Over at How It Works there’s a short story about a father and his two children sending up a weather balloon to 19 miles with a video camera on-board. The camera records all of the ascent and all but 2 minutes of the descent – the battery runs out!
It takes the Geissbuhler family eight months of planning and it’s a great testimony to what can be achieved by enthusiasts. It certainly helps that the miniaturisation of technology has allowed GPS and hi-res video cameras to be encapsulated in tiny devices such as mobile phones. However, this shouldn’t take away from their achievements. Here’s the video.