Let’s open up Space!
Space: the final frontier. These are the voyages of the hackerspace Noisebridge, our ongoing mission to explore strange (yet economically priced) new ascent technologies; to seek out new parts and new partnerships; to boldly go where no non-government-nor-massively-industrially-funded-group has gone before.

Space is awesome but why should Elon Musk get all the fun? Let’s create a space program open to everyone. Traditionally, space exploration has been limited to governments and to the wealthy, and that is a loss to us all. Access should be as wide as the human imagination and Space, itself. To end this inequity Spacebridge is stepping up to the challenge with the goal of bringing space to the masses!
Started in the hallways of the famous hacker/makerspace, Noisebridge, Spacebridge is a people driven near space exploration program. Relying on the propensity of hydrogen filled balloons to reach the edge of space before returning to earth with a bang(!), we are sending payloads to that edge, with plans to take samples, photos and other types of data, then and returning them safe to Earth. In short exploring the edge of our world and the beginning of the infinite.
In our first launch, we sent up a handcrafted Whale and Petunia to the upper stratosphere to both test our wings and “investigate the question of life, the universe, and everything.” While that payload was not recovered, we learned much. For instance, early telemetry readings strongly hint at the answer being 42.
This is a cross-disciplinary, project-based, learning experience involving many disciplines: electronics, software, radio operation, textiles, bushwhacking, treasure hunting (note, downed weather balloons are considered salvage),art and more!