Pictures of Sub-Space for $150

So my friend Doug is an engineering major and eventually wants to get into aeronautical engineering. Everyone knows my views on anything related to aviation, so naturally my words to him are something along the lines of "don't fucking kill me". Anyway, Doug calls me up at work the yesterday because the Balloon weather trajectory forecast website he's using isn't taking the latitude and longitude of the launch site he's trying to input into it. Knowing the answer, I was able to help, but... "Wait, what?" was probably your reaction to that last sentence and I was right there with you until he elaborated on the statement, telling me he was trying to "recreate something he saw on the internet".

Thinking he was trying to build something that was going to blow up in his face, I had to see what he was talking about. I made my way over to the website and as it turns out, it's actually pretty cool. What he wants to do is build a weather balloon and launch it to take pictures at the edge of space. And yes, it does sound a little far fetched until you see this:

Seems it's been done before, and for cheap yo. According to http://space.1337arts.com, it costs roughly $150 to do. So now that I know that this is possible and Doug isn't trying to talk to aliens, I am very interested to see how this works out. I am also kind of hoping he calls me with more pointless questions so I don't have to go out of my way to know what stage of construction his balloon is.

"A male pilot is a confused soul who talks about women when he's flying, and about flying when he's with a woman." - Anonymous