iPad survives fall from space – and lands near Area 51
OK, so it’s a publicity stunt, but a rugged iPad case protected the tablet from a 100,000-foot free fall.
In case you haven’t heard of G-Form — a company best-known for making ruggedized cases for electronics and all kinds of athletic pads (to protect shins, elbows and knees) – they’ve got a new iPad case, aptly named Extreme Edge ($44.95).
To prove how durable this 6oz case is, the company released a HD video last week, showing the iPad lifted up to more than 100,000 feet above the Earth by a weather balloon. The balloon eventually bursts, causing the iPad to free-fall back to Earth, where it crash lands in the Nevada desert – near Area 51, no less, says G-Form.
Of course, the iPad survived the fall.
“As far as we know, this is the first iPad ever in space,” said G-Form’s vice president of innovations, Thom Cafaro, in a company press release. “And definitely it’s the first iPad that’s ever free-fallen from space and survived to play more movies.”
G-Form has created other videos to demonstrate its line of ruggedized products.
Speaking of Nevada, the company will be at the Consumer Electronics Show (CES) this week in Las Vegas, to show off its new products for electronic devices (including an Extreme Edge case for iPhone) as well as new protective gear for athletes. Allegedly, there will be live demonstrations featuring bowling balls dropped on iPads.
Pretty cool test… take an item up in the air, drop it in the sand and say. WOW… Yes.. Marc is right… it is a publicity stunt … and we all talk about it.. and we know who made the case…
The situation is funny considering that Apple makes the iPad, and the iPhone … and that you can’t drop an iPhone from waste level without breaking it.
If a manufacture needs a protective case to hold the main case, then it is a case of fragility by design.
Dan White
Very well said
I think you probably meant from (WAIST) height, or else you’d have to throw the device in to the (WASE) basket. If these companies built devices with cases that could withstand a substantial drop then they would probably cost double what they do now. In order to pump them out, and get them to market as quickly as possible, they are made as cheaply as possible.
Actually, a pretty dumb move on their part. They would have no way of knowing where this thing was going to land. What if it landed on a moving car, or on a house, or on a person? Then they “Claim” it landed near Area 51. Seems very “convenient” if you ask me. Furthermore, did they prove that the device actually booted up after impact? Between the coldness of space, and the heat of re-entry I’d like to see if if worked,
Woah…pride goeth before a fall there, Brian. I’m pretty sure you meant to say waste not (wase) ;)
…sorry…I couldn’t resist!
It technically didn’t make it into space since the article says it was released at 100,000 feet. This is not nearly high enough above the earths surface to cause substantial re-entry heat and the “coldness of space” at this height would barely be below freezing.
Nice catch there deb my bad. Oh and just as a point of interest, it’s WHOA, and GOETH. Hey Spaceballs, check it out. You say that the ‘coldness of space’ would barely be below freezing? Pull on your sweater and go for a cruise up there, it’s onlt a balmy -100 Degrees. After -40 the Farenheit and Celcius scales equalize, so take your pick.
Fahrenheit and Celcius are only equal at -40.
-100C = -148F
-100F = -73.33C
100,000 feet is approximatly 19 miles which would be about the middle of the stratosphere where the temp is about -40 give or take a few degrees.
Outer space itself is a “balmy” -270 Celcius.
Ahhh, there goes Dan again, bagging on Apple…trolling for fanboys…
For the record, I have owned a samsung Galaxy S and it was knocked off the table and the screen shattered. I also own an Iphone, and it fell down a flight of stairs and works fine. DO you kow what I learned (aside from the fact that I need to be more careful with my phones) is that it all depends on how it lands, not the brand.
More related to the topic, I think that this company is way out of line. Dropping an uncontrollable item from space really does not seem like the brightest idea…Airplanes…schoolyards…person walking down the street…
So you’re trying to say that every consumer electronic device should be housed in a bullet proof case? That makes absolutely no sense. Electronics are breakable. Those who are careful with them have no problems. I don’t keep my iPhone in a case and I’ve never had a problem because I don’t treat it like a toy.
Also you should check your grammar and spelling before hitting the submit button. Waste level? Manufacture? Get back to school son!
“Waist”, not “Waste”.
waist level
That is not an HD video and I never saw the iPad boot up.
And if it landed on someone?
lol…touche!! Tossing junk from space is a dicey venture…
Marc,
No need to use the word “allegedly.” You’re not risking any kind of legal action against what you’re reporting. News reporters, particularly in the broadcast field are over using the allege, alleges.
The Canadian Press issued a bulletin in 2009 addressing this issue.
Maybe someone should ask the Ottawa Hospital that has returned 100′s of the iPads to find out how they broke them! Maybe they need to be sent into “Space” inorder for them to work. Darn good thing it wasn’t raining the stunt would probably have failed.
at least we know that g.p.s works
!!!!
I don’t know much about all this stuff but because of terminal velocity it probably wasn’t going to fast when it hit the ground.
Just a clarification – there would be little or no “heat of re-entry”. It was lifted up vertically by a stationary (non-orbiting) balloon, which would cause it to fall straight down, at terminal velocity. Heat of re-entry is for spacecraft re-entering from orbit at 17500 miles per hour.
My grandson dropped his itouch from 2 feet and the front glass broken to towsend pieces. Thats what happens in real life situation. Who cares about these stupid stunts.
Funny thing about impact – a few decades ago, I once heard of a Volkswagen Beetle demolishing a Cadillac, due to the angle of the impact and various other factors. I have no other details on it than that, but in a much simpler example from my own life, I once dropped a corel dinner plate (unbreakable, right?) on my living room broadloom carpet (wood frame building so no concrete under the carpet),and ‘it’ shattered into a thousand pieces from tiny to large in size.
Kudos to Deb and Stephen re their comments about the wisdom of dropping things from space. As an adjunct to your comments, what if the case had smashed into the windshield of a plane. I’ve always understood that terminal velocity is approximately 120 mph, so even if it had only reached half that speed, it could have done a lot of damage. I suppose, though, that the experimenters would have checked with the FAA to find a place to conduct the trial away from air traffic, at least I hope they did.
The only flaw in that planning though is that there is always some sort of nut around who reads such a report and elects to try it himself, and who might not be as cautious about checking for air traffic.
Oh my – Canada AM right now – must watch! Actually, it’s a different test – guy has invented a phone which he says is waterproof, snowproof, dirt proof and indestructable (made out of the same material as a black box in a plane. He drops it in a toilet, and when asked why he wanted to invent it and what his background is, he says he designs black boxes for planes and other vehicles, and for motivation, points out that there are so many places you want to take your cell phone. Now, I’m not sure where everybody else takes their phones, but there are some times I really don’t want to be disturbed. Aside from a moment’s peace sometime during the day, the accoustics of the bathroom’s design would advertise to the other party, just where you are. Not on my watch!
Additionally, I don’t think it is much of a marketing tool, since the company would have to say “out product is so breakable that you need a case than can survive a 100,000 foot fall to protect it’ – hmmmm – not exactly a positive ad campaign for any company to avail themselves of.
As for the 100 iphones dropped at the Ottawa hospital, maybe they slipped out of staff’s pockets on to the hard floors, but at any rate, the cost to the taxpayer for them seems like an exorbitant expense for Ontario’s (or any province’s) health care budget to accommodate.
Hi, Dazed, how cold was your Corel dinner plate when you dropped it? I dropped one of mine in the cold cellar and it turned to powder – had to vacuum it up, not a single piece big enough to pick up in my fingers.
People just need to be a little more careful with their personal electronics. I keep my digital camera in a handmade case I sewed out of thick cotton upholstery fabric. The inside of the case is soft and silky, and keeps the viewscreen free of fingerprints. It has a drawstring handle I can put around my wrist. The only time I have dropped it so far was onto the lawn; it was just fine.
Hi Carol,
There were a few large pieces, and many small shards no longer than 1/2″ to 1″. What amazed me most was that the plate had dropped on broadloom carpet over a plywood floor, but I think what madeit break was that in dropped on its edge, in an almost vertical attitude. the other amazing thing was that the distance from the top of the chair arm was only about 20″ or so.
In the years since that, I’ve dropped pieces occasionally on the linoleum tyiles (over cement) in my current apartment but the pieces ususally don’t break.
To clean up the original spill, I had to get tweezers and pick all the small shards out of the carpet, which must have taken about an hour.
As for my cellphone, I wear a nice little ‘Roots’ brand , horizontal pouch with a magnetized flap on my beltand that usually does the trick. Good plan with what you sewed to keep yours safe.
@Sean W – I don’t see anything wrong with expecting a portable electronic device (portable is the key word) to have a reasonable measure of durability. A broken phone does not automatically mean the owner has treated it like a toy. Case in point; over the holidays, I came downstairs to find my iPhone 4S lying on the ceramic-tiled floor in my foyer. The front glass was completely shattered. I had left it on the hallway table (no more than 2′ high) as normal, but I had forgotten to power it off, and the vibrate alert had caused it to vibrate itself right off the table. Is this considered treating the phone like a toy?
I took it in to the Apple Store, fully expecting I was going to have to pay the $50 or something for them to replace the glass. I was surprised to learn they couldn’t do that, and I would instead have to pay $200 for a replacement device. I refused, because to me, if the phone can’t survive a 2′ drop, AND it can’t be repaired, that to me, is a design constraint that I wasn’t willing to live with. Imagine leaving the store with a replacement phone and having it happen again – another $200 bucks? No thanks.
In the end, after phoning Apple Consumer Relations and a couple days of back and forth, they saw my point of view and I was satisfied, but one piece of advice I’ll give to anyone with an iPhone 4 – get a case. Accidents happen and you’ll save yourself a lot of frustration.
You guys are all a bunch of nerds….. correcting eachothers spelling and clarifying earth re-entry temperatures??? Who cares??? Its marketing…. and obviously marketed well as the story made the front headlines on every major news website.
Completely ignoring Melanie’s comment here – hmmm
At any rate, Corey makes a very good point – shouldn’t it be constructed better in the first place?
My thought on that is that lenses for people’s glasses are made unbreakable, so why not use that same material for the screen? If a young child found the broken phone at a time when the house is in chaos after everybody is getting up in the morning, then the child could innocently pick up some of the sharp pieces and be harmed. I wonder what Apple would say if such a tragedy happened.
another publicity stunt to increase market share :0(
Technically, falling with a burst weather balloon providing significant drag is not free fall. It’s closer to falling with a parachute than it is freefalling.
@ spaceball…… barely below freezing at 100,000ft… come on the temperature outside an airplane at 35,000 ft is about -40ºC to -60ºC
@ corey, that’s how businesses make fast money- cheaply made products, they break easily, then you have to pay for it to be repaired.
really, i never pay to repair something- just buy a new one, it’ll probably cost less to buy then repair- and it’ll also break again sometime.
well the video is no longer available to view so i dont believe them
@jesse – agreed. In a lot of cases I’d say you’re correct, but not with this. An IPhone retails for around $600 I think. Even a replacement for $200 is too much for me to feel “okay” with. The thing is, I don’t believe the iPhone is cheaply made. There’s too much attention to detail and finishing, and quality materials to say its cheaply made. I think the problem is that they designed a phone with both front and back made of glass, and replacing the front glass panel would take an experienced tech minimum one hour to complete because of its complicated design. So you’ve got an inherently fragile design that too complicated to repair. The cost of parts and labour is probably greater than providing a replacement phone. By the way, after making this argument, I eventually got a free replacement. My first purchase after getting it was a case.