Many a nerd has dreamed of exploring space—the final frontier—as a child. Despite visions in books, comics, TV, and film of a future where space travel is commonplace, that dream is still far from reality. But a handful of "self-admitted nerds" from the interactive design firm Sevnthsin are taking to the skies with a weather balloon, a hacked cooler, and the latest in mobile technology.

Calling their project Yavin IV (after a rebel base in the Star Wars universe), the small group from Minneapolis, Minnesota completed their first full launch on Friday. Ars was on the scene to capture the event, and we spoke with project leader Jamey Erickson to understand what the project is trying to accomplish, and what's in store for its future.

The project first started after some interoffice goading from Sevnthsin senior developer Jessie Ross. Erickson and Ross are long-time friends, and have a pact to go on a Virgin Galactic space orbit trip the minute the service is available to the general public.

"It stems from being an open office of self-admitted nerds," Erickson told Ars. Sevnthsin is an interactive design firm focused on mobile and social networking technologies, so the idea was hatched to leverage the advances in mobile technology to explore space. Taking a cue from a similar experiment performed recently at MIT, the pair decided to send up a weather balloon to the threshold of "space," with an iPhone shooting still images, a Flip camera shooting video, and a Droid Eris for GPS tracking.

"We realized that launching a balloon would be something doable," Erickson said. "We also wanted to test the limits of mobile technology. Why couldn't we do all this with cellphones?" Erickson said the fledgeling project decided to see what was possible using off-the-shelf mobile devices paired with available apps.

The iPhone used a time-lapse app to take photos on a regular schedule. The team chose a Droid Eris running Loopt to track the landing, since Verizon's network covers nearly all of Wisconsin where the balloon was expected to land. A Flip was turned on and set to record just before the payload was bundled up and the balloon launched.

The group did a test launch on September 17—a "dress rehearsal," according Erickson, that ran into a few technical glitches which limited maximum altitude. "We discovered some things we didn't account for, some errors in our process, but it went as well as we could have expected," he told Ars.