Hack the Tubes, Class of '16!

A Youtube video that shows an MIT acceptance letter tube orbiting Earth in near space, dangling from a high-altitude balloon, has gone viral. That's Erin King's response to the Admissions Office challenge:

"2012 is the anniversary of an old MIT balloon hack, so we put a letter in all of the Early Action admit tubes telling them we wanted them to hack the tubes somehow, and set up http://hackthetubes.mitadmissions.org to collect responses," says Chris Peterson, Admissions office counselor, as reported on BoingBoing. "Lots of them are great, but this one, from Erin King (MIT '16) in Georgia, is the best."

Thanks to some help from her father and the Columbus, GA, amateur radio club, she sent her tube on a two-hour adventure that reach 91,000 feet and landed in a nearby pine tree. King used GPS-equipped ham radio transmitters with two call signs (hers and her dad's) to track the position from the ground and captured the whole thing on HD video. Watch the video and get the technical details.

Enjoy the other creative takes on tube hacking:

• Embalming the Tube—one of two hacks submitted by Miranda from Indiana involves ancient rituals with an Egyptian flavor.[video]
• Sabrina turned it into a musical instrument.[video]
• Xavier in Texas offered a photo of what came in his tube, a play on Harry Potter-esque interior spaces.
• Stilt shoes from Catherine in Chicago, made she says, from "90 percent tape and 10 percent hope."[video]