I fail to see what this experiment has to do with NASA (which probably employs more MIT graduates than any other company or agency in this country).

[quote]Instead of rockets, boosters and expensive control systems[/quote]

If you don’t have rockets and boosters, you can only go straight up. And you can’t go too high up, because weather balloons can’t get much higher than 25 miles – they explode. If you want to put a space telescope with an 8 foot mirror into orbit and keep it there for 20 years, you have to do it the old-fashioned NASA way.

Neat experiment, don’t get me wrong, but prospects of doing the actual science that way are very limited.