photo: www.brooklynspaceprogram.org
Posted on 10/14/2010 11:49:08 AM PDT by Swordmaker
Taking their iPhone Where No iDevice Has Gone Before, a father and son in Newburgh, NY recently took a weekend science project to new heights. Luke and Max Geissbuhler attached an HD Video Camera, iPhone and some styrofoam packing to a weather balloon, then launched their homemade satellite on a journey that lasted 72 minutes and climbed over 100,000 feet into the atmosphere!
You must click on the site to see the video of the flight...
The resulting footage is stunning, and has been described as some of the best amateur space footage ever. The weather balloon burst after reaching about 19 miles high, then plummeted back to Earth by parachute and landed in a tree. The iPhone’s on-board GPS helped located the equipment once it landed, undamaged and only 30 miles away from the launch site!
“Max and I work on all sorts of fun projects together” said Geissbuhler. “I’ve always been one to tinker. But even after months of research and testing – we only had a 30 percent chance it would work. We got very lucky… We were totally out of our minds when we saw the footage. It was more than we were even hoping for.”
More photos from this amazing feat are available on the Brooklyn Space Program website. Nice job guys – now that’s a Science Project!
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No way any consumer electronic device will function at 100,000 feet.Nothing made by Microsoft,Sony *or* Apple.
cool
Full disclosure: I own no Apple stock... God, I wish I had had the foresight to buy some...
did they have FAA clearance?
Barbara Streisand!
Why, pray tell, do you make this blanket statement? Why wouldn't these units work at this altitude?
bump
Call me when they launch an iMac.
;-)
Did you read the article?
Very cool! Thanks for posting this.
But, why in the world did they pick such a cloudy day to launch?
And this was done without a government grant. Imagine that.
cool cool cool
There are plenty of reasons why they MIGHT not but there are also lots of reasons they might be lucky or that someone handy could ensure they would work.
Barbara Streisand!
Actually, it happens quite often:
Click here to learn more.
It is quite likely that if launched on a calm day, that the wind effects were minimal, and the balloon may have gone directly up. The iPhone 4 battery is not in a solid plastic case, but in what can be more accurately described as a flexible 'bag'. Thus, the effects of vacuum would be minimal - it would not 'explode' in a low pressure environment. Given the thermal mass of the iPhone, it would retain heat for a bit of time - so the battery would remain fully functional. Solid state electronics really don't care about temperature or pressure. Consumer Electronics are rated from 0C to 70C - but this is for 'long term' soaking. For a matter of minutes, the phone should easily survive excursions beyond this rating. If something were to fail, it would likely be the display - but the display would be unnecessary for this exercise.
MobileMe would track the iPhone to a radius of +/- 20 ft, and you can send a command for the phone to emitt an audio signal for 2 minutes per command.
There is nothing implausible about this accomplishment. Unless you can provide some reason - aside from an Anti-Mac bash - I wonder why you would decry this accomplishment?
To Swordmaker: Awesome footage. Believe it or not, this is what I wanted to do when I was 10 years old, but lacked the technical skills, the equipment (this was 1950), and mostly, the money.
To Gay State Conservative: “No way any consumer electronic device will function at 100,000 feet.Nothing made by Microsoft,Sony *or* Apple.” In 1969, a Commodore 64 computer (yes, 64K of memory), available to the public, wasa good enough to get Apollo 11 to the moon.
I’m an engineer - I deal in electronics a lot.
When a temperature or altitude rating is given on a product, this number is a statistical number (not a hard/fast limie). At 10,000 hours, approximately 1% failure rate will set a limit. For example, the iPhone is only rated to an altitude of 10,000 ft. And if you were climbing a mountain over a period of days - you might find that you would have difficulty with the phone.
But, over a period of minutes? Probably not. As for temperature - we have this thing Mechancial Engineers deal a lot with called ‘Thermal Mass’. Essentially, the more mass an object has, the slower it heats or cools. A razor blade will cool more quickly than a 100 lb anvil. So, for a period of minutes, I can see where there are more reasons for this to work - than not to work.
However, if this flight were several hours or days in length - I would be a little bit more skeptical.
That was fun to watch.
Imagine the wonderful memories that little guy will have when he grows up, of the very cool fun he had with his dad.
There are many stories and lessons here... the best being about a father and a son, together, on an adventure.
For me the question begs: A boy needs a dad... does yours have one?
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