Stories
Slash Boxes
Comments
Search

News for nerds, stuff that matters

Slashdot Log In

Log In

Create Account  |  Retrieve Password

Make Your Own Cluster Balloon

Posted by michael on Fri Dec 03, 2004 08:30 PM
from the we-disclaim-all-responsibility dept.
Toys Entertainment
Mr. Christmas Lights writes "'Have you ever dreamed of being carried into the sky by a giant bouquet of colorful toy balloons?' John Ninomiya does exactly that using 50-150 four-seven foot diameter balloons filled with helium ... and sealed with tape (duct?) and cable ties. Folks may recall the lawn chair man who floated up to 16,000 feet, but John takes this to a whole new level and his site has some wild pictures ... and includes the comment 'Kids, don't try this at home!'"
+ -
story
This discussion has been archived. No new comments can be posted.
The Fine Print: The following comments are owned by whoever posted them. We are not responsible for them in any way.

Make Your Own Cluster Balloon 50 Comments More /

 Full
 Abbreviated
 Hidden
More
Loading... please wait.

  • The inevitable question... (Score:3, Funny)

    by Chairboy (88841) on Friday December 03 2004, @08:33PM (#10993681) Homepage
    If you were a sixth century Scandinavian warrior out to kill a Grendel, and providence provided you with one of these clusters, what would you call it?

  • four-seven (Score:2, Interesting)

    by ryanmfw (774163)
    50-150 four-seven foot diameter balloons

    What kind of measurement is that? The ambiguous measure. The new way to skimp out on actually *editing* articles.

    Unless, of course, they're just different sized ballons, and I'm just being a pedant. Silly me.

  • Mary Poppin's (Score:5, Funny)

    by Kevin Mitnick (324809) on Friday December 03 2004, @08:35PM (#10993696) Homepage Journal
    Call me when we have an umbrella that lets you fly through the clouds
  • He eventually committed suicide, though it's unclear if it had anything to do with the amount of ridicule he received as a result of the lawnchair incident. All he needed to do was to make it look like he flew away on purpose, and nobody would be any wiser. Kind of like the guy in this article. :)

  • More information... (Score:5, Informative)

    by WalterGR (106787) on Friday December 03 2004, @08:37PM (#10993706) Homepage

    The lawn-chair man sounded like a hoax to me, but snopes.com [snopes.com] (which we all know is the final word in urban legends) claims [snopes.com] it's true!

    My favorite part:

    As Larry and his lawnchair drifted into the approach path to Long Beach Municipal Airport, perplexed pilots from two passing Delta and TWA airliners alerted air traffic controllers about what appeared to be an unprotected man floating through the sky in a chair.

      • Re:More information... (Score:5, Interesting)

        by mercuryresearch (680293) on Friday December 03 2004, @09:24PM (#10993983) Journal
        Assuming he's licensed (which this guy -- but not lawn chair guy -- is).

        The basic rule for right of way for aircraft is the the lesser manuverable craft has the right of way.

        So it goes like baloons, airships, airplanes, helicopters.

        Also, the "lawn chair guy" is dead, of suicide.

        It's definitely NOT an urban legend, I remember when he first did it -- made national news. The story still routinely pops up in pilot magazines.

        And to echo the cluster ballooning guy's advice: don't try this at home without training. I'm a licensed airplane pilot, and have crewed on hot air balloons a few times in New Mexico during their annual ballooning orgy. IMHO piloting balloons takes more skill as they're so much less manuverable you need to be considerably better at planning. Figuring out you don't have that skill while airborne is a bad thing.

        Heighting the terror factor is that when you're screwed you usually know about it well before the actual you're-screwed event takes place, and get to experience it in slow motion.

  • From the pictures... (Score:5, Funny)

    by kai5263499 (751741) * <kai&werxltd,com> on Friday December 03 2004, @08:38PM (#10993714) Homepage
    that looks like a prime position for a serious wedgie...

  • Yay! (Score:5, Funny)

    by Anubis333 (103791) on Friday December 03 2004, @08:38PM (#10993715) Homepage
    Sounds like we will have some new Darwin Award entries this year!
  • Check out Danny Deckchair. Its relativly new, and recieved decent reviews.

    http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0337960/ [imdb.com]

  • Mythbusters on helium balloons... (Score:3, Informative)

    by outofservice (79233) on Friday December 03 2004, @08:41PM (#10993738)
    The Mythbusters (Discovery Channel) did a segment on what it takes to get liftoff from helium balloons.

    From http://dsc.discovery.com/fansites/mythbusters/epis ode/episode_06.html:

    So, this guy named Larry Walters attached something like 45 weather balloons to this lawn chair. One of the tethers broke on the unemployed truck driver's little invention, shooting him straight up into the air. Apparently he sailed to 16,000 feet, where he was spotted by airline pilots, eventually closing LAX airport. He was finally rescued by a helicopter after he floated out to sea. Is this popular Internet legend full of hot air? Will Jamie and Adam close LAX?


    They tried doing this, and let's just say it took a LOT of balloons to get a young girl even neutrally buoyant.
    • Well, it's not a 'popular internet legend' it just became one.

      It happened in the eighties, somewhere around 97 it started to go around the internet with numerous facts changed, including ""A helicopter after he floated out to sea"

      He actually got tangled in powerlines.

      Don't these 'mythbusters' do their freaking homework? god
    • Indeed, it took them 3000+ baloons to levitate the little girl. Those ballons, hoever were of the average carnival variety. Also, at the time, they were testing the myth that a small child could be carried away by a large bouquet of carnival balloons, a la Mr. Bean.

      The Mysthbusters did a separate segment on "Lawnchair Lary" using large weather ballons. They also tested whether or not a pellet gun could be used to burst ballons to reduce altitude (as reported in the story). I know that they got the lawnchai
  • We stopped believing in Magic, when we were 5,6,7, or even 8. But this is amazinglgy great, and news worthy, if the site did not as of yet get slashdotted the QT slide show is kick ass and well made. I wish I could do this. PS be glad these baloons are not made of hydrogen. I wisth the news monoply broadcased this information. Rock On Balkoon Man ..

  • so far as oversized helium balloons go.. (Score:3, Interesting)

    by way2trivial (601132) on Friday December 03 2004, @08:46PM (#10993779) Homepage Journal
    I wondered in my life- more than once, if you only wanted to SLOW DOWN someone jumping off a building, say due to a flaming jet being inbetween you and the ground floor.

    how much helium/how large of a tank/baloon to produce enough lift and wind resistance to lower you to the ground with, at best, a broken leg... something between a hot air baloon and a $2.00 mylar in size, and only created to drop you at survivable impact speeds....

  • Hmmm... (Score:5, Funny)

    by Rorschach1 (174480) on Friday December 03 2004, @08:50PM (#10993799) Homepage
    Let's see, in my bedroom and garage, I've got on hand:

    * Paraglider harness
    * Reserve parachute
    * Helium
    * Balloons
    * Duct tape
    * Oxygen cylinders and masks
    * Warm clothes
    * Flight helmet
    * GPS
    * Handheld radio
    * BB gun

    And here I was wondering what to do with my weekend.

    • Re:Hmmm... (Score:3, Funny)

      by Anonymous Coward
      Excellent! I, too, have an open weekend. Perhaps we could meet up? In my garage and bedroom I have:

      * A large first-aid kit.
    • And now you know! Give out a bunch of helium-filled balloons to little kids in the big city. Get atop the highest building in the area. You'll need to use ogygen tanks for air up there and the warm clothes will come in handy. Now shoot the little kids' ballons from the top of the building. Use the radio to tell when the police are coming. Wear a flight helmet so the police can't identify you. Once they are almost on you, jump off the building utilizing a hybrid paraglider/parachute device (duct tape r

  • Can not go too high (Score:5, Interesting)

    by asadodetira (664509) on Friday December 03 2004, @08:52PM (#10993811) Homepage
    I remember in a fluid dynamic course we did some balloon calculations, and one conclusion was that baloons are unstable, as they go up, the pressure decreases, so the gas keeps expanding until it bursts. I guess this might be different with a real materials, I don't recall how you model the elastic membrane stuff.
    • I think your calculations were wrong. I remember the original event, it was all over the TV news. Also, sounding baloons are launched routinely. They rise until their expansion causes their weight to equal that of the air that they displace. They then tend to hover at that altitude until the helium leaks out.

    • Re:Can not go too high (Score:4, Informative)

      by windows (452268) on Saturday December 04 2004, @01:08AM (#10994858)
      They're only flying as high as about 20,000 feet at the most. The pressure up there is about 500 mb. Sea level pressure is approximately 1000 mb. Consider an experiment at the surface where we inflate a balloon in a 1000 mb environment. We then keep the same temperature, but drop the pressure to 500 mb. That means for the balloon to maintain equal pressure with its surroundings, it must double in volume. That means, since volume is a three dimensional quantity that the diameter must increase by the cube root of 2. The diameter is only 1.26 times what it was before. Even at 125 mb, the balloon would only be twice its previous size.

      The 300 mb level in the atmosphere is around 32,000 feet. That's higher than the peak of Mt. Everest. Unless you brought oxygen tanks along, you would almost certainly be unconscious at that pressure. And yet in our surface experiement, at 300 mb, the balloon would only have a diameter of 1.49 times its diameter at 1000 mb.

      And if your balloon is still intact at 300 mb and you're still conscious, you'd have more to worry about than your balloon bursting. You're likely to encounter some pretty strong winds at that altitude which might make steering a bit of a challenge.

      But unless you fill your balloon almost completely full at the surface, you'd likely be unconscious before you'd see your balloon burst.

  • Oh My... (Score:3, Funny)

    by dallask (320655) <codeninja@gmail. c o m> on Friday December 03 2004, @08:55PM (#10993829) Homepage
    This is going to get at least ONE slashdotter killed....

    Great photos though.
    • > This is going to get at least ONE slashdotter killed....
      >
      >Great photos though.

      What, the photos on the site, or the photos and video our soon-to-be-deceased Slashdotter will be streaming back to his webserver as he falls screaming to his death, practically guaranteeing a simultaneous appearance on both Slashdot and Fark.

      Hmm, a late-model ruggedized laptop equipped with wireless and a dozen pringles cans to guarantee that at least one Starbucks is at range after the crash... it'll survive th

  • Safety (Score:3, Informative)

    by OverlordQ (264228) on Friday December 03 2004, @10:00PM (#10994155) Journal
    From the Site:
    Latex balloon clusters have been flown as high as 20,000 feet; however, for a recreational flight, a maximum altitude of 3,000 - 5,000 feet is more common.

    From a BASE Jump site:
    The safety margin in a normal free fall exercise is 800 metres (~2600 feet), the minimum height at which a jumper may deploy the chute safely

    So basically if something farks up, your really farked.

    • Re:Safety (Score:3, Informative)

      by CvD (94050)
      Minimum exit height for skydiving is around 2500 feet, but this is not recommended. We regularly jump from 3500 feet. No problem there, you just don't get much freefall time (couple seconds). I'm not sure how fast a paragliding reserve opens, but with regular chutes you need at most a couple hundred feet to open a parachute if you're doing a 'hop & pop' where you open your chute right after leaving the plane. This would the case as well, where the pilot of the cluster would find himself descending too f

    • Re:Safety (Score:3, Informative)

      by pcraven (191172)
      I'm a balloon pilot, and get questions like this a lot. Balloons don't fail at altitude. If you have a problem, it is because you hit power lines, a tower, etc. 99% of problems with balloons occur within 100 feet of the ground.

      Also, maximum descent for a hot air balloon is the same as a military parachute. So using a parachute would be kind of pointless.

      I only know of one cases of balloons failing at altitude. It was a mid-air collision between balloons. Even then, the pilot survived. A streamering balloo

  • Warballooning? (Score:3, Funny)

    by kinema (630983) on Friday December 03 2004, @10:40PM (#10994347)
    We've seen wardriving, warflying, warboating I think the obvious next step is warballooning.

  • Try this AT HOME! (Score:3, Funny)

    by InfiniteWisdom (530090) on Friday December 03 2004, @11:04PM (#10994433) Homepage
    Kids, don't try this at home
    On the contrary, if you want to try this, do it at home... that way you won't find yourself floating at 16,000 feet unless you have an exceptionally weak roof.

  • Official "Lawn Chair Pilot" site (Score:5, Informative)

    by mcrbids (148650) on Saturday December 04 2004, @12:02AM (#10994638) Journal
    Go here [markbarry.com] to get the full skinny on the REAL lawn chair pilot, complete with streaming audio, pictures, maps, the works.

    It was on Art Bell a few years ago....

    • ...There are "strategic reserves" of helium?

      • Re:What a waste... (Score:5, Funny)

        by Nine Tenths of The W (829559) on Friday December 03 2004, @08:44PM (#10993761)
        Yes. The Pentagon has to plan for all eventualities, including invasion by an army of angry clowns
          • Yes, it floats off into space. Where did you think it went? It's lighter than molecular O2 and N2. If you don't believe me, check the wikkipedia or google for "strategic helium reserve". I weld with the stuff and I breath the stuff when I dive shipwrecks with a closed-circuit rebreather. I have a vested interest in knowing.

              • Re:What a waste... (Score:5, Informative)

                by Anonymous Coward on Saturday December 04 2004, @12:03AM (#10994646)
                Since you seem incapable of looking it up yourself, I did it for you:

                Abundance


                Helium is the second most abundant element in the known universe after hydrogen and constitutes nearly a quarter of the mass of the universe. It is concentrated in the stars, where it is formed from hydrogen by the nuclear fusion of the proton-proton chain reaction and CNO cycle. According to the Big Bang model of the early development of the universe, the vast majority of helium was formed in the first three minutes after the Big Bang.

                However, the concentration of helium in the Earth's atmosphere is only 1 part in 200,000, largely because most helium in the Earth's atmosphere escapes into space due to its inertness and low mass. All considerable helium on Earth is a result of radioactive decay. The decay product is found in minerals of uranium and thorium, including cleveites, pitchblende, carnotite, monazite and beryl. There are also small amounts in mineral springs, volcanic gas and meteoric iron. The greatest concentrations on the planet are in natural gas, from which most commercial helium is derived. The principal source in the world is the natural gas wells of the American states of Texas, Oklahoma, and Kansas.

    • Re:What a waste... (Score:5, Informative)

      by cheese_wallet (88279) on Friday December 03 2004, @09:21PM (#10993975) Journal
      "There is only so much left in the strategic reserves."

      There is enough helium in the US reserves to supply the states for 100 years, or the world for 10. I don't think this guy made a dent.

      http://www.agiweb.org/gap/legis104/heliumup.html

          • Re:What a waste... (Score:5, Informative)

            by Anonymous Coward on Saturday December 04 2004, @01:33AM (#10994937)
            Tell that to an analytical chemist who has his gas chromatograph explode because he has to run hydrogen instead of helium as the carrier gas. Sure, you get better resolution with hydrogen, but helium is safer. Add on to that the fact that in Europe, chemists collect and recycle their helium, one starts to appreciate the value only when there was a shortage. Ask any analytical chemist how their helium was rationed two summers ago- they'll remember it.

            Helium has utility in places where you'd never think about- heliarc welding, or any inert gas welding (TIG, MIG, etc.), for example. Welding aluminum isn't the same without it. Liquid fuel rocketry uses it to drive the fuel. It has innumerable cryogenic applications that are irreproducible with any other element. You can't grow silicon or germanium crystals without it, so kiss your computer chips and cell phones goodbye without it. The tests used to throw sizable chunks of foam into a Shuttle wing to simulate what happened to Columbia were done with a light gas gun- which uses helium to create a shock wave of sufficient velocity.

            Everyone thinks it's a big joke, a "strategic helium reserve." Truth be known, were it not for the eccentric and vast natural gas fields of west Texas that have very high concentrations of helium, we'd be up shit's creek without a pooper scooper on this one. Fact is, we can lord over other countries that require helium for their own purposes.

            Supplies are finite, and we're pissing it away on toy balloons. What a waste. Let 'em use hydrogen instead. Maybe they can do a Hindenburg. How's that for substituting for helium?

      • Helium is produced as a function of radioactive decay in the lab (or, in larger quantities, in nuclear reactors). The quantities are not commercially viable.

        Commercial quantities of helium come out of the ground in Texas. [dst.tx.us] People think the Strategic Helium Reserve [agiweb.org] was such a big joke. Except for the fact that without helium, we can't make computer chips, can't do inert gas welding, can't do a lot of science and (most important) can't make squeaky voices at kid's parties. So, the government has decided i

      • Re:Well (Score:3, Interesting)

        by anagama (611277)
        I dount you are in the minority with this fantasy. I clearly remember youthful days spending hours upon hours sitting on the back porch looking up at the sky and dreaming about floating off over the fields. This was around first grade, so that would be roughly 1975. I think the trigger was seeing an ad for giant baloons in a comic book. The flying/floating fantasy has been with me in one form or another since then. I have nothing but respect for this guy.

All trademarks and copyrights on this page are owned by their respective owners. Comments are owned by the Poster. The Rest © 1997-2009 Geeknet, Inc.