Here is how the earth looks from an altitude about 80,000 feet, shot by a camera on a small model plane called Vulture 1. A small group of British enthusiasts built the plane and launched it into the sky over Spain with a helium balloon. At high altitude, where the air is very thin, the balloon expanded and popped, and the plane came gliding to the ground. They called their project PARIS (Paper Aircraft Released Into Space), and joked that it would "reinvigorate the British space race."
(PARIS project, courtesy of http://www.theregister.co.uk/science/paris/)