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The Companion Cube - IN SPACE

DrForester

Kills Photobucket
Well, near space...

Today I and a group of students launched a balloon satellite. These are small boxes with science experiments that are launched tethered from a weather balloon and go to near 100,000 feet (We hit 102,000 feet). We also designed our satellite to look like the companion cube, so I thought I would share some pictures.

Our main experiment was to see how extreme cold effects flash memory (It doesn't apparently).

Y8TacP3.jpg




And I like how the last one looks a bit like Portal 2.
 

Mondy

Banned
Now do it with a scale model of the yellow Core and make someones day when it falls back to Earth in front of them.
 

CTLance

Member
Nice. Looks awesome. Hope you had much fun making this.

Did you make a video recording or "only" periodical still photos out of your Companion space probe?

Love that kinda stuff.

I always wonder, though - don't authorities frown upon stuff like that? Nevermind the danger of random people getting splattered by Companion Cubes at high velocity - but also planes and helicopters sucking that thing into their engines and stuff. I bet you need to have some paperwork to do before you can send up such a balloon.
 

DrForester

Kills Photobucket
Nice. Looks awesome. Hope you had much fun making this.

Did you make a video recording or "only" periodical still photos out of your Companion space probe?

Love that kinda stuff.

I always wonder, though - don't authorities frown upon stuff like that? Nevermind the danger of random people getting splattered by Companion Cubes at high velocity - but also planes and helicopters sucking that thing into their engines and stuff. I bet you need to have some paperwork to do before you can send up such a balloon.

School worked with a organization called Edge of Space Sciences. They get all the FAA paperwork done, and we launch in a rural area (In this case near Windsor, Colorado). They also do wind predictions to make sure it wont stray south into Denver's airspace. It landed about 100 miles from where we launched it near the Colorado, Nebraska border.

And it was a video, I just haven't gone through it all yet, and it was spinning a lot on the way up and down. That one picture I have is several seconds after the balloon burst and is a picture of the bottom of the balloon.
 

Bebpo

Banned
Very cool! How difficult is it for a layman to put together something that goes up into space like that?
 

DrForester

Kills Photobucket
Very cool! How difficult is it for a layman to put together something that goes up into space like that?

Not hard if you take a class at a school that does it for the launch part. There are a lot of logistics in the launch and recovery phase.

The box itself was pretty simple. Ours was made out of foam core, with foam insulation on the inside. Plastic tube in the middle to guide the rope they use to string it all up. We had a small electric heater inside made from a few resistors, that seemed to work quite well.
 
Temperature at 100 000 ft is just below -40°C.

You could use a dry ice to bring a sample down to a more controlled temperature state from where you could study the effects of "extreme cold" on the flash memory.

Our main experiment was to see how extreme cold effects flash memory (It doesn't apparently).

Was this reeeeeaallly the reason to send your ballon up? Or where you just looking for an excuse to send something really high and take pictures?
 

DrForester

Kills Photobucket
Temperature at 100 000 ft is just below -40°C.

You could use a dry ice to bring a sample down to a more controlled temperature state from where you could study the effects of "extreme cold" on the flash memory.



Was this reeeeeaallly the reason to send your ballon up? Or where you just looking for an excuse to send something really high and take pictures?

Oh everyone sent up a camera. In addition to other experiments.
 

dejay

Banned
Not hard if you take a class at a school that does it for the launch part. There are a lot of logistics in the launch and recovery phase.

The box itself was pretty simple. Ours was made out of foam core, with foam insulation on the inside. Plastic tube in the middle to guide the rope they use to string it all up. We had a small electric heater inside made from a few resistors, that seemed to work quite well.

How do you recover it? How far away from the launch site did it land or were you able to somehow control the descent?
 

DrForester

Kills Photobucket
How do you recover it? How far away from the launch site did it land or were you able to somehow control the descent?

The group that launches it has two beacons (at the top and bottom of the string) and has remote equipment in the car. THey have software to use current winds to predict track with sufficient accuracy, so shortly after launch we started driving to where we expected it to land. Out landed about 100 miles from where we launched it. Here was the prediction model before launch.

ICvnBMP.gif
 

DrForester

Kills Photobucket
Send these photos to Valve (gabens email would work I guess)

This. They'll love it.

I sent Gabe and email and he did respond, saying it was awesome. I then got an email a few days later from someone at valve who wanted to send us some stuff. Well, they delivered.

XjD3C1p.jpg


The pictures are for everyone on the team and signed by Gabe. The mini-portal gun replica is also signed by the development team!
 

Nokterian

Member
I sent Gabe and email and he did respond, saying it was awesome. I then got an email a few days later from someone at valve who wanted to send us some stuff. Well, they delivered.

XjD3C1p.jpg


The pictures are for everyone on the team and signed by Gabe. The mini-portal gun replica is also signed by the development team!

Oh man fantastic! Gotta love Valve there the best awesome swag man! :)
 

PAULINK

I microwave steaks.
I sent Gabe and email and he did respond, saying it was awesome. I then got an email a few days later from someone at valve who wanted to send us some stuff. Well, they delivered.

XjD3C1p.jpg


The pictures are for everyone on the team and signed by Gabe. The mini-portal gun replica is also signed by the development team!

Gabe Newell is a swell guy.
 
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