Where (Almost) No GoPro Has Gone Before

What would it be like to ride a six foot rocket to nearly 400,000 feet at Mach 5.5? Thanks to UP Areospace and some GoPro cameras, you can find out.

The rocket was a test for the Maraia Capsule project. Mach 5.5, for reference, is 3,800MPH. It appears several different GoPro cameras took the footage. You can see the upward travel, some great views of Earth, and the return on the video below.

This isn’t the first time a GoPro has been sent to great heights. In September, a GoPro camera from a weather balloon turned up after being missing for two years.

If a rocket is out of your league, you might try a slingshot. Of course, rockets aren’t the most exotic GoPro platform we’ve seen either.

29 thoughts on “Where (Almost) No GoPro Has Gone Before

  1. Cannot believe it was pure luck! The rocket stage split was almost cinematic. And the ending was as well: After a turbulent flight the chute opened, and a brief period of calm sightseeing was interrupted by the tree. Great footage!

    1. I think the Gopro software includes some de-fisheye tools. Fisheye’ing your friend is fun but space images I want distrortion free. I mean I want to see the curvature of horizon not the curvature of the lens.

  2. I was at the US space and rocket museum Huntsville AL, (totally recommend it!!!).

    One of the exhibits plays a video of the Saturn V , F1 engine bell (looking out the back of the rocket) firing from launch all the way to stage separation.

    Think about that for a second…

    The rest of the exhibit shows the actual film canister, and its many mile journey from when it ejected from the 1st stage, parachuted down to into the ocean, was picked up by the Navy and eventually made its way back to NASA for development.

  3. What is so special about gopro?
    Is it just marketing or is there something special which sets them apart.
    I have mostly seen the somewhat scammy stolen by animals videos and their availability to rent at the flight school in my airport. Even the flight school was approached AFAIK by gopro.
    That said shooting a camera to 400Kft is pretty cool.
    What is weird is that in aviation even most metric countries use feet and in/Hg, knots and nautical miles make sense for navigation.

    1. The following is just my poorly educated opinion, but they are akin to Raspberry Pi’s in the action camera community. There are other camera’s with similar specs, some cheaper, and in a variety of different form factors. GoPro holds it’s market share based on reliable quality control, good support, and lots of 3rd party accessories.

      You can get a 4K action cam for like 2/3rds the cost of a GoPro, but support is going to be almost non-existent and the quality questionable.

      In my opinion, GoPro has the same problem Kleenex or Lysol does. It doesn’t matter if you are using store brand tissues, almost everyone will call them Kleenex. Just like anyone will call a somewhat box shaped action camera a GoPro, and their stock price reflects that.

      1. I’d disagree with the “good support”. I own three goPros, but won’t ever purchase anything from them again. My last gopro had this nice feature of staying on, even though it was turned off (battery would then run down and it was useless when you wanted to grab it and use it). You just never knew if it had shut off properly. I contacted their support and they told me to *wait, as a future firmware would fix this*.. I waited.. and waited… and then it was out of the warranty. After contacting them again and telling them it still wasn’t fixed, they told me it was out of warranty now, but they would give me 10% off a new one. lol

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