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!
I agree, Space Engineer Dad really put a lot of thought and planning into this little project. I’m guessing that the cost outlay on this project was more than a trip to the movies too.
And while the altitude is certainly very impressive, the primary concerns I can see with this issue would be temperature and possible delamination of the screen assembly due to low atmospheric pressure. However, would the screen delaminate from exposure to low atmospheric pressure for a duration of less than an hour? I really don’t know. But, even *if* the screen delaminated, I’m under the impression that the MobileMe functionality would not be impacted. True, the phone may not work as a touch device after this experiment (or work as well) - but I expect that many of the functions would remain well within parameters.
My first area of concern was the battery. Looking into the iPhone 4 (assumed it was an iPhone 4) battery shows that these batteries are in a poly ‘bag’ - not a hard plastic container. So, any expansion of the battery due to low pressure would simply mean the bag got a little bit ‘bigger’, I’d expect minimal inflation as Lithium Ion batteries don’t have a lot of air in them.
Temperature wise, batteries don’t freeze quickly - it takes time and before they freeze their surge current drops, however their voltage output remains fairly constant. Given the short flight time, I can see where the phone may have less current draw - but in the standby state this should be minimal. As if falls back down, it warms back up - so the MobileMe connection should restore when the phone warms back up.
That’s what I find credable about this story. The 10,000 ft altitude on the Apple iPhone is a statistical rating, not an absolute rating. Approximately 0.1% of the iPhones on the market will fail when operating over some substancial length of time at an altitude greater than 10,000 ft. They do not say ‘why’. Overheating due to thinner air? Delamination of the screen? Offgassing of electrolytic capacitors?
I worked in a VA hospital back in the 80’s. One of the computer gurus was making fun of the PC computers and took us back to see what real computer memory looked like. He had room with tens of thousands of those round magnets all hand wound and hanging in racks. It was actually kind of impressive.
One of the most awesome things ever. BRAVO to the family that did this!
Now to launch one with a live 4G streaming video!!!!!
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