Brooklyn man and son send camera into space

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By Becky Stern
Posted 2010/10/25 @ 6:50 am
Category Art & Design, Science

Luke and his son Max Geissbuhler from Brooklyn, NY, sent a camera attached to a weather balloon up into the stratosphere! They call themselves the Brooklyn Space Program. [via FREEwilliamsburg]

From the pages of MAKE

Weather Balloon Space Probes in MAKE Volume 24 by John Baichtal, illustration by James Provost, pgs. 54-55. Check it out in our digital edition or subscribe.

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Becky Stern is head of wearable electronics at Adafruit Industries. Her personal site: sternlab.org

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6 Responses to Brooklyn man and son send camera into space

Stefano Paganini on October 25th, 2010 at 8:30 am said:

It’a cool project and a great family team!

As we reviewed on Oct.12th!

http://www.theifile.com/2010/10/12/the-first-iphone-in-space-ever-maybe/

Great infographics from Make, will update our post ASAP!

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- Andy on October 25th, 2010 at 11:23 am said:
  
  The site doesn’t have any details on what kind of comms package the project used, if any. However the previous comment implies that it was another cell phone based project.
  
  This means that the people behind the project didn’t do the full amount of research on legality of their project, since the project is NOT legal. Once you add a communications package, the FAA isn’t the only organization you need to check regulations with. You also need to check FCC regulations, which forbid airborne operation of cell phones except in very specific circumstances. (Namely, aircraft that have a microcell that will cause the phone’s power control to kick in and drop transmit power.) Putting a cell phone of any sort on a weather balloon is not allowed.
  
  (Legal HAB projects use the amateur (ham) radio bands for comms and have a licensed amateur operator take care of all comms responsibilities.)
  
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rdarlington.myopenid.com on October 25th, 2010 at 1:37 pm said:

“space” as defined by international agreement starts at 62 miles up (100km). At best this balloon made it 1/3rd of the way there.

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Colecoman1982 on October 25th, 2010 at 2:09 pm said:

This seems like a neat project but I have to agree with rdarlington. It’s not fair to the amateur projects that have/will actually make it into space (I’m pretty sure there’s only been one, so far, and it was a rocket) to just pretend there isn’t a difference (the difference in effort required is huge).

Even if you ignore the Karman line as the “official” limit of space, a balloon can’t go into space by it’s very definition. In order to stay aloft, it needs to be in an atmosphere. Being in an atmosphere means you’re not in space.

This is an atmospheric probe; no more, no less.

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Simon on October 25th, 2010 at 7:44 pm said:

I am another who would like to ask, politely, that these balloon projects, cool as they are, aren’t described as ‘going into space’. It’s one of those science inaccuracies, often repeated, that irks me. I guess because there is no need to simplify it in that way, it’s pretty neat they get into the stratosphere, and also because I am old and grumpy

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- Becky Stern on October 25th, 2010 at 7:53 pm said:
  
  Hah, thanks for your comment! We’re all for accuracy!
  
  Reply ↓