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back to article Nexus One phone rockets to 28,000ft

If you've ever wondered what happens when you stick a Google Nexus One phone in a rocket and blast it to 28,000ft from the Nevada desert, then here's your answer: This fine piece of tomfoolery was the work of rocket fans down at the Mavericks Civilian Space Foundation, who provided a launch vehicle for the "Nexus One/ …

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  1. Anonymous Coward
    Anonymous Coward

    Nexus Ones are radiation-hardened?

    Who knew?

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    1. Anonymous Coward
      Reply Icon
      Anonymous Coward

      V.A.B

      But surely the Van Allan Belt will shield any low earth orbit satalite pretty well anyway...If i recall there are many sats in LEO even some useful ones like the entire Iriduim constellation.

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      1. Anonymous Coward
        Reply Icon
        Anonymous Coward

        Re: V.A.B.

        erm, no, the Van Allen Radiation Belt is, as the name suggests, chock-full of harmful radiation and, inconveniently, occupies the entire range of Low Earth Orbit, which happens to comfortably contain the orbits of the Iridium satellite constellation. You can bet those suckers are shielded to the gills.

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        1. Anonymous Coward
          Reply Icon
          Anonymous Coward

          Learn something every day...

          Thanks for the prompt to read more.. mis remembered half truths... so my wiki funded education now says that the Van Allen Belts do create a safe zone but it is further out, between the inner and outer belts. Knowledge corrected.

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  2. jake Silver badge

    28,000 feet is hardly "space".

    Rumor has it there are lumps of rock taller than that ... and I'm fairly certain that last time I crossed ThePond[tm], I was about a mile higher.

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    1. Marvin the Martian
      Reply Icon
      WTF?

      Indeed.

      The boundary between atmosphere and space is traditionally put at 100km, so, eh, much much higher.

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  3. Lottie

    I love this sort of thing

    Bonkers-assed "I wonder if we can repurpose something into something else" tomfoolery always brings a smile to my face.

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  4. Anonymous Coward
    Happy

    Try doing this with a iPhone...

    Try doing this with a iPhone...

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    1. Findel
      Reply Icon
      Joke

      Good idea

      An iPhone might even get a better reception up there!

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  5. Yorkshirepudding
    Troll

    if you send an iphone 4 up

    will it get a better signal

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  6. Anonymous John
    FAIL

    Only 28,000ft?

    Pah! Paris can do better than that.

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  7. John Sturdy
    WTF?

    10 minutes of freefall later?

    Didn't look like freefall to me, it appeared to be parachuting at that point. Unless it was freefalling while being attacked by an orange flying squid.

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    1. Anonymous Coward
      Reply Icon
      Anonymous Coward

      Hypersonic orange flying squid

      I'm pretty impressed the phone survived impacting with the desert floor at over 10,000 miles per hour.

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  8. Anonymous Coward
    Anonymous Coward

    Pah! Openmoko topped 100km last year

    It was actually doing something useful too. Pictures in the first link, more details of the flight in the second. I don't know which of the experiments it was part of.

    http://freeyourphone.de/portal_v1/viewtopic.php?f=20&t=1430&p=14569#p14569

    http://www.ssc.se/?id=14315

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  9. David McMahon
    Heart

    It survived!

    Glad to see it survived :)

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  10. raving angry loony

    dizzy!

    OK, now I'm really really dizzy!

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  11. Astarte

    Image Clarity

    An interesting experiment. It could have been a good test of a camera's image stabilisation system.

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  12. Tigra 07
    Paris Hilton

    Welsh space program?

    The welsh have been doing something similar for years, using bottle rockets and small animals.

    The UK space program has progressed nicely ;-)

    Paris likes pocket rockets

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