Father and son launch iPhone where no iPhone has gone before. Luke Geissbuhler’s quest with his son to launch an iPhone 4 and HD video camera into space using a weather balloon has produced an absolutely breathtaking video documentary. The Brookly-based cinematographer and his son Max’s contraption climbed at a rate of 25 feet per second and in an hour was 19 miles high. The journey lasted around 72 minutes and captured some breathtaking footage of the earth.

The balloon battled 100 m.p.h. winds before it burst, sending the iPhone hurling back to earth at 150 m.p.h. Fortunately, the specially designed parachute deployed and slowed the plummeting device down to just 15 m.p.h. They tracked the package using the iPhones GPS transmitter and it was found 30 miles from its launch pad.  

“Max and I work on all sorts of fun projects together” said Geissbuhler. “I’ve always been one to tinker. But even after months of research and testing – we only had a 30 percent chance it would work. We got very lucky…We were totally out of our minds when we saw the footage. It was more than we were even hoping for.”

This is defiantly one of the coolest amateur science experiments ive come across. Period.

Jerry Clark for The Cool Commentator.