

Amateur rocket launch reaches 121,000 feet - zackbelow
http://ddeville.com/derek/Qu8k.html

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alphadog
121,000 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.

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artursapek
I was waiting for the camera to stop picking up sound the whole time. It got
really squeaky and full of static towards the peak but it never seemed to
happen.

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patrickyeon
Sound vibrations will still be picked up in a vacuum in this case. Vibrations
through the rocket body will be transmitted to the camera body (direct
contact) which will then be transmitted to the microphone (again, direct
contact). According to Wikipedia[1], 90% of the Earth's atmosphere, by mass,
is at an altitude of 52,000 ft or lower.

[1]
[http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Atmosphere_of_Earth#Pressure_an...](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Atmosphere_of_Earth#Pressure_and_thickness)

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willyt
If you look at the cut open V2 rocket in the Imperial War museum in London you
can see about 1/3 of the innards is the control system; gyro's, inertial
guidance etc. Today you can buy that on a chips from digi-key, farnell,
sparkfun or wherever for say $50 or even just root your smartphone and use it
as the control system. It always surprises me that there is very little
precision rocketry or ROV proliferation amongst the countries and
political/religious movements with extreme agendas out there.

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Loic
For the cut, you can take a look here:
<http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:Esquema_de_la_V-2.jpg> and the
corresponding Wikipedia article: <http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/V-2>

Technologically impressive, but a weapon...

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mekoka
Sending your own widget up and having it bring back snapshots of other
continents and a round Earth, only seconds later. What an amazing feeling it
must be. Makes me wanna go dig up my old mechanics book. Can someone give a
ballpark figure of how much it would cost to build something like this and how
long it took them?

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jgrahamc
You could cheaply reach the same altitude using a helium balloon. 121,000 ft
is only 37km. Plenty of home grown helium balloons have reached that height
(and higher).

My project reached 32km: <http://blog.jgc.org/2011/04/gaga-1-flight.html>

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jcapote
"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

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tibbon
Went higher than the GPS satellites could see?

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Symmetry
No, but there are limits on how high commercial GPS receivers will work to
prevent them from being used to guide ballistic missiles.

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mhb
Can't they confirm that the altitude met the contest minimum based on how much
earth curvature there is in the photos?

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jgrahamc
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.

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mhb
They should be able to do that. No?

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thwest
Yes camera calibration is a well known problem. You have some nice straight
lines from the launch pad structure you should be able to do it with.

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iamdave
I 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

~~~
jgrahamc
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 control it was awesome.

What they looked like before I started hacking them:
<http://www.costco.com/Browse/Product.aspx?Prodid=11630618>

Short video of the first full glitch free run of the lights under my control:
<http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=P9SOI9EnjTg>

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jeffbarr
That looks great. Will you be posting any info about how you did this?

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jgrahamc
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>

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achristoffersen
Related; Copenhagen Suborbitals - homegrown opensource _manned_ rocket:
<http://www.copenhagensuborbitals.com/> \- Peter Madsen (one of the two guys
building this thing) also built a submarine..

Edit: June launch attempt
[http://www.youtube.com/watch?feature=player_embedded&v=K...](http://www.youtube.com/watch?feature=player_embedded&v=K7YZpvs513U)
[http://www.copenhagensuborbitals.com/contentgfx/Rocket-2011_...](http://www.copenhagensuborbitals.com/contentgfx/Rocket-2011_550.jpg)
<http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Copenhagen_suborbitals>

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artursapek
I'm impressed with the machining on this. It looks like he made it at home in
his own shop. It looks very solidly welded and bolted together. As an ID
student that's the most amazing part for me, the thing had to have been
_really_ solid to not just fall apart under that much speed. Edit: Although I
was disappointed by the lettering coming off the side of the shaft and
covering the camera lens. Something that would be hard to predict :P

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imd
If GPS failed before 100,000 ft (and it looks like any commercial GPS would),
what about the altitude charts on the project's homepage?[0] How were they
generated? Can that data-gathering method qualify it for the Carmack
challenge?

0: <http://ddeville.com/derek/Qu8k.html>

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jholman
As to how they were generated, the charts are labelled. The first shows raw
acceleration data, plus the first and second integrals of that data. The
second shows data from a _simulation_, which was tweaked after the flight to
approximate more closely data that they do have.

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ashishbharthi
I am not sure if anybody would know here but do we need to take permission
from FAA for doing this kind of stuff?

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joshmlewis
Watch the video! It's one of the coolest things I've seen in awhile.

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shuaib
One of the most awesomest things I've seen in a while.

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TylerE
Pretty impressive, but that ain't space.

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jgrahamc
Agreed. It's in the stratosphere and might be called 'near space', but it's
not above the Karman line.

<http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kármán_line>

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resnamen
I read that as "dude sends epic homegrown into space." I pictured an enormous
plant in a hydroponics research facility, with growth unfettered by gravity...

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tibbon
Looks like they were at the Black Rock Playa. Hope they take all their moop
with them, since the Burning Man people just got done cleaning it up...

