balloons.cfm

Congrats Justin Lee! I was in your CS class senior year of Bellaire. ;-)

These are the kinds of things that make me want to attend MIT. You can easily market these things if you made them user-friendly. Maybe even put a steering mechanism on them?

Why do you think these things are peculiar to MIT?

Because of this: "Justin Lee and Oliver Yeh". At a state school, it can be quite difficult to find another person willing to help you build your dreams.

As someone who went to a state school for undergrad, worked for a few years, and is currently at MIT for a PhD: Yes. MIT is a magical place like none other.

It's hard to put it more concisely.. The whole school just has an aura of "what the hell, let's try it" and a the professors and financial backing to make it happen.

It seem that financial backing wasn't needed for this project. Isn't the cheap cost the surprising factor here?

Sure. I was making a statement about MIT, not this project.

Top notch marketing/PR? ;-)

I do not think that they are peculiar to MIT. I didn't say that at all. All was saying was that MIT has made so many amazing things in the past and it would be an amazing experience to be part of their program.

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