A story has been going around about a group of students that managed to send a balloon “to the edge of space” on a shoestring budget. While there, it snapped pictures of the Earth, the atmosphere, and space.

This story is factually incorrect and misleading. This balloon did not make it to the edge of space.

First, balloons rely on buoyancy. You ( Read more... )

I’ve often wondered why re-entry heat shields on spacecraft were such a big deal. The massive fireball that results from re-entry is due to the tremendous speed with which the spacecraft re-enters the atmosphere, resulting in aerodynamic heating (and not, as Mr. Stokes points out in the comments, due to atmospheric friction as I had originally ( Read more... )