Oliver Yeh is the kind of guy who cooks up ideas so kooky, so out-of-this-world, that even his fellow MIT students tend to roll their eyes when they hear them.

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.

They're also tapping into the exploding do-it-yourself movement online. Web sites like Makezine.com and Instructables offer blueprints for people who want to make everything from wiener-dog wheelchairs to self-playing harmonicas.

Most of the inventors who use these sites care more about the ideas and the sense of community and accomplishment than traditional rewards like copyrights and cash, said Eric Wilhelm, a former MIT student who is now CEO of Instructables.

Yeh and Lee are far from the first people, or even the first students, to send balloons into near-space to take pictures. But their on-the-cheap methods and stunning images have earned them a glowing reputation among those who paved their way.

Yeh and Lee also learned from those who came before them.

They did tons of Internet research during the spring semester and over summer break, so that when they arrived back on MIT's campus in Cambridge, Massachusetts, they set right to work.

All of the parts they used are commonly available. Yeh and Lee bought a Canon camera on eBay and then fastened it inside a Styrofoam cooler. A hole poked in the side of the container let the camera lens gaze out into space, and they attached a Motorola Boost cell phone to the camera so it would send GPS coordinates back to Earth.

A wireless router was hooked up to the mobile phone to give it the extra antenna power needed to send the coordinates down. And the students taped a hand warmer -- the kind skiers put in their gloves -- to the mobile phone's battery so it wouldn't freeze.

"We weren't sure if they were both necessary, but we couldn't test it, because we couldn't find anything that's negative 40 degrees," Yeh said. "Our freezer stopped at negative 10, so that was the best we could do." Video Watch an interview with Yeh and Lee

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