Here are a few ingredients needed to get to space on the cheap: Balloons, but big ones. Ping-pong balls. Off-the-shelf kayak paddles. And naturally, all the foam core construction material you can get your hands on.
Hacking, for a certain brand of space enthusiast, isn't just for computers. Ralph Bruckschen, a data visualization expert from the Supercomputing Center of the Max Planck Society in Garching, is one of these. Speaking at the Chaos Communication Camp here today, he outlined the vision of cheap space launches using lighter-than-air vehicles – essentially balloons built specifically to carry light payloads to the stratosphere, from which a larger space-going vehicle could be launched. 
It's a strikingly low-tech idea in an era when even the private sector space projects springing up are using rockets and expensive airplane-launched rockets. But the first steps have already been taken by an organization called JP Aerospace, where Bruckschen served as volunteer for several years.
JP Aerospace's full vision is to build a three-part system ultimately capable of launching a craft out of orbit into space. A first stage would use a lighter-than-air ascent vehicle to reach a stationary craft hovering above the earth at about 140,000 feet.
At this big suborbital space station, a lighter-than-air orbital craft would be constructed. Because of the extreme height, reasons the group, this will have to be big – more than a mile long. Released from the station, it would cruise up through the upper portions of the atmosphere to about 200,000 feet, roughly the upper limit for lighter-than-air craft, and then use electric propulsion to accelerate slowly, perhaps over as much as a week, to orbital velocity.
That's the theory, at least. So far, the group has launched dozens of test missions with balloons and payloads of 30 pounds or so, carrying cameras, GPS trackers and experiments built inside ping-pong balls. The most successful have been brought successfully to nearly 100,000 feet and back, with some stunning photography as a result.
They've built a 90-foot ascender ship, a huge blue inflatable wing, made from the same light material as parachutes or hot-air-balloons. Various versions are still in the testing stage, hovering a few feet over the floor of a giant hanger.
As far as capital investments go, the outlay has been minimal. The structures carried into the upper atmosphere have been built from foam core and carbon fiber, largely cannibalized from archers' arrows and kayak paddles from Walmart. The company has sold ads on its flights, with sponsor's logos visible on camera with the blue curve of the earth visible behind them at the top of the vehicle's flight.
The further steps are a bit trickier to imagine. On its Web page, the company says it has an ion engine to power the final stage in development, and hopes to test it at an altitude of 120,000 feet soon. But they'll need to launch the two-mile-long suborbital space station to build the third-stage craft.
Improbable as any hacker's wild – but theoretically possible – fantasy, maybe. But it's enough to keep imaginations fired. On Friday or Saturday morning, weather permitting, Bruckshen will give CCC campers a demonstration of the idea, sending a balloon-carried payload (pictured in Bruckschen's hands here) to as close to 100,000 feet as he can manage, carrying a GPS device, a camera, a cell phone, and with luck a ping pong ball experiment made by one of the hackers here.
Why do all of this? Bruckschen, who says he's no longer affiliated with JP Aerospace, but supports their goals, grins at the idea.
"NASA and the European Space Agency are doing an OK job," he said. "But if we want to get the public into space, we're going to have to work on it ourselves."
Pictures of vehicle flight and the ascender vehicle are courtesy of JP Aerospace.
