Man, you’ve got to love those crazy kids at MIT…what won’t they do next?

What they did do  this time around was show up NASA like there was no tomorrow.  While the beleaguered space agency is whining and complaining about how they can’t get enough money, a group of kids at MIT is blowing them out of the water.  These guys not only built but also launched a fully functional if somewhat low-resolution camera satellite, and they did it all for right around a hundred and fifty bucks.

Basically, all they did was fill a weather balloon with helium and then hung a styrofoam beer cooler underneath.  Inside the cooler was a Canon A470 camera, and a bunch of instant hand warmers sufficient to keep the batteries and camera itself from freezing in the vacuum of space. They then added one last component, a prepaid cell phone with GPS so they could recover their craft later.

Total retail cost: one hundred forty eight dollars.

It took the picture you see at left, so I’m left with one crucial question: what’s NASA’s big problem that they can’t top this?

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