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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.
in his neighbor country Pakistan, quake victims struggle to survive
Yeah, He's spending his money the best way!
richard branson is going to be pissed off
Why doesnt he fly them some food and water?
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.
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.
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.
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?
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
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.
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.
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!"
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?
Is that the one where you raise Indians? I don't think I've played that one.
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.
These Indians can't screw with US(A)... hell we did it 45 years ago.
--A Fellow Skydiver
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 are a submarine troll. Know what that means? You post to Slashdot for a week looking for karma and then burn it all off on blatantly offensive comments. Remember that whole flaming tree you posted about a gay governor a few months ago? How about that whole unfounded Griffin critcism? And what about your nasty comment about someone's username?
That's *MR.* Self-Righteous Asshat.
Mods, don't feed this guy. Maybe without a karma stash he won't go on these trolling runs.
--
Trolling all trolls since 2001.
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...
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. --
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.
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
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!