Advances in model rocketry …
When I was growing up, I really enjoyed building and launching model rockets. There were several of us in my neighborhood that would buy and build the Estes Rockets that we bought at the local hobby shop. I remember that we all would look through the Estes catalogs at all of the new rockets, the multi-stage rockets, and the rockets that had payload capabilities.
One of the neat gadgets that you were able to buy from Estes was a camera that would take the 110 film cartidges. It would take a series of pictures as the rocket went through its flight. You would have to take the film to get developed after recovery. I remember that we all talked about getting one of these cameras.
This article brought back all of these memories as these guys have taken this to a whole new level. They are now putting a video camera in a model rocket, and sending live video feeds back to the ground as the flight takes place. Amazing. I went to their site, and enjoyed checking out the recorded videos that they had.
Pretty soon, with a set-up like this, you’ll be able to watch them launch their rockets live! All it will take is tying their existing video feeds to a streaming video server attached to the Internet. They might be able to use a 802.11 point-to-point wireless link to get from their “launchpad” to the Internet.
If I get motivated … maybe I’ll play around with some of this stuff … it might be fun!