iPad Survives Fall From 'Space' with G-Form Ballistic Fibre Case

An iPad case manufacturer claims to offer protection for your beloved Apple tablet - even if you drop it from space, if a recent promotional experiment is to be believed.

Accessory maker G-Form attached an iPad 2 in one of the company's "military-grade ballistic fabric" cases to a weather balloon, which then floated to 100,000 feet, before bursting and causing its cargo to fall to the ground.

An on-board GoPro camera records the descent and another camera appears to show a G-Form employee collect the iPad - fully working - from its landing point.

But almost as soon as the iPad returned to Planet Earth, critics pointed out that, first, space technically begins at over 320,000 feet, not the 100,000 from which G-Form's iPad fell; and second that another experiment found the case to be ineffective from a three-story fall.

American news station MSNBC tested a G-Form case - albeit an older model than the one dropped from space - and found that the iPad it contained smashed when dropped from the roof of a three-story building.

G-Form's space drop experiment was aided as the iPad landed on grass and loose stones rather than tarmac or concrete, and it would appear that a GPS tracking unit on the iPad's back took the brunt of the impact.

Commenters on YouTube - not often known for their eloquent, thought out remarks - claim that the video is fake for a whole number of reasons, ranging from "it would have fallen 50 miles away" and "why didn't it float into space?", to "it would have frozen" and "why didn't it burn up on re-entry?".

We can only hope that some of these comments are being sarcastic, but we wouldn't hold our breath.

It's also worth noting that the GoPro camera used to film on-board also survived, seemingly without protection, and of course the same falling speed could be achieved from a much lower altitude, as the iPad would have reached terminal velocity long before impact.

Either way, the experiment goes to show that the G-Form case does offer a very high level of protection for everyday drops and knocks that iPads are often subject to, and dropping it 'from space' only adds to the positive publicity the stunt has created.