Kids sent a rubber chicken to space!

[Atticus]

This is awesome!

LINK

High school kids sent a rubber chicken Camilla to space with a helium ball:



They put with her some insects and sunflower seed. They are going to try and plant the seeds. This is one of those things that makes you jealous you never thought of it.

[ParadigmShifter]

Did it have a pulley in the middle? (That may be a bit of an obscure reference).

[Atticus]

Indeed! Google was very helpful though.

[CivCube]

Originally Posted by ParadigmShifter

Did it have a pulley in the middle? (That may be a bit of an obscure reference).

Those things take up so much space in one's pants.

[Dreadnought]

Originally Posted by Atticus

They put with her some insects and sunflower seed. They are going to try and plant the seeds. This is one of those things that makes you jealous you never thought of it.

Hah, before I read the article, I thought the students put the seeds in space so that they would fly to other planets and be planted.

[Civ001]

Put all of our funding in to this research development now!

[taillesskangaru]

Originally Posted by Atticus

They are going to try and plant the seeds. This is one of those things that makes you jealous you never thought of it.

Indeed so. And yesterday I was just wondering how it'd be awesome to send a helium balloon into the upper atmosphere and take some pictures from up there.

[Bluemofia]

Originally Posted by taillesskangaru

Indeed so. And yesterday I was just wondering how it'd be awesome to send a helium balloon into the upper atmosphere and take some pictures from up there.

I've done it before in high school as well with the Adler Planetarium in Chicago in 2007, though it was to 100,000 instead of 120,000 feet. Didn't get to send live things into space, because that cricket we were trying to send didn't agree with us and got away sometime between launch and retrieving, but you do get a lot of cool things if you send instruments on it.

Sending a temperature sensor, you can map the boundary of the troposphere and stratosphere where the temperature inverts, a Geiger counter you can map when the cosmic ray showers start to happen as well as when they die down and turn into individual cosmic ray events, etc. We even managed to record a plane passing by.

Coolest part is, if you send it up at a clear day, you can actually see the balloon pop at 100,000 feet. The balloon expands enough such that it is big enough for you to see on the ground. (I remember doing the calculations based on video footage of when the balloon popped, but I don't remember the numbers anymore.)

[Rashiminos]

Originally Posted by CivCube

Those things take up so much space in one's pants.

Flooring inspectors have roomy pants, as do some more illicit cousins.