
Sending a potato to near-space - typpo
http://www.ianww.com/blog/2015/07/17/sending-a-potato-to-near-space/
======
cyanbane
Great read & cool project. Somewhat disappointed I did a ctrl-F and couldn't
find the term 'Spudnik'.

~~~
jonah
He didn't mention it, but if you look carefully in the third image:
[http://i.imgur.com/r1EvMIwl.jpg](http://i.imgur.com/r1EvMIwl.jpg)

~~~
cyanbane
totally missed this image. They did get it in there!

------
keehun
Having built potato cannons in my high school days, I half-hoped that this
article would be about launching a potato to near-space via a launch. Pretty
cool, regardless!

~~~
pavel_lishin
Would a potato even survive the sort of acceleration required? Would you just
end up delivering mashed potatoes to near-space?

~~~
TrevorJ
If the potato came apart early enough then the drag would increase
exponentially and you'd just have potato mist a few meters above ground level.

------
stephensonsco
I love the idea -- whisperer, meal and all. Did you punish the disobedient
GoPro?

------
meatysnapper
Gerald Bull would be proud.

------
souterrain
Could costs be reduced by using hydrogen?

~~~
typpo
Yep, definitely. We chose helium because it's easier to come by (party stores)
and generally safer.

~~~
ChuckMcM
Actually hydrogen is pretty easy to come by if you get some Sodium Hydroxide
(known as caustic soda or Lye) and aluminum you can mix some NaOH in water,
drop in the alumninum and out will boil out hydrogen. Capture it in your
balloon membrane and voila, done.

In general its not a problem if it isn't mixed with oxygen, if you live in the
desert (as I did as a youngster) you can fill up a garbage bag this way and
launch it into the sky) we tried to get one to explode but it just burns as
the oxygen from the air comes into contact, and then waits for more oxygen to
show up. Now if you mix it two parts H to one part oxygen? Then you can make a
very loud pop :-)

~~~
srean
...And stupid me, I tried to electrolyse _very_ salty water using household AC
when I was in primary school. I manage to fill tiny bottles with potentially
dangerous gaseous mix and leave foul smelling faintly green gas in the room
(chlorine surely). Thankfully the worst that happened was a blown fuse. I was
of course planning to make a hydrogen powered rocket missed the part about
cryo... something :)

~~~
ChuckMcM
Yeah, that is a challenge (the cryo part). I was, of course, a huge fan of the
space program and in reading about things like liquid oxygen decided to try to
make some. Lots of books about it talk about using compression and expansion
of the gases to cool down atmosphere to the point where you can pull out the
liquid oxygen. What I didn't appreciate at the time was CO2 freezes solid and
nitrogen liquifies before oxygen does. So my setup of four air compressors,
each being fed by the previous compressor and having their tanks cooled by an
ice bucket failed in an interesting way. The third in the series seized up
when the tank's CO2 froze into ice and blocked the output port, and then the
tank "rapidly self disassembled" from the compressor as it warmed up and I was
trying to debug the problem :-) The tank and compressor separated, the tank
moved about 20 feet away while doing its impression of a balloon flying about
the room as it deflated.

It killed me when the old Intel Santa Clara 4 facility was demolished to
become data center space that they _scrapped_ the Liquid N02 generator that
was part of that building. I drove by one day and it was laying in the parking
lot in pieces. I would have loved to figure out some way to save it, all that
liquid nitrogen on tap for what ever evil mad science experiment I wanted.
Sigh.

------
jonah
Any idea of the max and min temps seen inside the box during the flight? How'd
the potato fare?

~~~
typpo
Unfortunately, no real measurements. I would love to do it again with a
thermometer and other interesting payloads.

The potato looked generally fine when we recovered it, but not incredibly
appetizing, as its insides had been exposed to air for a while. The styrofoam
box is a pretty good insulator and when we opened the capsule there was a lot
of condensation and the enclosure was hot and damp.

