16-Year-Old MIT Admit Sends Her Admission Letter Into Space & Films the Journey
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Re: 16-Year-Old MIT Admit Sends Her Admission Letter Into Space & Films the Journey
#2Can we stop referring to these high altitude balloon payloads as going "into space"? At 91000 feet up, he is over 70 km from the official edge of space, and 130 km from lowest satellite orbits.
EDIT: The soon to be MIT student correctly refers to it as a "near space" flight, but the context was changed to increase the link bait factor.
Re: 16-Year-Old MIT Admit Sends Her Admission Letter Into Space & Films the Journey
#3how hard and expensive would it be to make amateurish spacecraft and go into the space? and obviously (which I think makes is so hard to do) come back to Earth in one piece?
Re: 16-Year-Old MIT Admit Sends Her Admission Letter Into Space & Films the Journey
#4I'm not going to be impressed anymore until someone puts a camera into orbit for a few revolutions.
Re: 16-Year-Old MIT Admit Sends Her Admission Letter Into Space & Films the Journey
#5I'm not going to be impressed anymore until someone puts a camera into orbit for a few revolutions.
I had thought I might buy the necessary material and write out the required instructions to do this and give them to three six and seven year olds for them to assemble and launch (with adult help to carry the tank & fill the balloon).
So far their mothers say yes, they have a sense of humour & don't think I will actually let the kids do it without a lot of help. Their fathers say no, likely because of their own selfish lack of input in building it and they think they might have to pay for the project (ie the damages if it goes wrong). I will have to try some more and hopefully in a few weeks will have convinced them to try this experiment.
Re: 16-Year-Old MIT Admit Sends Her Admission Letter Into Space & Films the Journey
#6how hard and expensive would it be to make amateurish spacecraft and go into the space? and obviously (which I think makes is so hard to do) come back to Earth in one piece?
These guys (Copenhagen Suborbitals) are building an amateur rocket to hit suborbital heights - 500,000 feet. Pretty awesome work:
http://forums.somethingawful.com/showthread.php?threadid=327...
Re: 16-Year-Old MIT Admit Sends Her Admission Letter Into Space & Films the Journey
#7Can we stop referring to these high altitude balloon payloads as going "into space"? At 91000 feet up, he is over 70 km from the official edge of space, and 130 km from lowest satellite orbits. EDIT: The soon to be MIT student correctly refers to it as a "near space" flight, but the context was changed to increase the link bait factor.
Even worse, the reporter says "She took her admissions letter and then rocketed it into space." As if there were a rocket involved.
I mean, I like high-altitude ballooning, don't get me wrong. I'm just saying that this sentence primed me to expect something an order of magnitude cooler, someone strapping 250 grams of aluminum-based rocket fuel to their acceptance letter and watching it blast off.
Re: 16-Year-Old MIT Admit Sends Her Admission Letter Into Space & Films the Journey
#8Just wondering: how do you get into MIT at 16, and is it worth it? I mean would you be missing out as a 16 year old at MIT (or any other university) because your peers are into other things than you, or is it an overall net plus?
I assume that it is not some inherited genius that enables kids to get into university, but some unique "strategy". Of course I could be wrong. I also assume it would be doable without ruining the childhood, that is, the kid should be naturally excited about science and stuff, not forced into it.
Re: 16-Year-Old MIT Admit Sends Her Admission Letter Into Space & Films the Journey
#9I wait for the day one of those "space" experiments by some high-school student (and his parents) ends up crashing a jet engine or lands on a windshield of a van going 80 miles/hour.
It's all fun until reality and hits you right in the face and you pay for your YouTube video for the rest of your life. Is it likely to happen? No, but that wont save you afterwards.
Re: 16-Year-Old MIT Admit Sends Her Admission Letter Into Space & Films the Journey
#10Can we stop referring to these high altitude balloon payloads as going "into space"? At 91000 feet up, he is over 70 km from the official edge of space, and 130 km from lowest satellite orbits. EDIT: The soon to be MIT student correctly refers to it as a "near space" flight, but the context was changed to increase the link bait factor.
It's still impressive. Jets fly at 35,000 feet, so her balloon went 3 times higher than a jet.
I want to do this. Anyone have a link to a set of instructions? It looked like she was following some printed instructions in the video.