Pretty impressive, but that ain't space.
Agreed. It's in the stratosphere and might be called 'near space', but it's not above the Karman line.
Amateur rocket launch reaches 121,000 feet
21–30 of 58 posts
Re: Amateur rocket launch reaches 121,000 feet
#22"As the GPS devices on Qu8k failed to log readings above 100,000 feet, the attempt is likely disqualified." would love to know what happened
Went higher than the GPS satellites could see?
No, but there are limits on how high commercial GPS receivers will work to prevent them from being used to guide ballistic missiles.
Re: Amateur rocket launch reaches 121,000 feet
#23"As the GPS devices on Qu8k failed to log readings above 100,000 feet, the attempt is likely disqualified." would love to know what happened
I thought commercial GPS was disabled above 60,000 ft.
It says here[1] "All GPS receivers capable of functioning above 18 kilometres (11 mi) altitude and 515 metres per second (1,001 kn)[56] are classified as munitions (weapons) for which U.S. State Department export licenses are required. These limits attempt to prevent use of a receiver in a ballistic missile." News to me!
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Global_Positioning_System#Restr...
Re: Amateur rocket launch reaches 121,000 feet
#24121,000 feet = 36.88 km
From Wikipedia: The Kármán line lies at an altitude of 100 kilometres (62 mi) above the Earth's sea level, and is commonly used to define the boundary between the Earth's atmosphere and outer space.
That's not space. Though it's an amazing feat nonetheless.
Re: Amateur rocket launch reaches 121,000 feet
#25"As the GPS devices on Qu8k failed to log readings above 100,000 feet, the attempt is likely disqualified." would love to know what happened
Went higher than the GPS satellites could see?
But the rules is that the gps devices needs to record a measurement greater than 100k feet. If that's higher than what GPS satellites can see then no one can win.
Re: Amateur rocket launch reaches 121,000 feet
#26Earlier quoted context omitted.
I thought commercial GPS was disabled above 60,000 ft.
It says here[1] "All GPS receivers capable of functioning above 18 kilometres (11 mi) altitude and 515 metres per second (1,001 kn)[56] are classified as munitions (weapons) for which U.S. State Department export licenses are required. These limits attempt to prevent use of a receiver in a ballistic missile." News to me! http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Global_Positioning_System#Restr...
People have built their own, though. It's not easy, but it can be done.
The question is, does launching a rocket into space technically count as export?
Re: Amateur rocket launch reaches 121,000 feet
#27I don't have anywhere near the smarts to pull something like this off (maybe one day, one day), but I'm always so excited when people try these and they work. Awesome job
Build something else. Whatever it is that you build you end up with that awesome "I built that" feeling. Last night I hacked to 0230 on turning a set of 50 GE Color Effects Christmas lights into a 7x7 color display. No one around me really understands why this was worth staying up half the night for, but when I finally got control of the serial bus protocol for programming the lights and saw my display work under my…
That looks great. Will you be posting any info about how you did this?
Re: Amateur rocket launch reaches 121,000 feet
#28Can't they confirm that the altitude met the contest minimum based on how much earth curvature there is in the photos?
They would have to compensate for artificial curvature introduced by the cameras they are using. If you look at the images you can clearly see that effect.
Re: Amateur rocket launch reaches 121,000 feet
#29"As the GPS devices on Qu8k failed to log readings above 100,000 feet, the attempt is likely disqualified." would love to know what happened
I worked at one of the major GPS manufacturers as a hardware/firmware designer and we stopped tracking above a certain altitude and over a certain velocity due to government policy.
I remember one time there was a bug report from a customer complaining that our GPS would not work after mach 2 or some extreme speed. This ended up being a "qualified" foreign government client, so a new firmware version was sent which removed the restriction.
Re: Amateur rocket launch reaches 121,000 feet
#30Earlier quoted context omitted.
Build something else. Whatever it is that you build you end up with that awesome "I built that" feeling. Last night I hacked to 0230 on turning a set of 50 GE Color Effects Christmas lights into a 7x7 color display. No one around me really understands why this was worth staying up half the night for, but when I finally got control of the serial bus protocol for programming the lights and saw my display work under my…
That looks great. Will you be posting any info about how you did this?
Yes, I will. When I've got it doing something useful I will post a full blog post with details and also with the source code etc.
Some more pictures to give you the idea:
1. All the LEDs removed from the cable and stuck into a specially drilled piece of thin plywood: http://yfrog.com/hwy2snj
2. Reverse of the plywood showing the bulb with all the cables cut. Had to cut, strip and solder all 288 cables back in place: http://yfrog.com/j2xp8gsj
3. Little shot of the rewiring on the back. The colored pieces are tiny bits of heatshrink that I put in place to insulate everything: http://yfrog.com/nzh3ngdj