How cool was that?
To celebrate 100 million firefox downloads, the OSU LUG and the NASA launched a weather balloon today called "Firefox One". I've been there on the MU quad with quite a bunch of other people who were celebrating the Firefox jubilee (or just thought "cool, what a nice balloon").
The balloon is a latex thing weighing something like 3 kilograms in total. It is filled with helium and will go up to the final height of 100 000 feet, which is right at the edge of space. During all its flight, the digital cameras mounted to the balloon will take pictures of where they are. Eventually, when going too high, the balloon will rupture and on a parachute, it will go back down to the earth. Someone will hopefully find it and call the number that's written on it.
And then - there will be photos of "Firefox One"'s fantastic journey :) I will keep you posted on that.
I made quite a few pictures during the launch today, too. I will post them as soon as I get home later.
The whole launch was also recorded by the Oregon State Webcam by the way. But as quite a lot (millions?) of firefox users clicked on it in order to see Firefox One launch, I am not quite sure if anyone was able to see any picture ;)
Go Firefox!
Update: I uploaded some photos on my photo page (see: USA -> 2005-10-22 Firefox...)! However, there are even more photos on the LUG website.