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Find DARPA's Balloons, Win $40K

Posted by timothy on from the in-related-news-no-easter-egg-hunt dept.

coondoggie writes "The Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency today offered up a rather interesting challenge: find and plot 10 red weather balloons scattered at undisclosed locations across the country. The first person to identify the location of all the balloons and enter them on the challenge Web site will win a $40,000 cash prize. According to the agency, the balloons will be in readily accessible locations, visible from nearby roadways and accompanied by DARPA representatives. All balloons are scheduled to go on display at all locations at 10:00AM (ET) until approximately 4:00 PM on Saturday, December 5, 2009."

4 of 252 comments (clear)

  1. Indentifying the Balloons by NuclearError · · Score: 5, Funny

    Here's a handy chart for finding the balloons.

    --
    Nuclear engineers build weapons. Civil engineers build targets.
  2. Re:I sense. I sense... by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 5, Funny

    Sorry to disappoint, but this is only 10 Luftballons.
    I think you were looking for 99 of them. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/99_Luftballons

  3. Re:Floating? by davester666 · · Score: 5, Funny

    Obviously, this is just an attempt to use crowdsourcing to find a bunch of lost weather balloons. In this day and age of gov't budget cutbacks, every balloon saved is a slightly bigger performance bonus at the end of the year...

    --
    Sleep your way to a whiter smile...date a dentist!
  4. Re:Floating? by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 5, Funny

    There's no real point to it. Here's what they did: There are five balloons around, numbered from 1-5, and four balloons numbered from 7-10. Just like the prank where you release a 3 pigs, painted with a "1", "3", and "4" into a high school.

    They're just 5 months early.