@Gann: Lens flare? Not...that's the Millennium Falcon making it's getwaway.

yelraf

At least we beat the Russian Мзפд БґФСҖѕ into space...

Braff

I'd love to see a "glider" made of legos launched this way. granted they'd have to be super glued together.

Also, what the hell, how could they not do this one:

Donnie Darko
Project : Poke the Hamster
The robot will be using a small lego stick to continuingly poke a hamster while it gains altitude until the hamster explodes. The purpose is to see how high you have to go before a biological animal explodes.

Lupison

This is an awesome experiment. The pictures are amazing.

zanthian

That's pretty freakin awesome.

MagnoliaBoy

What I find amazing about these pics is the random framing. Picture from orbit are always perfectly composed: all in focus, subject framed properly. To have a pic with the immense earth stretching out below and a blurry rubber fragment in the foreground...I dunno, it makes outer space very real for me.

HairlessOne

Does anyone wonder what the radiation up there did to the Lego's? Will they mutate?

Git Em SteveDave is a poor substitute for LindsayJoy

We send legos to space for the first time and they don't send a Death Star or Millennium Falcon?

These people and their science...I'm disappointed by man.

Try again.

doobiebros2two

Oh, now I must buy a balloon and camera to get me some of those space photos.

jkr2

Oh god please tell me at least one of them was carrying a lego passenger. I salute that brave soldier.

I tried to send a minifig into space in my younger and more idealist years, by tying an enterprising your astronaut to a helium balloon and releasing him to the wild blue yonder. Sadly he was never seen again.

Just look how far we've come.

mhlaxp

This post just made my day.

I'm not sure exactly why. But I like it.

ideaman2020

Stunning.

sean.piggott

@EasyGT: Lense flare, compare to 'highest photo.jpg'.

Gann

@EasyGT, I think that would be Marty and the Doc!?

halfkorean

i like how they called the freefall one little joe
[en.wikipedia.org]

lol123

does anyone else see the lights in the "balloon fragments" photo?

EasyGT

Parachute pics? Stoopid scientists - you can't take upskirt pictures from the air!

Maksimir

@dallasmay2: ~60km. 30km up, and 30km down w/some drift.

Git Em SteveDave is a poor substitute for LindsayJoy

@dallasmay2: 30km?

hu_hu_cool

I like it.... lego robots..

hu_hu_cool

Does anyone know how far it traveled?

dallasmay2

I always wondered what it'd be like to cross Nintendo and Lego. I didn't expect it to be this friggin' awesome. Or have this amount of scientific relevance.

Gann

Lasers? It doesn't need 'em. We're being bombed by Peeps!

weatherman

Wiimote measuring g-forces at different altitudes is the raddest thing I've ever heard of.

waveman216

jesus you can tell us...
you have a crawler bot like google that searches the whole internet for lego.
c'mon i know you do

vinchbr

My dream would be to send a model rocket up on a balloon like this, with a minifig inside, and somehow have the engine lit just before the balloon burst.

wingbatwu

This is exactly what we DON'T want our government doing. Sure, lasers are cool and all, but as Afghanistan and Iraq have shown, you can inflict severe casualties by simply throwing enough cheap and gullible lego men at the problem armed with ILDs (improvised lego devices) at our men.

Xavoc

Does anyone have a lawn chair I can borrow, I have a few ballons I need to blow up...

andrelix

@Git Em SteveDave is a poor substitute for LindsayJoy: I think they already have, you see, a short tie back, and many may remember, a large minifig washed ashore somewhere in Europe, I don't recall where, and I think this may be related to the Lego space program headed by mhlaxp, they didn't use adequate shielding.

Con Seannery

@bpapa9013: I never said I wanted to achieve true orbit... :)

I imagine a weight-balanced platform, with the launch pad at one end, and a camera at the other end.

I would get one of those 3-stage model rockets with a transparent payload section, where the minifig would sit.

Who cares if the rocket is never found again, I would love to have the launch sequence photos!

And if the rocket IS found, then I'd arguably have the first ever minifig that earned its astronaut wings.

wingbatwu

@Ajax: It's technically "Lego blocks". That's from the previous Lego coverage on Giz.

I prefer "Lego", and have to resist the urge to punch the face of someone who says "Legos"

Atlantys

Wow. Coolest thing ever! Thx Giz

Lazarus511

*is enough

Ajax

@waveman216: I second that. The union of high altitudes, Wiimotes, and Legos (Legoes?) are enough to make me squeal.

Ajax

@wingbatwu: That actually is a pretty ingenious idea: attempt to launch something into a true orbit from 30km.

Would greatly cut down on the necessary transit fuel, but you still gotta get the appropriate velocity, which I doubt any sort of model rocket could achieve (not a rocket that is light enough to be carried 30km up by a weather balloon anyway). Not to mention the fact that dangling from beneath a weather balloon does not a stable launch pad make.

So, I like your idea, but the practicality of it is still somewhat lacking...

bpapa9013

btw - this didn't pass by a priest in a lawnchair did it?

johncon3

@wingbatwu: While I too think this is a fantastic idea I fear it wouldn't work. Probably not enough oxygen at that altitude for combustion of a standard model rocket engine. I don't think the Estes variety uses an oxygen-rich fuel component, but I could be wrong.

Now if you make your own engine, or use NO2+hydrocarbon like the mythbusters civil war rocket you probably have a shot.

jtheletter

This is an obvious attempt by the government to further the deployment of teeny-tiny plastic nuclear platforms into space.....

johncon3

Now this is the kind of hobby I need to get myself into! I'm off to check for a local meet up group.

Flynn_is_my_user

[www.todaysbigfail.com]

jkr2

I read China is already constructing a counter project out of Fiddlesticks.

BiZarRroBALlmeR

@jtheletter: Wikipedia says that rocket motors above the E rating use a propellant similar to the one used in the space shuttle boosters, so I think an F motor would readily ignite.

wingbatwu

Er, _most_ of them safely parachuted to ground as planned. Poor Little Joe, on the other hand, ended up with a tangled chute and landed the hard way. From 80,000 feet. Reportedly, the NXT was still intact and running the program when it was recovered, and all the related parts were unbroken as well, thanks to being encased in a large styrofoam shell.

If you've ever had a chance to meet Brian, that is one crazy guy. You can read his preliminary report on the results here.

@mhlaxp:
At least one of them was carrying a passenger. Brian's Gypsy had what appears to be an Alpha Team Crunch minifig dressed up in Brick Forge's new HALO...er, I mean Space Marine armor. Little Joe had the Alpha Team Flex minifig, sporting his original headgear. Personally, I think he should have gotten his hands on the official LEGO Dino Attack minifig w/ parachute and had it set up such that if the main chute failed to work properly, the NXT would automatically eject the passenger out the bottom.

@Lupison:
Doesn't work that way. "Explosive decompression" is a term that describes what happens when a habitable space is abruptly exposed to hard vacuum, not the urban myth of living creatures blowing up due to the lack of air pressure. You asphyxiate, the moisture boils off of your eyes and out of your mouth, and you might have ruptured capillaries in your skin, but that's about it. The hamster, on the other hand, would probably freeze to death before it would run out of oxygen.

Purple Dave

@vinchbr: I am the crawler. I am Lego.

Jesus Diaz

All I want is a camera strapped to one of those filming it's flight into the edge of space. I think it would be greatly humbling to witness.

geoffcbassett

I have been really wanting to do this. seems easy, just need the hardware. figure a good calculator ( i phone should do) , latex baloon to spec, helium, rig for snapping photos or shooting video, and a portable ham radio to track position and altitude using [www.aprs.net]

also can't forget about faa part 101 compliance for unmanned balloons.

aeroworks

@aeroworks: Screw the FAA! I've got a bag of 100 party ballons and a helium tnak, and I'm not afraid to use them!!!!

Besides, what can they do? Suspend the pilot licence I don't have?

balloondoggle

@Purple Dave: Challenge #1: Identify the offender.

It's unlikely they'd put the effort into a prosecution unless there were a problem caused to get thier attention. So few people would know that what you are doing is against the FARs that it would probably go unoticed and unreported to the FAA. They are a bit unobservant most of the time if you aren't actually on an airport or in controled airspace.

balloondoggle

@balloondoggle:
If by "suspend pilot's license" you actually mean "impose fines and jail time", then yes. They can.

Purple Dave

@aeroworks: &balloondoggle: &Purple Dave: Easily solved by getting on a boat and heading out past the three (I think) mile zone (though many contend that you start measuring at the edge of the tectonic plate or some such oddity and others argue for a larger distance from shore). Once in International waters, you don't really have to comply with the FAA.

HOWEVER, compliance is a nice idea in this case because it will help make sure you don't cause an air-disaster of some sort.

As a kid, I had twice as much string as I needed for setting the kite altitude record. I had it all out, but the kite was out at a bad angle, so not really high enough. Then the police helicopter yelled at me to bring it down. Ahhhh.... The memories.

hnkelley

@balloondoggle:
That's easy. You just wait for him to land, like they did with that bozo who drifted through the airspace of LAX a number of years ago. Once they've spotted you, it's a simple matter to follow you, and it's not like you have much say in where you're headed beyond the ability to incrementally reduce your altitude (which might send you in a different direction based on prevailing winds).

@hnkelley:
It used to be three nautical miles in some countries (including the US), apparently because that's as far as you could lob a cannon ball to express your irritation at what the other guy was doing. UN law recognizes a generic limit for territorial waters at 12 nautical miles (almost 14 regular miles) from the low water mark, except where negotiated differently by treaty. So, if you want to head out 14 miles from shore, and hope and pray that you'll come down somewhere that your buddies on the boat can recover you, while _not_ passing back over the territorial waters boundary...well, I guess there's not much they can do to stop you. Technically, as long as your ship is flying a flag of registration, you're still subject to that nation's laws while on the high seas, but I guess once you leave the deck that jurisdiction no longer applies to you, and one could argue that no laws are broken until the very moment you cease to be within the localized jurisdiction provided by contact with the boat.

Purple Dave

@Purple Dave: Ah, I forgot about the changes. Thanks for the reminder!

hnkelley

@hnkelley:
Yeah, wouldn't want to to get arrested for unintentionally attempting to commit suicide, would we? ;P

Purple Dave