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I’m trying to get some interesting footage of the earth from space. I’m considering a weather balloon (preferably available online) with helium. I’d rather it be actually on the border of space, 100km up, rather than near space, and as cheap as possible. I’ve already got a camera to film with.

  • Are weather balloons feasible for this?
  • How else could I do this?
Polygnome
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Blue Herring
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    You would not reach 100 km up using a simple weather balloon. From Wikipedia "The altitude record for an unmanned balloon is 53.0 kilometres (173,882 ft), reached with a volume of 60,000 cubic metres." Heights much lower than 100 km are offtopic here. – Uwe Jul 07 '20 at 16:40
  • @Uwe While Partially I agree your comment, partially I think it would be pretty okay as an answer. Maybe this is the rare case as you should first answer the question, then vote to close it as offtopic. – peterh Jul 07 '20 at 16:51
  • Looks like you can get a weather balloon up to about 39 km. – Fred Larson Jul 07 '20 at 16:54
  • If reaching a high altitude per balloon would have been so easy, the altitude record jump of Alan Eustace would be 50 km plus. He reached 135,889.108 feet (41.419000 km; 25.7365735 mi). – Uwe Jul 07 '20 at 17:26
  • @Uwe that being said, images from ~50km up are already quite interesting and show many of the things you can see from 100km as well, like the curvature of the Earth and the thin blue atmosphere layer on the horizon. – Polygnome Jul 08 '20 at 07:44
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    I've edited the question to make it more suitable for our format, I hope I haven't changed your intent too much. We do not allow shopping / product recommendation questions and opinionated questions, I also removed the greetings (which are considered fluff) and tried to bring the question into a form that is neutral and answerable with facts only, and removed the brand names which are irrelevant to the question anyways. – Polygnome Jul 08 '20 at 07:48
  • You mean, like this balloon? – Frax Jul 08 '20 at 16:05

2 Answers2

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Extending @Uwe's comment:

You would not reach 100 km up using a simple weather balloon. From Wikipedia:

"The altitude record for an unmanned balloon is 53.0 kilometres (173,882 ft), reached with a volume of 60,000 cubic metres."

Thus, the only currently feasible way to get the cam into the space using rockets.

Small, sub-orbital rockets could be quite cheap, but as far I know, they are not very widely used. They are obviously cheap only in cost/launch, and not in cost/weight .

Building a rocket is also a no-go in your case.

The most likely option in your case, if you buy place on a nanosatellite launch. The likely price will be about $\approx$ $1000/kg.

Doing that, plus developing the radio communication and the satellite itself makes even so unfeasible to optimize your project around your cam - but at least it is possible.

peterh
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  • Well, having this new SpaceX radio network, maybe developing the satellite could be under $1000 and maybe a month of work. It would not have any positioning or gyros. The whole cube should be covered by solar panels. From that point, we essentially have a mobile phone in the space. – peterh Jul 08 '20 at 14:18
  • Have a look at https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/PocketQube – John Doty Jul 08 '20 at 16:55
  • Possible, but the vast majority of successful cubesat projects cost far more than that, tens of thousands of USD. Also, the Starlink recievers are going to be pretty bulky -- roughly pizza box sized. – ikrase Jul 09 '20 at 11:54
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I had a similar idea a few years ago. Decided against it, because it's very possible I'd never get my devices back.

I wanted to make something like David Akerman has made. Basically, he used a Raspberry Pi with a weather balloon and a camera. Refer to the posts on the official Raspberry Pi website, you'll get some good info.

peterkodermac
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