Slashdot Mirror
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)."
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.
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.
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.
And he does this by going to 70,000 feet in the aeronautical equivalent of a bullock cart?
rj