British Man With $747 Budget Beats NASA

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Aug 18, 2007
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Man With $747 Budget Beats NASA

A British man took extraordinary photos from space, baffling the bureaucrats at NASA, with its billions of looted dollars popping out the doors and windows. Read the story of how Robert Harrison did it with a camera, a plastic box, and a helium balloon.
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Home Space Photos: Man Takes Space Photos With Balloon And Home Camera

Harrison told the L.A. Times that a NASA official who saw the photos and video called him and asked him how he did it.

Apparently NASA thought Harrison used a rocket to achieve the flight into space.
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Collection: The Icarus Project

Pretty amazing that even 20 years ago, it would have been inconceivable that a hobbyist could capture pictures and video like this.
 
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I can't stop smiling at this...

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Just goes to show that people can achieve amazing feats with a few tools. I'm sharing this guy's Flickr collection with a few friends.

I'd +rep you, but I need to spread some love apparently.
 
bollocks

Although the pictures are really impressive, the spin put on these balloon stories is comical. The balloon reached 22 miles - the karman line - the boundary between earths atmosphere and space is 62 miles. The difference between the two is 40 miles but it might as well be infinity.
As for beating NASA the moon is 200000+ miles away.
Journalists looking for a story.
 
^^ Definitely journalist fishing for a story. This was done at my college as well as MANY others years ago.... In fact my college got the idea from another college in the first place.
 
Damn you guys need to pull the stick out of your collective ass. I suspect it's a lot more interesting that anything you people will achieve in your lifetime. I'm sure I read somewhere about this being the furthest a civilian balloon has ever reached and 22 miles up in the air is nothing to sniff at. The funniest shit is that this cost a few hundred dollars to make and yet NASA spends millions on doing the same shit. Hilarious.
 
The British fellows methods, while impressive, take a lot of time/resources many wouldn't be interested in using. these cats at MIT did something similar with off the self products and free software.

1337arts

i like their leet url too.
 
He sure did beat NASA, He should continue to do so by placing himself into a steel trashcan + TNT and visit the moon, that will really show those NASA noobs!
 
Crisis said:
Damn you guys need to pull the stick out of your collective ass. I suspect it's a lot more interesting that anything you people will achieve in your lifetime. I'm sure I read somewhere about this being the furthest a civilian balloon has ever reached and 22 miles up in the air is nothing to sniff at. The funniest shit is that this cost a few hundred dollars to make and yet NASA spends millions on doing the same shit. Hilarious.
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I'm sure it would have cost NASA a shitload less to do what they do, but bureaucracy dictates that one should charge 20x more than the actual price in order to get anything done, kinda like charging 500$ a hammer.
 
Crisis said:
Damn you guys need to pull the stick out of your collective ass. I suspect it's a lot more interesting that anything you people will achieve in your lifetime. I'm sure I read somewhere about this being the furthest a civilian balloon has ever reached and 22 miles up in the air is nothing to sniff at. The funniest shit is that this cost a few hundred dollars to make and yet NASA spends millions on doing the same shit. Hilarious.
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well, considering I've actually been on a rocket launch team..

aside from that, the purpose of the launches for NASA are completely different (though yes, they spend too much damn money.) The experiments that go up with the shuttle are the purpose of the launches, not a bunch of pretty pictures
 
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