Saturday, January 28, 2012

LEGO Man in Space


So probably about two years ago, there were a rash of amateur videos of people cheaply sending cameras high enough into the atmosphere to photograph the curvature of the earth.  Very cool stuff.  Recently, a similar video has popped up from two Canadian high school students.

This time, along with the camera, a tiny LEGO astronaut went up too.  The entire project took 4 months to plan, but only cost the students $400 total.  Their apparatus consisted of three point and shoot cameras, a wide angle video camera, and a cell phone with a GPS app.  They packaged them all in a lightweight styrofoam box, with some disposable hand warmers so the cameras would function at high altitude, and set it aloft with an $85 weather balloon.
Full story here (LA Times)
It took a little over an hour for the cameras to reach their max altitude of about 80,000 feet, and a half hour for them to drift back down to earth via their homemade parachute.

Not a bad test flight for the first LEGO astronaut.

24 comments:

  1. That is awesome, amazing what one can do when they put their mind to it.

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  2. Wow that is really incredible. I'm looking forward to people saying the first Lego moon landing was faked.

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  3. This is really cool (and not to mention absolutely adorable), I have a feeling it's going to make a lot of people want to send stuff into space, myself included...

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  4. Wow, that was really cool.

    Id like to hook up a camera to a rocket like that sometime.

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  5. That lego astronaut looks pretty happy, flying about! (But I guess he does have a permanent smile on his face..)

    Ha, this is pretty genius.

    GM x

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  6. Incredible!
    80,000 feet....it's like 26 km or smthng...
    not bad at all!

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  7. Saw this a while ago. Really cool. I f***ing love legos. Glad it went to space :)

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  8. I read an article about it in the Toronto Star. It was like, "WHOA COOL PEOPLE LIVE IN MY CITY!!"
    It's just so cool :D

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  9. That was pretty cool, i wonder how far away it landed!

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  10. duuuuuuuuuuude that's so awesome!

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  11. I didn't know weather balloons flew so high

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  12. I heard this video was good, now i know. Thanks +follow

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  13. I saw this on the news. that's impressive but a pretty simple experiment tbh.

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    1. Yea, it's really not all that hard to put together. I know a couple of schools are starting to do these as class demos. I just liked the LEGO twist.

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  14. That's pretty awesome, that little guy belongs in a museum somewhere.

    I'm currently cutting the last few pages of the book and then I need to add a second coat of glue and then I'll be done! I hope to post pictures within the next 1 or 2 weeks. :)

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  15. That's mental, how cool is that, Lego man in space, proper big grin on his face too . . .

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  16. Saw this a few days ago on the news. Amazing!

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  17. hahaha man im gonna dig my lego out ^^

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  18. That's so awesome and inspiring!
    I've been looking at your blog and enjoying your posts so I followed you. Keep it up with interesting finds like this! I'd also love if you could check out my blog, I'm just starting out. Thanks :)

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