Rocket Project team successfully launches a Vaio into the stratosphere
By Joseph L. Flatley 
posted July 30th 2010 1:16PM
posted July 30th 2010 1:16PM
Earlier this spring, Sony's Rocket Project gave eight lucky high school students several Vaios, a crash course in rocketry, and the opportunity to design and build a rocket that could make it to the stratosphere. Well, what do you know? After a few weather-related setbacks, the thing finally launched on Friday, July 23 from its launchpad in the Black Rock Desert in Nevada, achieving Mach 2.8 (nearly three times the speed of sound) in the process. Wernher von Braun never had it so good! Video after the break.
Should I sell my hero and get a galaxy s?
@Apple Google Microsoft Don't care, watching a rocket
Should I drop my iPhone 4 because of all the terrible reception issues and dropped calls?
@Juggernaut408 Stick to the topic man... we're watching rockets here.
@Juggernaut408 if you look at real statistics provided by ATT you see the issue is a severely overhyped mediafest, try not to be such a stereotypical uneducated consumer. You are on Engadget, you should know these things. But then again when you look at your last 3 pages of comments on Engadget you are just a troll. So no real sense will ever come from you.
@rmbrown09 O.k Apple Fanboy - I have an iPhone 4 - DO I NOT have a right to complain if my service is terrible? I'm not like you who KNOWS he has terrible phone service but decides to hide it and be in denial! PAAAAAAA LEASE!
@Juggernaut408 Don't post questions like that on an utterly utterly unrelated story.
@Juggernaut408 Yeah
Go ahead. Drop your iPhone 4 and then drop yourself into oblivion too.
Now if you want to talk about rockets, we on, else, go play with yourself. Dont forget to shave you palm afterwards...
@Juggernaut408 Don't we have any decent hackers on here to get rid of people like this? Fucking trolls.
@rmbrown09 LOL What a hypocrite. I just saw your past posts and see how you BASH on EVO 4G and you're calling me a troll?
LOL
Samsung SCH-R900 approved by FCC: first US LTE phone is go
Jul 30th 2010 2:03AM on Engadget
Evo just got old
EVO 4G's Android 2.2 update starts trickling out tomorrow, loads of new features and fixes in store? (update: official for August 3rd!)
Jul 29th 2010 4:24PM on Engadget
@m3nphls what a joke.
I can hold my phone any way I want, it's folks like you that are uneducated in the subject and act like sheep that start wars.
Hey bro, hows that low res screen? Hows that low battery life?
@mixit They aren't a full-troll, some of their comments are relatively coherent.
@d0mth0ma5 Nah he's right we're trolls......
@Juggernaut408
Two wrongs don't make a right. I don't care who trolls what. You're trolling.
@Kizorblade isn't that what I just said?
@Juggernaut408
I was a little slow on the post button :C
Rockets are so underrated. Wish more people cared about NASA these days, it's sad...
@DanMan They are not going to care till we get serious about a mission to mars!
@DanMan I'm facinated by Space Exploration. Theoretically the discoveries we can make are endless.
@DanMan
My dad used to be a major member of the amateur rocketry group here in the southeast. Before 9/11 it was fairly inexpensive and unrestricted. After 9/11 it is literal hell to get into
@DanMan
People care about NASA, problem is that NASA needs an overhaul, and they need money from Federal Government to do it.
@Juggernaut408 Mars is a dead wasteland. Launch a mission to Europa and Titan and then I'm interested!
@Juggernaut408 There might not be a mission until the public get interested. It's sad that popular opinion effects science when most people don't understand what the benefits are, and the leaders (of all countries) don't articulate it to the people.
@DanMan
I would love to be shot off into space and float around with a lifetime supply of food/water.
@dyinman I see you've fallen for that clever Martian propaganda.
@Juggernaut408 Yeah we need to do something that's never been done before instead of making trips to the I.S.S. I know it's been done before but at the very least we could go to the moon again and have people explore the planet instead of robots. I think that would at least get some people excited about NASA again.
@DanMan
Mach 5 < Rocket
personally I wish we'd find a better and cheaper way into space already....
@dyinman Hey I'd love for them to send people to Europa! With its vast underground OCEANS god knows what we'll find down there!!!!
I think there is probe that will sent out in the next couple of years that will melt through the ice and dive into the under ground ocean.
Can you imagine the CHAOS it will cause for all these religious people if we find .....ummmm......* GASP* LIFE?
@Juggernaut408 You need to read the Space Odyssey books (2001, 2010, 2061, 3001), they theorise exploration of Europa.
@DanMan
Rockets are pieces of crap. Maintainable commonplace safe spaceflight will not happen with rockets. Travel and commerce throughout the solar system will not occur with rockets. Rockets are far too expensive, consume far too many resources, and require obscene levels of high tech manpower to coordinate. Compare this to aviation and naval industries which have flourished. Explosions are not a reasonable form of transportation. Man up to it.
@dicobalt
Rockets are good for heavy lifting.
@dicobalt
Oh yeah, and as for "Explosions are not a reasonable form of transportation. Man up to it."... sure they are, that's basically what powers all combustion engines (e.g. like almost every car on the road other than the few pure electrics).
@dicobalt
I don't disagree, but this statement...
"Explosions are not a reasonable form of transportation."
made me think of a quote I heard from the time the internal combustion engine was edging out steam cars. The steam car salesmen called them "Explosion" engines to emphasis that they were dangerous, and steam was safe. As for explosions not being a reasonable form of transportation, the internal combustion engine is still doing pretty good.
@DefPoet
Don't bother with Amatuer Rocketry....go for high power via Tripoli or NAR. They survived 9-11 quite well. Especially now that the courts have gotten the BATF of our backs about AP.
@Brokinarrow
There isn't going to be one. It takes a lot of energy to get up there.
@dicobalt
Rockets will always have a role. They're the best and only solution for getting up there.
It takes extreme amounts of energy to get up into space. There's no way around it. Rockets are best.
@OvRiDe
Small explosions inside a combustion chamber is a world away from a vehicle where propulsion is derived solely and directly from an explosion. Rockets are more fuel than vehicle. How much mass of a car/truck/airplane is fuel and how much mass is the vehicle itself. The explosion in an combustion engine is made far more efficient through compression and power transfers into gears. Imagine if your car was the size of a bus, you only had two seats, and you had to carry 2000 gallons of fuel to make a one hour trip. That's a rocket. Rockets are not going to get us true spaceflight.
Rockets need to be replaced, nobody at NASA seems to be serious about a real space program. It's a bunch of grown up highschool kids from rocket club masturbating to gigantic model rockets. The fact rockets are relativistic forms of travel sure doesn't help things either, this is a problem even within our small solar system, forget about interstellar travel.
@dicobalt
Rockets don't function by explosion.
They rapidly burn fuel in a controlled fashion to achieve a high speed exhaust stream.
It may sound like nit picking, but the difference is profound,
Should I comment on topic?
Sony's In Spaceeeeeeee....
@DaHarder
What cha' doin' out there man?
@DaHarder Is it cold out in space Sony? Does the coldness of space make your VAIO's go pointy Sony? Do you use your pointy VAIO's to transmit data back to Earth?!?
@Indefinite Implosion I dont think they are going to give money to build a rocket to anyone named Indefinite Implosion... Just saying..
That's a bit meh, isn't it? Now watch this:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_b4WzWFKQ20
@kadajawi I resent having to watch an advert before I can see a Top Gear video paid for by my taxes. But that is a very funny video, love 'em.
@d0mth0ma5 Well, thank god you pay for it, cause Top Gear looks pretty expensive. I didn't get to see an ad either... weird.
And the next episode is going to be the last episode of the series. It's getting shorter and shorter...
@kadajawi that was awesome.. thanks for sharing the link
@Scottydukes1 At least it's better than explosion.
And this is connected to Sony's future development/product promotion how?
I mean it's cute and all, but not really seeing the business value.
@LANjackal It isn't a Sony experiment, but they gave the students the laptops to launch the rocket. In terms of product promotion, this pretty decent non-traditional (the best kind) marketing.