Space travel is anything but cheap, however, two Canadian high school students recently sent a man into space on mere $400 budget! Okay, so it wasn't a real man and he didn't actually go into space, but sending a Lego man up 80,000 feet to catch a glimpse of the Earth's curvature and the blackness of space is still pretty impressive when you consider the young duo did it just for fun.
To get the project off the ground Mathew Ho and Asad Muhammad first picked up a weather balloon for $85 and had it filled up with helium for another $160. The balloon was then attached to a homemade styrofoam box designed to hold three point and shoot cameras along with a video camera to capture all of the action.
As the weather balloon gains altitude the surrounding air pressure decreases and the balloon expands to its absolute limit before popping and sending the cameras, along with their trusty Legonaut, tumbling back to Earth. Obviously, this portion of the experiment required the parachute that Ho and Asad had previously handmade and attached to the styrofoam box.
In order to find their makeshift spacecraft after its descent back to solid ground they had also put a GPS-equipped smartphone inside. When all was said and done the duo ended up finding their contraption and Lego pilot abut 75 miles from the launch point. You can see the incredible video shot from inside craft below.
[The Toronto Star via CNET]
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