Sending your child's toy train into the stratosphere is no mean feat, but turning that train into an animated character requires a special blend of mechanical and computer-generated magic. Ron Fugelseth just happened to be the right magician for the job, as evidenced by the video that he and his 4-year-old son Jayden created.

Fugelseth's video traces the flight of his son's silver train, named Stanley, to an altitude of 18 miles or so. From that height, Stanley could see the curvature of the planet with the black sky of space above. The train's face reflects the wonder of the sight — as well as his distress when the helium-filled balloon that got him that high bursts into bits. The animation is what transforms the tale of Jayden's toy train from your garden-variety balloon experiment into ... something wonderful.

"To me, the whole thing about this is the storytelling," Fugelseth, creative director for California-based Oxygen Productions, told me today.

It all started months ago, when Fugelseth saw the video showing the balloon-borne flight of a Lego astronaut. "When I saw that Lego video, I thought, 'I should totally see if I could get Stanley to space,'" he said.

But Stanley is no cheap prop. To Jayden, the train is much more than a toy. "It's been his imaginary friend since he was 2," Fugelseth said. "It's like Linus and his blanket. This never would have popped into my head if it wasn't for that family member, that little white train."

So Fugelseth did his research and assembled the components for a stratospheric flight: a mail-order weather balloon, a palm-size HD video camera, an old cellphone capable of transmitting GPS location readings, a pocket warmer for heat, the necessary batteries, and a foam box for insulation and padding. (Check out the YouTube video description for other details, such as the procedure for letting the FAA know you're sending up a high-altitude balloon.)

Four weeks ago, Fugelseth and his son launched Stanley from Tracy, Calif. Then they waited for the balloon to pop and for the payload to come back down. When Fugelseth lost the cellphone signal, he worried over whether he'd ever be able to recover the precious cargo — but the phone "magically started working again," he said. With a little assistance from Dad, Jayden found Stanley in a cornfield 27 miles from the launch site.

That's when the computer-generated magic kicked in: Fugelseth used video processing software to create the expressions on the toy train's face, just as he did two years earlier for a Jayden-and-Stanley video titled "A Train and His Boy." The trick isn't all that different from what Fugelseth does for his day job, but it's still a challenge. "It's not every day that a client asks for something like manipulating a face on a train," he joked.

Fugelseth finished the 2½-minute video about Stanley's stratospheric voyage on Wednesday night, and since then it's gotten more than 91,000 views and a raft of positive reviews on YouTube. "If any video has ever deserved to go viral, this is it," one viewer wrote. "C-o-o-o-o-o-lest dad in the world. ... Dude, you gave me a warm feeling, looks like there's still hope for the human race after all."

But perhaps the most influential review came from Jayden and his 2-year-old sister. "They just went crazy," Fugelseth said. "They've watched it a million times now. ... One thing that Jayden said was, 'I wish I was a train, so I could go to space.'"

Be patient, Jayden. Maybe someday, you'll fly higher than Stanley ever could.

More near-space adventures
For a more grown-up tale, check out this "Now Is the Time" video presentation, recorded by a trio of space enthusiasts using a weather balloon, a platform made of plastic pipes and two GoPro cameras pointed at an iPhone. The main video is a tribute to spaceflight, but the "behind-the-scenes" video just might be more entertaining: It chronicles the three attempts to get the setup airborne, plus a backstory about the director's efforts to propose to his girlfriend using video from the stratosphere. (She said "yes.") Here are a few more tales of high-altitude high jinks:

• 'PongSats' rise to the edge of space
• 'Star Trek' action figures take flight
• Gemini capsule launched on a string
• Balloons built for future frontiers
• Teens send toy above the clouds
• Twin-balloon airship hits high frontier
• Students reach high for launch photos
• MIT acceptance letter hits the heights

Alan Boyle is NBCNews.com's science editor. Connect with the Cosmic Log community by "liking" the log's Facebook page, following @b0yle on Twitter and adding the Cosmic Log page to your Google+ presence. To keep up with Cosmic Log as well as NBCNews.com's other stories about science and space, sign up for the Tech & Science newsletter, delivered to your email in-box every weekday. You can also check out "The Case for Pluto," my book about the controversial dwarf planet and the search for new worlds.

JP Aerospace

A 2-inch-long paper model of a 1960s-era Gemini capsule hangs from a string in front of a camera mounted on a balloon-borne platform at an altitude of more than 97,000 feet. Meanwhile, the moon hangs in the far background, sans string.

So what if it's only a paper spaceship? This year marks the 50th anniversary of Project Gemini's christening, and you could regard this small-scale re-creation of a Gemini space mission as a fitting tribute to the times.

The original 19-foot-long Gemini spacecraft was built to accommodate two astronauts for missions that would lay the groundwork for the Apollo missions to the moon. This 2-inch-long Gemini model was built by John's Paper Models and hung from a string during one of JP Aerospace's high-altitude balloon flights in Nevada's Black Rock Desert.

"The model was flown to 97,704 feet on balloon during last month's PongSat mission. 980 student experiments were also flown," John Powell, the founder of JP Aerospace, told me in an email. The California-based venture sends payloads up to the edge of space at the end of a helium-filled balloon, and recovers the payloads after the balloon breaks.

The payloads range from mini-experiments that can fit inside a pingpong ball — hence the name "PongSat" — to the occasional chair or cellphone. These flights don't come anywhere close to the internationally accepted 62-mile (100-kilometer) boundary of outer space, but they do rise high enough to provide exposure to cosmic rays, the near-vacuum of near space and other conditions that can put space hardware to a rigorous test. And as you can see here, the flights provide an awesome view as well.

JP Aerospace

JP Aerospace's "Away 66" mission rises. The tiny model of the Gemini capsule can be seen hanging from the left side of the balloon-borne platform.

Meanwhile, another near-space mission has successfully sent "Star Trek" captains and celebrities into space, at least in miniaturized, plasticized action-figure form. StarTrek.com provides a photo essay chronicling the results of this month's "Send Picard to Space" balloon mission, backed by more than $6,000 in Kickstarter contributions. "The captains and equipment spent two hours aloft, 90 minutes of that in the stratosphere, until the balloon popped and the payload parachuted safely back to Earth," StarTrek.com reported. Stay tuned for the encore presentation. 

More adventures in near space:

• Balloons built for future frontiers
• Teens send toy above the clouds
• Twin-balloon airship hits high frontier
• Students reach high for launch photos

Alan Boyle is msnbc.com's science editor. Connect with the Cosmic Log community by "liking" the log's Facebook page, following @b0yle on Twitter or adding Cosmic Log's Google+ page to your circle. You can also check out "The Case for Pluto," my book about the controversial dwarf planet and the search for other worlds.

Quest for Stars / Challenger Center / CSE

The shuttle Endeavour leaves behind an arcing plume of exhaust in this picture, captured on Monday by the Senatobia-1 balloon from an altitude of 64,000 feet.

The hundreds of thousands of spectators who turned out to watch the shuttle Endeavour's final launch on Monday could see it for only a matter of seconds before the spaceship plowed through a cloud bank, but a camera-equipped balloon built by students captured plenty of pictures of Endeavour's ascent from 64,000 feet.

The Senatobia-1 balloon experiment — organized by Quest for Stars, the Challenger Center for Space Science Education and the Coalition for Space Exploration — followed up on a similar operation that tracked Discovery's last launch in February. In the picture above, you can see Endeavour's plume of exhaust as the shuttle arcs spaceward.

The balloon was sent up from Beverly Hills, Fla., hours in advance of Endeavour's launch, and took video with an array of high-definition digital cameras as it ascended. Even after the launch pictures were taken, Senatobia-1 continued to rise until it reached an altitude of 95,000 feet. Then the balloon popped and the payload parachuted back to Earth, its location tracked via GPS signals. Searchers found the payload stuck up in a tree in a nursery in Pierson, Fla., 130 miles from the launch site.

"This time we were sitting there waiting for it," Quest for Stars spokesman Bobby Russell told me today.

Senatobia-1 is named after the community in Mississippi that suggested "Endeavour" as the name for NASA's youngest shuttle, which was built as a shuttle fleet replacement after the 1986 Challenger tragedy. Yet another connection to Endeavour was included as part of the balloon payload: a list of signatures from students in Senatobia, wishing a speedy recovery to wounded U.S. Rep. Gabrielle Giffords, the wife of Endeavour commander Mark Kelly.

A shuttle launch costs hundreds of millions of dollars, but Senatobia-1's launch cost much less. "For under five grand you could do basically what we did," Russell said.

He said additional videos and still imagery would be made available via the Quest for Stars website, Twitpic gallery, Facebook page and YouTube page this week. Here's a sample from today, showing the payload's freefall:

Next up is a balloon launch from the San Diego area, scheduled for next week, and then comes the big summer project: construction of the "Strato-Shuttle," a balloon-borne unmanned aerial vehicle with a 5- to 6-foot wingspan. The idea is that the balloon rises up to an altitude of more than 120,000 feet, and then releases the UAV to fly back to earth under remote control. Russell is recruiting student interns and plans to test the system in Mojave, Calif. — the same locale where the pros are working on Virgin Galactic's SpaceShipTwo and XCOR Aerospace's Lynx.

"That's the next generation," Russell said.

More amazing views from on high:

• Awesome photo of shuttle from airplane

Connect with the Cosmic Log community by "liking" the log's Facebook page or following @b0yle on Twitter. You can also check out "The Case for Pluto," Alan's book about the controversial dwarf planet and the search for new worlds.