Recently, two space projects have been extensively featured on the blogosphere. The first one, BEAR-4 organised by a group from Canada, launched on the 23rd of August 2009. The second, Project Icarus, was launched on the 2nd of September 2009 by a bunch of MIT students. Their idea? Take a picture from space. Equipment? Barely $150: a camera, a GPS mobile phone, a few external batteries, a balloon, a home made parachute, a box, disposable hand warmers to keep everything alive, free software, and bits of strings. Put all that together, fill up the balloon with helium, launch on a good day; and voila!
Project Icarus reached an estimated 93,000 feet, that is about 3.2 times mount Everest (or 21.11 times Ben Nevis – 113.4 times Arthur’s Seat). From that height the air is thin and cold, you can clearly see the curvature of the earth and the glowing atmosphere effect from the sun. The helium balloon eventually bursts and the whole thing sees itself go all the way back to earth. With a bit of luck, the GPS phone is able to upload a few measures to the internet on its way back, and the boys end up finding the package a little later, undamaged, with incredible pictures.
What is amazing is that these projects are relatively easy to organise, they do not require cutting edge equipment, and are certainly not costly. Pretty much everything can be bought on eBay. Expertise required? Not that much when you think about it. You need to know how to extend the battery life of a cell phone, how to add an external antenna to it, make sure the low temperature does not kill the electronics and use no fancy & freely available geo tracking software.
But what an achievement, these guys are some of the very few people on the planet who have actually managed to send stuff, and bring information back from the edge of the earth. Just compare their resources to the different official space agencies (NASA, ESA, etc.). That’s $150 and a day of work, you can’t get better value than that! The BEAR-4 people sent a HD camcorder, and reached a whopping 107,000 feet. The flight was just under 4 hours. This group had made several (successful) attempts before that, and even got a camera crew from Discovery to document their project.
So why do we not see projects like these on the old continent? Lets not blame the weather this time. In Scotland we certainly have no shortage of knowledge, and definitely no lack of nerds. Unfortunately, it might be because of this absence that people like Branson prefer building their spaceports in the mojave desert, where there are more space enthusiasts than cactuses. A little more experimentation around here would bring more publicity, which would trigger research which in turn will mean finance availability, expertise and long term opportunities in the region.
Don’t forget to check out the videos and high resolution pictures on the groups’ webpages, as they are fascinating: BEAR-4 and Icarus. One word for these guys: Congratulations!
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