Video from a camera attached to a weather balloon that rose into the
upper stratosphere and recorded the blackness of space.
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Reminds me of the joke about USA spending millions to develop a ball point pen that would write in zero gravity and thru greasy paper. After years and millions: finally came up with pressurized space pens-another mission accomplished for the USA Space Program==the Russians just can’t compete with the money we are spending.
So the Russians used a common pencil.
Same with billion dollar launch rockets: 95% of what they do can be replaced by balloons, but then what would NASA do?
Thanks. I enjoyed the adventure.
Great video! Too bad the boundary of space does not begin at 100,000′. Space starts at 62 miles up, ask Burt Rutan…
Right on Bobbo!
Very cool!
#1, according to Snopes, the real story is:
‘NASA never asked Paul C. Fisher to produce a pen. When the astronauts began to fly, like the Russians, they used pencils, but the leads sometimes broke and became a hazard by floating in the [capsule’s] atmosphere where there was no gravity. They could float into an eye or nose or cause a short in an electrical device. In addition, both the lead and the wood of the pencil could burn rapidly in the pure oxygen atmosphere. Paul Fisher realized the astronauts needed a safer and more dependable writing instrument, so in July 1965 he developed the pressurized ball pen, with its ink enclosed in a sealed, pressurized ink cartridge.
Fisher sent the first samples to Dr. Robert Gilruth, Director of the Houston Space Center. The pens were all metal except for the ink, which had a flash point above 200°C. The sample Space Pens were thoroughly tested by NASA. They passed all the tests and have been used ever since on all manned space flights, American and Russian. All research and developement costs were paid by Paul Fisher. No development costs have ever been charged to the government.
Because of the fire in Apollo 1, in which three Astronauts died, NASA required a writing instrument that would not burn in a 100% oxygen atmosphere. It also had to work in the extreme conditions of outer space:
1. In a vacuum.
2. With no gravity.
3. In hot temperatures of +150°C in sunlight and also in the cold shadows of space where the temperatures drop to -120°C
(NASA tested the pressurized Space Pens at -50°C, but because of the residential [sic] heat in the pen it also writes for many minutes in the cold shadows.)
Fisher spent over one million dollars in trying to perfect the ball point pen before he made his first successful pressurized pens in 1965. Samples were immediately sent to Dr. Robert Gilruth, Manager of the Houston Space Center, where they were thoroughly tested and approved for use in Space in September 1965. In December 1967 he sold 400 Fisher Space Pens to NASA for $2.95 each.
Lead pencils were used on all Mercury and Gemini space flights and all Russian space flights prior to 1968. Fisher Space Pens are more dependable than lead pencils and cannot create the hazard of a broken piece of lead floating through the gravity-less atmosphere.’
So Nasa never spent millions of dollars in developing a pressurised pen.
I continuously blather on about topics as I’m an expert on everything… Look, look at me! I’m the God of Dvorak.org! All bow done before me! I comment on everything posted here because I am insignificant and I feel the need to have my intellectual prowess recognized by all who visit here! I’m the god of Dvorak.org. The GOD I tell you!
somehow, i don’t think #7 was the “real” bobbo. The “feel” and syntax is off. and bobbo isn’t too big on god/being god, me thinks.
that aside, i remember those pens, i a few iirc..they worked lovely
this spacecamera project was pretty f’n cool if you ask me. simple and effective.
-s
Right on Gasparrini!
#6–It’s a Gas, Gas, Gas==thank you. I have always thought it was just a joke, didn’t think there was that much to it. More than a kernel of truth?
Makes me wonder what is so important it has to be written down to begin with? But thats a different story.
So, millions spent in development and they were sold for $3 bucks? Somehow I doubt that, but then I don’t actually know everything.
I thought that was super cool.
If NASA doesn’t get some sort of launch vehicle soon it is nothing.
Unless you can figure out some way to control where a balloon goes and keep it at the location wanted we are still going to need to put satellites in orbit.
The wee bit of bad news is back in the 1800s there was a solar storm that hit North America that would have knocked out every satalite and our entire electric system grid and most electronic equipment if such had existed at the time.
We are now much less prepared for such an event than New Orleans and the Gulf Coast was for Katrina.
The science actually is in on that one.
Use bigger balloons and put the two kids in there.
I’d love to do something like that here but with my luck it would fly over/land in Area 51 and then I’d get shot.
Pretty neat footage though.
just to let everyone know who try to reproduce this experiment.
you can’t just let a baloon go off like that, you need an official permit.
I guess it is very unlikely that you will ever get a permission for this.
if you do this and something happens (thanks to the address included in the box) you will be fully liable. if it hits someones head or it crashes on the highway you will pay for the rest of your life. good luck then