HomeWelcome to the home of the Skyward Sphere project. The project is a collaboration between Reykjavík University, CCP Games and Síminn. This website is meant to host a general overview of the project and all the project documentation and media.
The projectThe project is they brainchild of the Eve Online team at CCP. The main objective was to transport a model of an escape pod from CCP's Eve Online MMORPG containing the names of all active subscribers as of December 31 2012 to the stratosphere and capture the journey on video.
Dr. Eyjólfur Guðmundsson, CCP's Eve online lead economist, contacted Dr. Ari Kristinn Jónsson the Rector of Reykjavík University. He were directed towards Stefán Freyr Stefánsson of RU's School of Computer Science and Dr. Joseph Foley of RU's School of Science and Engineering. At this point the project was handed over to Ragnar Ágúst Eðvaldsson, a software engineer and producer at CCP, and Arnar Valdimarsson a video producer in CCP's marketing department. Ragnar is CCP's project manager for the Skyward Sphere project. Stefán, Joseph and a small team of grad students started preliminary work on the project. A little later students in the course VT-HUN1003 (Design) were brought on board. Work started immediately on establishing what the project should accomplish, basic requirements of the payload and ways to solve them. During the planning phase of the project Iceland's largest telecom company was brought on board for communications support. Guðmundur Ingi Karlsson is an electrical engineer at Síminn and coordinated with the Skyward Sphere team on the 3G communication. Síminn provided the project with a 3G smartphone for GPS position tracking and live video streaming. The greatest asset provided by Síminn was dedicated long range 3G cell tower for the project. This allowed the phone to maintain a 3G data connection to this extreme altitude. Síminn is using the information gained on this project to gauge it's 3G system performance. The peopleMost of the heavy lifting was done by students of Dr. Foley's course. With specialized support from RU's staff, members of the Association of Icelandic Radio Amateurs, CCP and Síminn.
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