Space Chair TV Commercial Puts Local Space Explorer John Powell On the Map

John Powell, local space explorer, author and now tv commercial producer has captured imaginations and amazed audiences with his new tv commercial for Toshiba. The video produced in collaboration with Toshiba, and Gray London Films of London, England captures an arm chair rising from the earth to heights of over 98,000 feet above to the edge of space. The video has now been seen on YouTube more than 575,000 times. The tv commercial which was made to advertise Toshiba’s new line of HD televisions is simply known as Space Chair.

Powell operates a small volunteer aerospace company, JP Aerospace, which out of a small warehouse in Rancho Cordova, has flown science projects under helium balloons to the edge of space more than 100 times. Each volunteer donates some time each week to design, build, test and fly science experiments to very high altitudes under helium balloons.

When John Powell received the first email from Gray London Films, asking if he could fly a light-weight chair high above the Earth, his first reaction was “no one is going to be sitting in the chair, right?” Correct. Powell’s second reaction: “Yeah, we can do that. It sounds like a really fun mission.”

Watch the making of Space Chair and the tv commercial on YouTube. Learn more about John Powell in this story on News10.net and learn about John’s book, Floating to Space.