LEGO Man Takes $400 Space Flight

Whoever said the youth of today lack motivation and ambition have obviously never met Mathew Ho and Asad Muhammad. These two 17-year-old high school students from Toronto, Ontario made headlines around the world late last month for designing and building a homemade weather balloon that carried a LEGO mini-figure 80,000 feet above Earth into space.

Well, not quite outer space, but pretty darn close to it nevertheless. “Show us some pics,” you say? Well, Mathew and Asad did better than just capturing photographic proof of their mission—they installed a video camera to record the balloon’s journey, and then did what any other 17 year old would do—they uploaded a video of the journey on YouTube!

Spending about $400 and four month’s worth of planning, Mathew and Asad completed their mission by assembling a lightweight Styrofoam box to hold three Canon point-and-shoot cameras, a wide-angle video camera, a cell phone with a GPS app installed, a weather balloon, and a hand-sewn parachute. (Hold on. These kids can sew too? This takes the term “crafty” to a whole new level, doesn’t it?)

Once the balloon was inflated with helium, they let it go and off the balloon went, complete with a Canadian flag-holding LEGO man super-glued on its side. The journey took about 97 minutes and began to descend back to Earth after the balloon popped.

Thanks to the included parachute, the cargo landed safely with all of the equipment intact, allowing us to see these breathtaking images and video. All of which have made these high school students, and LEGO Man, instant rock stars and the subject of new stories worldwide.

LEGO Man’s become so famous in fact, people are stopping him in streets to take pictures with him. He’s even made the rounds in his hometown of Toronto to have his picture taken with local celebrities and politicians.

And it doesn’t end there for the wee guy. It’s even been said that LEGO Man is the 11th Canadian to go to Space! Yes, for realz. Rock it out little LEGO dude!

Here at The Hive, Zid can’t stop buzzing about the amazing accomplishment of these two 12th Graders. It really is inspiring what you can do when you put your mind to it! “Bee” sure to check out the jaw-dropping video and pictures and let us know what you think!