First Rickroll in Space, Part 3 A comedy article
by John Hargrave 128,751 73 09/30/2010 03:22 PM 13346 views
Our mission was to pull the first prank in space, blasting the Western hemisphere and wayward aliens with the deep, rich baritone of Rick Astley. [Read Part 1 here.]
After launch, our BrickHouse Security GPS told us that our homemade "Astleyroid" had gone up to nearly 90,000 feet (17 miles!) before the balloon popped and Rick Astley plummeted back to earth. To give you an idea of the height, it took nearly 40 minutes for the 80's pop star to fall to the Earth, which is longer than his actual career freefall.
We had two cameras set up: one shooting video, and one shooting still photos. Check out the video here (featuring Mr. Astley), and the still photos below (featuring the ZUG logo).
The Photos
Preparing to launch.
Liftoff!
700 feet: This is how UFO conspiracies get started.
2,700 feet: This is the kind of photo that should be accompanied by a heavenly choir. Not Rick Astley.
10,000 feet: The Astleyroid breaks through the cloud layer. In chaos theory, this causes a volcano to erupt in Chile three years later.
21,000 feet: This is totally our new Facebook profile photo.
40,000 feet: "Does something smell like burning candles to you?" -- Icarus
63,000 feet: You can begin to see the curvature of the Earth -- proving that the Earth is not flat, but more like a long, slightly curved table
89,000 feet: Note: there are no visible holes in the ozone layer. Another conspiracy debunked.
Occasionally the camera would tilt upward, giving us a view of the inky blackness of space.
Eventually, our balloon popped and the Astleyroid came hurtling down to Earth, still calmly snapping photos.
As it dove camera-first through the cloud layer, water vapor condensed on the lens, leaving the rest of the photos a blurry mess.
Finally, it fell into the high branches of a tree bank, where the camera kept taking pictures until it ran out of storage space. Here's the last photo it took from this amazing journey.
The annals of space history are filled with names like Yuri Gagarin (first man in space), Neil Armstrong (first man on the moon), and Albert II (first monkey in space). Now history must add RICK ASTLEY to this list: the first 1980's pop star in space.
How to Launch Your Own Prank in Space
1) Order a weather balloon large enough to carry some silly item into space, like a co-worker's coffee mug or cherished family photograph. (We ordered a 1000 gram balloon from Scientific Sales to take Rick Astley into space.)
2) Order a digital camera and hack it to take pictures every 30 seconds. We used a Canon A470 with the CHDK software installed. Be sure you have enough storage to take pictures for a four-hour flight.
3) Order a GPS transmitter (not receiver), which will radio its location when it lands, and report on how high it traveled. Thanks to BrickHouse Security for loaning us a Spark Nano GPS, which worked very well; you can see other alternatives at the MIT page.
4) Find a styrofoam beer cooler to stuff the whole thing inside. To test shock absorption, the MIT students put eggs inside their cooler and dropped it off a building; when the eggs were padded enough to stay in one piece, they were ready to launch. In the meantime, they had a lot of omelettes.
5) Weigh the whole mofo to make sure it is under 4 pounds, as regulated by the FAA. (Take pictures as proof.) If you live outside the U.S., then move to the U.S. and make sure it's less than 4 pounds.
6) Rent a helium tank from your local party supply store. Google helium rental and order the largest one they have. Ironically, the helium tank will be incredibly heavy.
7) Find a place to launch, far away from cities, lakes, or UFO enthusiasts. Use the University of Wyoming's excellent Balloon Trajectory Forecast site, which predicts where your balloon will come down based on current weather patterns. It was accurate to within 1/4 of a mile for our launch.
8) You'll also need rope, duct tape, and reflector tape (for the outside of your beer cooler). A parachute wouldn't hurt, either. To find the thing when it lands, you'll need a laptop and a GPS device. Also: beef jerky.
9) Launch! Chew the beef jerky until your GPS reports that your device has landed.
10) Download the pictures, then send them into ZUG. Our promise: we'll never give you up, or let you down.
Click for full-sized version
Thanks to our launch team, Will "Gigageek" Sweatman, Jay Stevens, and Isaac Hargrave. We're hoping this pioneering prank inspires other folks to launch their own funny items into space. If you have any, or know of any, please leave us a comment below!
I never opened these threads thinking it was just that they played Rick Astley to wake up the astronauts or something. But it didn't want to go away on the board so I finally opened it.
I love to burst your bubble, so here goes: it didn't go into space. The Federation Aeronautique Internationale has established the Karman line at an altitude of 100 km (62 miles). NASA is a little less stringent, and calls someone an astronaut if they've flown to an altitude of 50 miles or more.
But it did go pretty friggin' high, and it was pretty friggin awesome. I give it two fifes up, but mostly because that Will Sweatman kid is incredibly brainy and just gosh darn adorable. What middle school does he go to?
Whistler is the kind of guy who goes to see The Muppet Movie and won't shut up about the fact that you can see the wires controlling Kermit's arm.
Everything you said about the definition of space is true. However, when one is talking about a Comedy Website, "space" is defined as "High enough to be really, really impressive and to satisfy all but the most pedantic of nerds."
Brad, you had mentioned putting a sounding rocket on a weather balloon a while back. I'm still brainstorming this, but I'm having a hard time with calculating the escape velocity at 125K feet. If it's possible to reach it, maybe we can send a very light object into low Earth orbit.
Of course Whistler would point out that the object is still inside the solar system, so it's not that big a deal.
a) When John says the helium tank is incredibly heavy he means that it is almost TOO freaking heavy for a computer geek, a comedy geek and an engineering geek to easily carry.
b) Remember when you're tracking your own balloon that the Balloon Trajectory Forecast site uses METERS, not FEET. heh. Slight miscalculations translating into miles off course can ensue.
c) When John says we tracked the Astleyroid to its landing site, he means that while I desperately tried to keep a GPS signal on the iPad and Laptop, he careened on and off backwoods dirt roads at 80+ mph with a half-filled helium tank banging around in the back seat while he was barely awake with 2 hours of sleep from the ZUG Film Festibal.
I submitted this to Fark (yeah, I'm probably the only one of us who thought of that) but I don't think I have the kind of pull (heh) required to get it posted.
Remember when you're tracking your own balloon that the Balloon Trajectory Forecast site uses METERS, not FEET. heh. Slight miscalculations translating into miles off course can ensue.
The balloon is producing around 5 pounds of lift, so the device is moving up at close to 10 miles per hour. It will maintain this speed for about two hours.
Apogee
The sound is different at this altitude due to the thin atmosphere. It's about the same density as the atmosphere on Mars. In fact, NASA has tested winged spacecraft at this altitude in hopes of one day flying them on Mars.
Descent
It's about 6pm at this point. That's why the sun is so close to the horizon.
The device quickly reaches very close to terminal velocity after the balloon popped. The parachute is wide open at this point, but there is very little drag at this altitude to slow it down.
The same day this was initially posted, I was up late and looked at the tv. "It's Effin Science" was doing a similar stunt. They used a doll in a space suit and no parachute, and they didn't Rickroll aliens.
My point? I want to know which one of the effin science geeks John is. My bet is on the one in the middle.
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