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Make Your Own Cluster Balloon
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!'"
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.
Hurricane Ivan: A 17th century prison collapsed. All of the inmates escaped.
Yeah, but then there would be no need to arrive by ship. In any event, John Gardner's book "Grendel", which tells the story from Grendel's perspective, is my favorite book of all time. Beowulf is a prick and deserves a cluster f .... ahem.
What changed under Obama? Nothing Good
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....
every day http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Special:Random
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.
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.
No, there is enough in the reserve to supply the US government to 100 years, the entire US for ~15 years, or the world for about 10 years. The world helium supply is limited and non-renewable. Just like oil. However, when oil runs out we can use solar and alcohol and biodiesel. There is no substitute for helium.
I didn't mean to come off as the Grinch. People like this guy are hardly putting a dent in the supply compared to those damn blimps that leak huge amounts of crude helium (Ne/He) into the atmosphere. I also hate those toy ballons they give to kids. It's another waste of helium and the balloons wind up in all sorts of environmentally unfriendly places.
But I think I have to make an exception for these cluster balloon guys. I think the increase in human spirit and morale far outweighs the reletively small amount of helium used. I'd love to do it myself.
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.
What changed under Obama? Nothing Good
It blows off into space, dipfreak.
It's lighter than anything in the atmosphere. It goes up, and the freakin "SOLAR WIND" (which for intents and purposes ammounts to photons and other itty bitty particles--some of which might be helium or other compounds being expelled from the sun) that's constantly whipping by Earth blows the shit right off the edge of space.
There's some dumbfucker creationists around that think that since the current level of helium in the atmosphere would take something like 2 million years to generate that it's evidence that god almighty whipped the earth (and indeed the rest of the universe) up in about seven days, whereas evolutionists think the earth is around 4.3 billion years old. Puuuuh lease.
They think that helium has to reach escape velocity, but seem to conveniantly neglect the fact that there are external forces--almost too small to measure (photon pressure and solar wind), but when you add it all up they have a whole lot of fucking energy, and it's more than enough to scrape a few hundred billion helium particles off the earth over the course of a FUCKING LONG TIME years.. Aurea Borealis, anyone? Say goodbye to that helium.