Sunday, March 27, 2011

Up, up and away.

When 78-year-old retiree Carl Frederickson's house takes off into the air aided by the help of hundreds of helium balloons in Up!, viewers saw it as a heart-warming moment of pure fiction.  A flight of fancy. 


A team from National Geographic, however, brought fiction to life.  Scientists, engineers, two balloon pilots and dozens of volunteers built a light-weight 16 x 16 foot house, attached 300 helium-filled weather balloons (each of which is 8 feet tall when inflated) and managed to get the small house 10,000 feet into the air.

Setting a new world record for the largest balloon cluster flight ever attempted, the entire aircraft from top to bottom was a whopping 10-stories high, made it to an altitude of 10,000 feet, and flew for about an hour.

And yes, the house was inhabited when it took flight. 

Simply amazing!



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You can catch the full story when the new series "How Hard Can it Be?" premieres later this fall on the National Geographic Channel.

I cannot wait to see what they try next!


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