PROJECT SPACE EGGS-Launching your ideas to near space

 Welcome to High Altitude Ballooning! (HABing)

The astronomer and author Carl Sagan would like HABing.

From this distant vantage point, the Earth might not seem of any particular interest. But for us, it's different. Look again at that dot. That's here. That's home. That's us. On it everyone you love, everyone you know, everyone you ever heard of, every human being who ever was, lived out their lives.

Carl Sagan

And on his tiny pale blue dot my father lived. Here I live.

Here I decide to inspire young minds.

By sending up balloons. So we can look back. At this tiny blue dot.

And inspire one another. Because that is all we have.

Per Olav Verås

One day a young student, Aleksander asked if it was possible to send something to space. He wanted to show a picture to his friends of the earth, and show that the earth was round. (the year-2011!)

Before responding with an answer I said the edge of space was at about 100 kilometers. He didn't mean whether we could send something into a low earth orbit? That would take some doing.

No, Aleksander explained all you needed was a balloon. And some string. You could just send the balloon up, and up...and UP! (with a mobile phone) So you can take pictures! And the balloon would land again. Back on the planet earth.

After reflecting how my father inspired me, I told 11 year old Aleksander back on that day in 2011. Yes! Let's do it!

(We did it, sending the balloon to a record height-over 35 kilometers, or 100,000 feet up in the stratosphere.)

Now, lets do it again.

As an integration in MVP 2, MVP 3, MVP 4, and MVP 5-with a tentative launch date in May, 2022.

Extensions and Tasks will be added in all classes in various units. The extensions and tasks will relate to ideas about experiments the student is thinking about.

Here is a presentation I made for a gathering of science teachers in Norway, at a seminar hosted by the Norwegian physicist Andreas Wahl.