Have you ever wondered if equipped with enough balloons, a house could lift off the ground and float into the air like in the movie Up?
The National Geographic Channel has the answer: yes, yes it can.
At dawn this past Saturday morning, March 5, National Geographic Channel and a team of scientists, engineers and two world-class balloon pilots successfully launched a 16′ X 16′ house 18′ tall with 300 8′ colored weather balloons from a private airfield east of Los Angeles, and set a new world record for the largest balloon cluster flight ever attempted. The entire experimental aircraft was more than 10 stories high and reached an altitude of over 10,000 feet and flew for approximately one hour. The record will be part of a new NGC series called How Hard Can It Be? premiering Fall 2011.
That guy is really brave.
Photos by Stewart Volland, copyright 2011 National Geographic Channel.
Sophie on 03.09.2011 at 13:33 PM
this is great!
ak on 03.09.2011 at 18:31 PM
I hope that’s not helium. Ironically, National Geographic published an article a month or so ago called something like ‘the $100 helium balloon’ about how the US’s non-renewable helium resources are being depleted rapidly. Currently the supplies are something like 1% of what they were 100 years ago. The article suggests hiking up the price of a children’s helium balloon to $100 to protect the remaining sources…..
Carl Fredrecksen on 03.09.2011 at 21:39 PM
http://registry.faa.gov/aircraftinquiry/NNum_Results.aspx?NNumbertxt=878UP
TeamMono on 03.10.2011 at 07:35 AM
This is really amazing! I would love to live like that, haha! Every day another view, right?
Heather H. on 03.10.2011 at 13:26 PM
What a wonderful idea! I wonder whether they actually landed in South America, just like in the film…