Father and Son Launch iPhone, HD Video Camera into Space

Cult of Mac ^ | Oct. 12, 2010 | By Adam Rosen

[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!

photo: www.brooklynspaceprogram.org

“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!

[Fresh Wind]

If there was a Commodore 64 on-board Apollo 11, they they must have had a time machine. It was introduced in 1982.

[ArrogantBustard]

In 1969, a Commodore 64 computer (yes, 64K of memory), available to the public, wasa good enough to get Apollo 11 to the moon.

There are several things wrong with that assertion.

1) The Commodore 65 computer was introduced in 1982.

2) The Apollo flight computers did not use microprocessors or dynamic RAM, or spinning hard disks.

3) The Apollo flight computers were built for the project.

4) Computers in general were not available to the public.

5) WASA, by any definition I'm aware of, had no involvement in the 1960s and 1970s manned spaceflight program.

[Ditto]

It goes 20 miles into the air and just happens to land in a place where the "launchers" were able to recover it?

Why not? It has a GPS.

[steveo]

I can see my house from here...

[ixtl]

I stand corrected. I read the comment in an article on how powerful a computer needed to be several years ago, and that line just stuck with me. (When you reach my age, memory becomes selective, and you don’t always get to make the selection.)

[ArrogantBustard]

In fairness, I should note that the compute power of the Apollo flight computers is often compared to that of a C-64. The Apollo computers were much larger, though.

[Gargantua]

Just about as cool as it gets. Low tech, 99% imagination, and the very epitome of the American Spirit of adventure and discovery.

I love it!

;-D

[PA Engineer]

A heads up. They placed hand warmers in the compartment before the flight.

[Carbonsteel]

Sorry, but you forgot your Muslim outreach.

[a fool in paradise]

The roaming charges are going to be murder.

[a fool in paradise]

“Dad, make E.T. stop sexting me!”

[Swordmaker]

Call me when they launch an iMac.

Hehehe

Back in the late 1980s a users' group I was an officer in got into a debate about which could fly farther when thrown, the flat wing shape form of an Amiga 500, or the bowling ball form of the Mac Plus when tossed by its top handle. We finally just had to find out empirically. We tossed a non-working sample of each at our annual picnic. I can attest the Amiga 500 flew farther.

Neither computer survived the experience.

[Swordmaker]

Why, pray tell, do you make this blanket statement? Why wouldn't these units work at this altitude?

Well, for one thing, the conditions are WAY outside the specs Apple lists for acceptable operating ranges.

[DrC]

Very cool experiment. That said, it must be nice putting over $500 in equipment at risk given that the dad acknowledged there was only a “30 percent chance it would work.” Very gutsy move considering it could have as easily landed in the Atlantic Ocean or a large lake.

[BunnySlippers]

Hey, Google is up 45 points in the after market ... Apple is up 3 points over the close.

[Sir_Ed]

Totally cool...thanks, Sword!’

Ed

[Swordmaker]

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.

Space Engineer Dad, in this project, did make allowance for this... He included chemical hand warmers around the electronics that they broke the capsules on and mixed before launch... he showed and made comments on that in the first part of the video. The styrofoam and foam rubber around the electronics also help insulate the sensitive components. He even thought to include an LED flasher to help find the unit at night. I am impressed with his planning.

[Swordmaker]

“Dad, make E.T. stop sexting me!”

Now that is truly funny...

But, coincidentally, there's an Apple anti-sexting Patent for that... announced just today...

[ReignOfError]

That said, it must be nice putting over $500 in equipment at risk given that the dad acknowledged there was only a “30 percent chance it would work.”

The phone looked like a 3G or 3GS model. You can get 720p camcorders for under a hundred bucks. If both were leftover hardware after upgrading, this is much cooler than putting them on Craig's List for $100, $150 at most.

[Locomotive Breath]

They used magnetic core memory. Tiny little toroids of magnetic material, otherwise known as magnetic cores, strung together by impossibly small wires. Hence the origin of the term “core dump” for reading out the entire contents of memory.