geekosystem

K'Nex are an incredible set of building toys. Over the years we've seen people build amazing, surprisingly functional devices with just the stuff that comes in the box. Or a lot of boxes: It takes a lot of pieces to build a YouTube-worthy ball machine. Case in point, University of Colorado student Andrew Locke probably used thousands upon thousands of pieces when he built himself a working pinball machine entirely out K'Nex.

Of the variety of things one might find to complain about in regards to the Nintendo 3DS, the sound doesn't immediately come to mind. It's not great sound, mind, but there are a litany of things that are more obvious. Thanks to one intrepid inventor, however, you are now just a series of tubes, clips and metal funnels away from awesome sound.

After eight months of research and testing, photographer Luke Geissbühler and his children attached an HD camera to a weather balloon and sent it off into space from Newburgh, New York, reaching 100,000 feet and recording space before plummeting back down to Earth.

As stated near the beginning of the video:

The mission was to attach a HD video camera to a weather balloon and send it up into the upper stratosphere to film the blackness beyond our earth.

Eventually, the balloon will grow from lack of atmospheric pressure, burst, and being to fall.

It would have to survive 100 mph winds, temperatures of 60 degrees below zero, speeds of over a 150 mph, and the high risk of a water landing.