Does the name Wayne Szalinski ring a bell? He was a quirky
scientist/inventor from the suburbs simply trying to wow the scientific
community when he accidentally shrunk his kids with a state-of-the-art
electro-magnetic shrink ray.
None of that happened in real life; it was the plot of Honey, I Shrunk the Kids,
which arguably introduced the world to a do-it-yourself approach to
scientific exploration. Though we're probably decades away from being
able to miniaturize ourselves, we may not be too far from DIY space
exploration.
Luke Geissbuhler is the founder of an organization "formed by a group of friends in New York City" called the Brooklyn Space Program. According the website, BSP was formed to promote "scientific exploration, engineering, design and education."
balloon with a styrofoam take-out box
containing a camera and an iPhone for tracking purposes. To prevent
freezing, the amateur scientists wrapped both items in hand warmers and
released the balloon into space.
What began as a very cool bonding experience, resulted in some remarkable footage from space. At 19-miles above the Earth, the balloon popped and the container experienced a brief moment of weightlessness.
According to the video, the contraption reaches "maximum speed at approximately 150 MPH, even with the parachute deployed." Ultimately, the package was found 30-miles from the original launch-site using the phone's GPS coordinates.
Though Space Balloon doesn't unravel any scientific mysteries or present new images of the upper stratosphere that other, more powerful cameras haven't already revealed in the past, it does open the door for future DIY space exploration. Who needs NASA when we've got the Internet, right?
