Hobbyist shoots Space Photos with Weather Balloon, EBay Camera & Duct Tape

A typical space shuttle mission flies 200 miles above the earth's surface and returns beautiful pictures on the way, but it involves 1,500 people, puts six or seven astronauts at risk and costs, depending on who's doing the counting, close to half a billion dollars.

Robert Harrison got some pretty good pictures too. He did it with a weather balloon, a used digital camera he picked up on eBay and some duct tape.

"I thought I was going to get some nice pictures," said Harrison, a computer engineer from the British town of Highburton, West Yorkshire, "but I didn't realize I'd see the curvature of the earth, the blue band of the atmosphere and the blackness of space."

His camera rises to altitudes of about 20 miles over the English countryside. The price per flight: about $750.

Harrison began his hobby two years ago, figuring it might be fun to get pictures of his house from above. The project has, er, ballooned since then.

http://abcnews.go.com/Technology/balloon-camera-duct-tape-shoot-earth-pictures-space/story?id=10210658





Pretty damn cool!

Kinda shocking, really!

but basically being a cheap bastid, it never materialized. Glad to see that a private citizen had the wherewithal to accomplish this. Congratulations! Well done!

Great pics!

From the article:

The balloon rises, carried randomly by the wind, until it bursts. The camera then parachutes to the ground in its housing. Harrison put his phone number and a printed label on the outside: "Harmless Scientific Experiment."

Imagine if everyone did this, how much pollution it would cause, ocean creatures choking on balloons, etc - only governments will be able to send things over a certain height.

Just wait for it.... :)

and has a great time, and makes the billion dollar agencies look bad.
I just love it - I hope he really enjoys it.

mark

in the article another link leads to flickr pics of a lot more shots he also notes on that page that permission is needed to launch...

- thanks for the article and pics... :)