Space On a Shoestring 257
An anonymous reader writes, "Three engineering students from Cambridge University plan to send an unmanned craft into space for £1,000 ($1,880) and have just sent a test mission up 32 km for a lot less. Their snaps from the upper atmosphere are impressive, and were taken by a balloon equipped with off-the-shelf technology including GSM text messaging, radio communications, and an ordinary 5-megapixel camera. They now plan to use a similar craft as a launching stage to get a cheap rocket into space." There's also a video of the balloon launch.
Re: GSM text messaging (Score:5, Insightful)
Anyone familiar with the story of flight 93 knows that cell phones work at the cruising altitude of commericial jet aircraft.
Lee
Yes, but orbital? (Score:4, Insightful)
Re:Very cool hobby... (Score:2, Insightful)
Ya know, in the grand Slashdot of life, aren't we all karma whores at best?
The parent supplied useful information, albeit in such a way as to boost his karma. It's better than some "designer" "offend everybody" troll post (with little four letter acronyms & whatnot).
Re:Necessity is the mother of invention (Score:3, Insightful)
To put something into a stable orbit, you must not only achieve height, but tangential velocity. A rocket that is capable of achieving the neccessary velocity (around 7000 m/s depending on how heavy the object is) will probably not be lifted by a baloon any time soon.
In addition to that, 32km is not high enough to put something into orbit. You need to be around 180km to make several stable orbits. And if you want something up there for years, you need to be 250+ to avoid drag from the outer atmosphere.
This is just height. This is not orbit. There is not nearly enough energy here to make orbit.
Still, quite an amazing feat for the costs invovled. My hat is off to them.
Re:Orbit (Score:3, Insightful)
To get there from 20 miles would still require a considerable rocket, though, and I'd be very surprised to see them pull that off for under US$2k. That additional 40 miles is still a considerable event in amateur rocketry, even with the wind essentially eliminated, and that's from a standing start.
And it's a very, very long way to orbit from there (though somewhat easier if you're not planning to get whatever it is back down safely).
As usual, the press-release writers have sold an interesting event ("nice pictures taken from high up cheap") and tried to spin it into a big deal ("we're going to space!"). I imagine the actual engineers are shaking their heads.
Re:oh boy (Score:1, Insightful)
The fact that you've included the made-up and utterly nonsensical word "Islamofascism" (used exclusively by people who do not know anything about either fascism or Islam) should be enough to clue everyone in that you're a pants-pissing hysterical idiot. Well, that and the fact that you seem to think there's a "d" in the word "urban".
Re: GSM text messaging (Score:4, Insightful)
On the flip side, the phone can't deal with dozens of control signals from dozens of towers on the same channel. Normal operation a phone sees a control channel from several towers nearby on several frequencies. These control channels get geographly re-used. At altitude it's the ability to see many towers on the same frequency at the same time scramples the signal to the phone and breaks the phone ability to lock on to a control signal. This is the sudden loss of signal bars seen on an airbone phone. Too many towers in view at close to the same signal strength and on the same channels as each other.
Re: GSM text messaging while flying (Score:4, Insightful)
Re:ACES (Score:3, Insightful)
Re: GSM text messaging (Score:3, Insightful)
Costs/Point (Score:3, Insightful)
Re:Moo (Score:4, Insightful)