Toronto Teens Send Lego Man 80,000 ft. In Air

Seventeen-year-olds find new meaning for 'getting really high on the weekend.'

Two Toronto-area teens designed a weather balloon and sent it 80,000 feet in the air – three times the height of normal commercial aircraft, and about as high as the famed SR-71 Blackbird flew. Seventeen-year-olds Asad Muhammad and Mathew Ho spent much of their free time building the balloon from scratch, forking over $400 of their own money for materials and a camera to record the journey. And, for good measure, they attached a little Lego man holding a Canadian flag. This past weekend, the pair ventured out to a suburban high school, filled the balloon with helium, turned the camera on, and let the little guy fly. Over the course of the next hour, the balloon travelled some 80,000 feet into the air – the upper reaches of the tropopause, the boundary between the troposphere and stratosphere. While it's not quite space, per se, it's still a helluva lot higher than anything you've ever built has flown. Once the balloon popped, the little Lego guy fell all the way back to Earth in about 32 minutes, landing about 120 kilometres away. Plus, the adventure brought back amazing images of Earth that could make for great viral marketing for either Lego, Canada, or the Toronto District School Board. Either way – Asad and Mathew, congrats for making our 17-year-old selves feel entirely inadequate.