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Indian Tycoon Sets Balloon Flight Record
GillBates0 writes "The BBC is reporting that Vijaypat Singhania, a textile tycoon, has set a new world record for the highest hot air balloon flight. The 67-year-old took off from Mumbai, India in a 48m(160ft) balloon and flew to a height of 21,290m (69,852ft) breaking the earlier record of 19,811m(64,997ft)."
That Indian math guy covered previously on Slashdot?
Professor William Waterman Sherman has returned home after less than a month of traveling around the world in a hot air balloon. For reasons yet to be explained, the Professor returned, not with his original balloon house, but on a broken but otherwise magnificently built wooden platform held up by no less than twenty-one hydrogen balloons. He himself will reveal the complete, long-awaited story tonight at the meeting of the Western American Explorer's Club in San Francisco... ( Read More... )
Creative misinterpretation is your friend.
The pilot relied upon his Pakistani friends to shoot at the balloons to aid in his descent.
that makes people want to get in balloons?
I am not left-handed, either!
Indian Balloon Tycoon?
These sequels to Railroad Tycoon are getting stranger and stranger.
how is this Science?
1's and 0's should be free.
I don't have any funny quote, I just wanted to bring up the "Balloon" episode of Newsradio where he faked his trip around the world.
richard branson is going to be pissed off
Why doesnt he fly them some food and water?
same can be said about any other rick tycoon.
The project was called Mission Impossible 70K (MI70K) and there are some live videos detailing his flight (Flash required) on this site - http://www.mi70k.com/video.htm. The site also carries information about Mr. Singhania and his some other records.
"This goes to show to the world that we are not bullock cart drivers, but we can compete against the best of the world." Aren't Singhania's one of the richest families in India? Money can do anything.
Make your computer faster: rm -rf
Watch Singhania's attempt the world record breaking feat-Live! For latest updates here including record update.
The important thing is not to stop questioning --Albert Einstein.
Well, India and Pakistan not the best of friends - having suffered through a nasty partition in 1947, followed by wars in 1965 and 1971 - in which India helped Bangladesh become a separate country. Over the years, India has alleged Pakistani involvement in terrorism specially in the beautiful hilly state of Kashmir which is still a sore point of contention between the two countries. The most recent armed conflict was in 1999 when the Indians pushed out armed insurgents back into Pakistan.
All that said, I believe that most of the conflict is fuelled by the politians in both countries who instigate the people for their own benifit. No matter what the political state of affairs People like me on the ground would just like to code in Bangalore and not worry about it at all. Anyways, Pakistani dry fruits are still better than the ones we get here.
walk into a bar.
IND: We are holding world record for highest balloon pilot now.
PAK: Not you are!
IND: Yes we are. You are still third world country now.
PAK: We will still bomb you with our A-Bomb! You will be glowing ashes, while we will remain the center of human culture.
IND: You will not, you can not do any of that. You are third world country who eats the flesh of animals.
PAK: And you are stupid balloon flyers who answer the phone for your American bosses!
IND: And you are terrorists who eat dead cows! All your base are belong to us, now!
PAK: All you have are balloons to fly. That won't get you a visa to go to your American homeland!
[bouncers with blue helmets arrive, and the conversation continues as it has for centuries]
Raise your children as if you were teaching them to raise your grandchildren, because you are.
48 meters of diameter? Damn, someone's going to be high from all that helium.
Same goes for the Pakistani chics man. They are much hotter than the average Indian chic.
I spent several nights googling, and couldn't come up with anything definitive. How long can a balloon stay aloft? I don't care about whether it uses hot air, hydrogen, whatever. I'd like to make a balloon that would hold about 5-10 pounds (well, more than that, including the tether), put it on three long tethers, and let it fly as long as possible. The duration it can stay up is important, because I can't go check on it often (I live too far away). I want to loft an anemometer and record wind speeds to assess the viability of erecting wind generators. The good generators are really big, and really tall. And really expensive - a million dollars give or take per turbine. Obtaining financing will require the most reliable energy estimates I can muster. Wind speed can vary significantly with elevation, so I want to make measurements quite high, and a balloon seems like it might be a cheap way to do it. I want to collect data for an entire year, because seasonal fluctuations will significantly impact the viability of such a project. I could relaunch a few times, but if it's a daily event, that becomes problematic.
If you have any expertise in balloons, post an email address, and I will contact you.
Why don't you spend all your disposable income on people who need it? That includes getting rid of your computer and internet access, because those things cost money that could be used for other people. In fact, sell off all of your possessions and live in a small, unfurnished apartment. After all, that money can be used to help other people.
Or you could be a normal person and spend your money as you see fit. If you think people should be forced to spend their money for causes you like, become a politician and raise taxes.
Is there some value that I'm missing in this? Why does any care that some rich guy made a balloon to take him up 60K ft? Is there some practical application that he is trying to improve this technology for? Or, is he just trying to pump his own ego?
Why does this get reported everywhere / anywhere?
Are you American or British? Using the same logic - those countries are spending billions on an ill-defined war in Iraq when that money could be used to feed the entire planet. On and individual basis, did you need to spend as much on your toys this year?
So this is how India is going to fly to space: 1) Launch a tycoon into high altitude 2) He can't get down, send US/European spaceships with Indian astronauts on them to the rescue!
Lone Gunmen crew.
http://www.google.com/search?hl=en&q=69852+feet+in +miles&btnG=Google+Search
"God bless those pagans."
Autonomous Retard -- Is your camp safe? UnsafeCamp.com
A very good source for some perspective is this Wikipedia page on atmospheric heights. Note that the troposphere (illustrated nicely with Mt. Everest just jutting into it, an airplane flying in this layer) only extends up to 17 km (at the equator, lowers as you near the poles - the figure at the right in the Wikipedia page is in miles though, so be careful) -- this guy flew well above that (21 km).
:
So this guy is in the stratosphere, where we see only weather balloons illustrated. The layer above (mesosphere, from about 50 km on) is practically space, it's apparently where meteors burn up. So I guess this guy reached the high stratosphere - for comparison check out that Mount Everest is at 8.84 km elevation!
It's no wonder, then, that from the article (which I actually read, just for you)
He travelled in a pressurised cabin attached to a balloon as high as a 22-storey building.
This "pressurized cabin" is just mentioned once more, in this "quick facts" table:
whoops, sorry, there's once more mention of this enclosure, here are a couple of more paragraphs quoted for you, the appropriate text in bold):
And what the hell, there's so little I didn't reproduce, you might as well have a mirror. (Although I find only the following other fact interesting: "During the ascent, air temperatures plummeted to around -93C (-135F)." And maybe a quote from his wife Asha telling of her relief and joy at the success of the trip: "When I heard that he had broken the record, I became numb in mind and heart". I'm sure there's a funny to be made about that.)
CAREFUL, THERE IS NOTHING ELSE INTERESTING BELOW!!
Later that day,Vijaypat confessed that it was not a balloon, but rather he was having a picnic, and the mumbai (Bombay) fumes/pollution/cow dung odour had lifted his picnic-blanket off the ground and into the sky.
Let me be the first to say "How, Keemosabee!"
What's that you said?...
"I would say that 99 per cent of what my father has written about his own life is false." - L. Ron Hubbard Jr.
Maybe Saddam was the only one that could not understand the definition. Everyone else took the notion quite seriously.
Autonomous Retard -- Is your camp safe? UnsafeCamp.com
http://home.att.net/~1.elliott/JOEKITTINGER.HTML "On August 16, 1960, Captain Joe Kittinger jumped from a huge helium balloon at a height of 102,800 feet, almost 20 miles above the earth! Captain Kittinger fell for a full 4 minutes, 36 seconds." http://www.thatvideosite.com/view/1164.html
This story is full of a lot of hot air.
You're probably an American.
Well, aren't there people in your country who are billionaires? People who have far more money than they could possibly spend? Well, there are also people who live in abject poverty too.
Tell me, how is that any different?
P.S. The earthquake affected parts of India too.
"Accept that some days you are the pigeon, and some days you are the statue." - David Brent, Wernham Hogg
No way did that balloon get that high on hot air - absolute claptrap from the slashdot submitter - even the article says it was helium that raised the balloon.
Psssh.
he didn't go higher than joe kittinger or malcolm ross
a world record set in 2 hours, in a pressurized cabin. This guy has the guts to prove that he has money.
Ballooning, over land at least, seems like a sport revolutionized by cellphones. Combined with GPS, a ballooner can now land nearly anywhere safe, and just get picked up by a driver.
--
make install -not war
full og gas, no wonder they fly that high :-) (I'm Indian Origin myself BTW)
Scott McNealy to Michael: "Suck my Sun!" Michael Dell to Scott : "Lick my Dell!"
If you had bothered to actually read any of his previous posts before you jumping to your asinine, knee-jerk conclusions, you would have discovered that he claims to be from Iran.
How is this impressive, when Joe Kittinger rode a balloon up to 102,800 feet (31.3km) and then parachuted out of it, breaking the speed of sound with just his body?
My point is still valid. Pick any country and you will find people who are shockingly rich and those who are shockingly poor.
Short of forced redistribution of wealth on a massive scale that puts us all on a level playing field, that's always going to be the case, so why make a big deal about this particular case?
"Accept that some days you are the pigeon, and some days you are the statue." - David Brent, Wernham Hogg
Is that the one where you raise Indians? I don't think I've played that one.
oh dear - what a monkey
No, we Americans have zero billionaires. I think that pretty much refutes your entire point quite nicely, doesn't it? Yes, hm, well maybe you should stick to the facts, sir, and leave all these crazy hypothetical angles where they belong - in the hearts and minds of naive little children who still dare to dream of a world where America has billionaires.
Oh look, you were modded "Insightful". You're probably a European. Well, aren't there shoes in your country? I'm sure some people have lots of shoes. And we all know that you can't judge a person until you walk a mile in his shoes - unaccredited anecdotes are the ace of trump in the suite of proof in this game of debates. Therefore who are you to judge these mythical, fantasy beings (who don't really exist) called American billionaires? You haven't even worn all the shoes in Europe, let alone make-believe sandals of fictional American billionaires. I rest my case! I SAY GOOD DAY SIR.
Check your facts... The highest hot air balloon has gone over 100,000 feet. Not only that, but the crazy fucker jumped out of it at that height. Read up on Captain Joe Kittinger of the US Air Force. He did this back in 1960.
Wrong. Check your facts. That balloon was NOT a hot air balloon. It was a helium balloon. Here, you do the reading up and check it out for yourself: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Project_Excelsior.
-- A fellow skydiver too.
1 million => 2 chicks
1 billion or 1000 million => 2 * 1000 = 2000 chicks!!
Unless the chicks you get are non-uniformly priced, in which case you may get a bulk discount and even more.
This is of course a slashdotter's dream.
As such.
You need help.
"Accept that some days you are the pigeon, and some days you are the statue." - David Brent, Wernham Hogg
As far as I know, Auguste Piccard flew up to 23000 m in the 1930s. So how is this 21,290m a new record?
If there was a way to make Slash convert data automagically to feet or meters according to IP range (or some other way to state unit preference).
So we, the entire world, would never have to see inches, feet, Fahrenheit again during our precious, but short, lives.
Just an idea...
My point is still valid. Pick any country and you will find people who are shockingly rich and those who are shockingly poor.
My point, made through satire, is that this is the most uninteresting sentiment I've seen moderated as "Insightful" in a long, long time. And as far as Slashdot moderation goes, that's saying a hell of a lot.
I need help, you say. Hm. You're the guy who's posting a whole string of thoughtful comments to point out that some people are rich and some people are poor. WOAH. It just hit me. YOU'RE RIGHT. Man, forgive me. The sheer brilliance of this new, unprecedented concept has just made its impression felt. I totally retract all my satire and sarcasm. You, sir, deserve a drink on the house.
How someone chooses to moderate my posts (if at all) is down to them, not me. Seems that your issue is with the moderators, not with me. Perhaps you should address your posts accordingly.
"Accept that some days you are the pigeon, and some days you are the statue." - David Brent, Wernham Hogg
He's filthy rich. Undoubtedly he must be evil too.
"And again I say unto you, It is easier for a camel to go through the eye of a needle, than for a rich man to enter into the kingdom of God." Matthew 19:24.
This is the REAL highest balloon flight.
h an_air/20th_cent_records-2/LTA12.htm
:)
http://www.centennialofflight.gov/essay/Lighter_t
and I suspect no one will ever come close because it takes the backing of an org like the US airforce. Not only is it the highest ballon flight but HE JUMPED OUT making it also the longest and farthest human free fall. The only person to break the sound barrier without an aircraft. Now that is is baaaaaaaddddd aaaaaaaasssss. All that just to test a space suit.
Yep the US air force is pretty sweet.
I like things that are sweet and not things that are lame. --
---
(\(\
(-.-) Give me back my damn feet!
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Why is it that when you believe something it's an opinion, but when I believe something it's a manifesto?
This is the highest *hot air* balloon flight. In case you flunked your chemistry lessons in preschool, helium is not hot air.
That is a very good suggestion.
Meh. You posted it. I've long since given up on the moderation system.
Zoo Tycoon was OK but Prison Tycoon sux0red. Indian Tycoon sounds interesting. Is it like a Wild West theme?
read subject
From the title, I was thinking someone set a new record on the NES game "Balloon Fight." But I guess this is also noteworthy. :p
Then he has a few earthquake victims with which he can show as the example .... eh ?
How many beans make five, anyhow ?
Personally I preferred Kittinger's return to earth. He jumped over the side and performed the world's highest skydive. From 69000 to a deploy height of around 3000ft you'd get over 5 minutes of freefall. :) That would be worth setting a new height record to do!