Space and Earth Sciences News

No spacesuit required: The Lego man floated some 15 miles above sea level. (Credit: Video screenshot by Tim Hornyak/CNET) Why build a Gingrichian lunar colony, which would cost billions, when you can send a man nearly into space for only $400? That's what Canadians Mathew Ho and Asad Muhammad did with an albeit plastic man from Lego and a modified weather balloon. The 17-year-olds from Toronto bought an $85 weather balloon online and rigged it to a Styrofoam box equipped with three point-and-shoot cameras and a wide-angle video camera. They threw in $160 worth of helium from a party supply store, a dash of superglue, and voila, a Legonaut was born. The toy ascended 80,000 feet over Ontario, recording the awesome footage in the video below, before floating back to Earth some 97 minutes later on a homemade nylon parachute. It landed near Rice Lake, some 75 miles away from the soccer field where it was launched. A GPS-enabled cell phone onboard told the boys where to go. The project took about four mo