Faster, Cheaper
Sounds better already.* MIT students beat NASA on a beer-fund budget, launch and recover unmanned low-orbit beer cooler mission. Wired’s Gadget Lab:
The two students (from MIT, of course) put together a low-budget rig to fly a camera high enough to photograph the curvature of the Earth. Instead of rockets, boosters and expensive control systems, they filled a weather balloon with helium and hung a styrofoam beer cooler underneath to carry a cheap Canon A470 compact camera. Instant hand warmers kept things from freezing up and made sure the batteries stayed warm enough to work.
Of course, all this would be pointless if the guys couldn’t find the rig when it landed, so they dropped a prepaid GPS-equipped cellphone inside the box for tracking. Total cost, including duct tape? $148.
Launch
Two weeks ago, on Sept. 2, at the leisurely post-breakfast hour of 11:45 a.m., the balloon was launched from Sturbridge, Massachusetts. Lee and Yeh took a road trip in order to stop prevailing winds from taking the balloon out onto the Atlantic, and checked in on the University of Wisconsin’s balloon trajectory website to estimate the landing site.
Because of spotty cellphone coverage in central Massachusetts, it was important to keep the rig in the center of the state so it could be found upon landing. Light winds meant the guys got lucky and, although the cellphone’s external antenna was buried upon landing, the fix they got as the balloon was coming down was close enough.
…
The picture you see above was shot from around 93,000 feet, just shy of 18 miles high. To give you an idea of how high that is, when the balloon burst, the beer-cooler took 40 minutes to come back to Earth.
To go where no beer cooler has gone before.
* Reference to former NASA adminstrator Dan Golden’s much-mocked “Faster, Better, Cheaper” slogan. OK, new NASA slogan contest. I’ll kick it off:
NASA … Ferry to Low Orbit! (Or if you prefer: HACA … сладостная езда!)
NASA … What Have We Done for You Lately!?!
NASA … Optometrist to the Stars!
(Nod to my pal Luke on the MIT space program alert)
Posted by Jules Crittenden at 12:27 pm Comments (1) on Wednesday, September 16, 2009
One Response to “Faster, Cheaper”
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September 16th, 2009 at 8:29 pm
Well this certainly creates new budget considerations in DC.