A flock of enterprising collage students are reshaping the space program. Big expensive rockets? Hypersonic shuttles with millions of parts? Complex systems that take thousands of support people every time they get off the ground?
None of the above. These blokes want to use balloons, airships to be precise. They have been sending payloads to the edge of space for almost half a decade now. Using nothing more exotic than weather balloons. Now they want to build manned lighter than aircraft that could slowly climb their way into orbit. Without using lots of power, without burning tons of chemicals.
Pretty cool idea!