But that never stops him.

His latest concept -- to launch a camera into near-space using a weather balloon, a cell phone, hand warmers and a drink cooler -- fell flat when he sent out an e-mail message to dozens of his classmates, asking for help.

Unfazed, Yeh managed to find one friend willing to chip in. And on September 2, the go-it-alone pair floated a balloon-camera high enough into the atmosphere to photograph the curvature of the Earth and the deep black of space, all on a lunch-money budget of $148.

"For me, it was just about not being afraid to do what I love to do," said Yeh, a 20-year-old MIT senior studying computer science and electrical engineering. "Before, people were just kind of like, 'That's a crazy idea; there he goes all over again.' (Yeh once convinced a friend to float the Charles River with him on a raft made of plastic bottles.)

"I didn't have a lot of people who wanted to do it with me, so I'm really glad I stuck it out and succeeded in what I wanted to do."

After Yeh's fellow student and sidekick, Justin Lee, uploaded the story to CNN's iReport.com , their camera-to-space effort, which they named Project Icarus, went viral online.

Since then, the duo has received a number of requests from other would-be space photographers, asking for their project notes. Yeh said he will post those soon on the project's Web site at 1337arts.com .

They've gotten so many inquiries they had to post this warning: "CAUTION/DISCLAIMER: Launching things into the stratosphere can be DANGEROUS! Please contact the FAA before trying ..."

These enterprising students seem to have hit a nerve with the public, probably because their effort costs so little, suggesting that anyone with some know-how and a few common tools can photograph the edge of space. That's something normally reserved for big-budget agencies like NASA.

Source: CNN