EDITED: 20110318 @ 0955 EST5EDT. See end of article.
A few weekends ago at HacDC a small team of highly skilled hackers gathered to work on practical solutions to a problem which has risen its ugly head time and again in the past few months: a lack of connectivity. Most of the time, when your DSL line goes dead for a couple of hours it's no big deal. If your phone service is tied into DSL (e.g., you're a voice-over-IP customer or the line is physically damaged) it's a bit more of a problem if you don't have an alternate …
I got up rather earlier than usual last Saturday morning (0600 EST5EDT) to get ready for another Spaceblimp launch by HacDC, this time from a location in semi-rural Maryland. I had just enough time to get Windbringer prepped, my doctor's bag packed, and the rest of the stuff I wanted to keep close by into my backpack when I got a phone call from Bjorn in the parking lot outside my apartment building, who would be driving the chase car this time around. We met up with Nick (who rode shotgun in the TARDIS last time) and then struck out …
HacDC will be launching Spaceblimp-3 from Maryland tomorrow morning. You'll be able to follow its progress on Twitter, or you can watch the balloon's positional telemetry on aprs.fi as long as it's in the air. If you'll be out and about (or you're just allergic to Twitter) but want to keep track of the balloon, text the words "Follow hacdcspaceblimp" to phone number 40404 and you'll receive text messages with periodic status reports.
Sometime yesterday afternoon, one of the members of the Spaceblimp team received an interesting phone call. By all accounts it seemed that Spaceblimp-1 had been found but the labels on the housing were somewhat damaged, so the finder had mis-dialed one of the numbers. The individual who was called, one Bob Dehn, found …
Official word has just come down the wire about HacDC's entry for the Hackerspaces In Space competition. The HacDC Spaceblimp unfortunately didn't place in the top five. The weight of the near-space probe was 1.81 pounds (well under the limit) and was retrieved the day of the judged launch in just 93 minutes. However, the project went over budget by $70us, which kept the Spaceblimp out of the winner's circle by scoring only 70 points.
We're not done yet, though. There will likely be another competition next year, and there are plans afoot for launching a new Spaceblimp …
