Man flies over South Africa in a chair tied to helium balloons [video] | Hacker News Reader

Man flies over South Africa in a chair tied to helium balloons [video]

theguardian.com

101 pointstommywilliams50 comments

Launching high-altitude helium balloons has been the activity some friends and I do for fun. Over the course of 2 years+ we've been doing this, we had over a dozen of successful launches where we could retrieve the payload.

For kids, this is a great inspiration and educational opportunity, especially for those who are interested in technology and programming. We used Arduinos and Raspberry pis in many components of the payload, from the tracker to the data logger. They get to program and control the behavior then test the hard/software so I personally think it's a great way to hook them up with computers and really understand them. This is one of those instances of "doing crazy stuff" kids are interested in.

For adults, it involves many fun aspects too. Specifically for geeks, the best feature is the optimization of weight, reliability, and features for the payload. Some people did get crazy with party balloons that carry impossibly light and efficient payloads that last for over a year with full tracking and sensory information. It can get surprisingly technical when you want to communicate with the payload reliably from the ground (over the radio wave). You'd be baffled and outraged when it was reported that with all the amazing things we could do, we didn't know peep about a missing airplane. The little phone in our pocket knows and tracks every step we take, you'd think - what's so hard about keeping communication with an object in the line of sight? I think all we don't appreciate enough is how advanced and amazing our cellular network is. When you have cellular communication, you have everything, the economy of scale is real and it works. With (amateur) radio, it's a different story: Many times we'd had flawless successes communicating with the payload, sometimes we just couldn't do it for some mysterious reason with the same equipment. I've grown to be much more sympathetic to people who have to work with that vast amount of distance, space, and power envelop when it comes to tracking some flying object on the sky, let alone on/under the sea.

As a side note, I can't imagine launching such a huge object such as yourself tied to a cluster of balloons to the sky could be something the authority is too fond of.

Some of Leo Bodnar's balloons have circumnavigated the Earth multiple times. The small foil balloons don't expand like a latex balloon does, so they can hold a stable altitude without bursting.

http://www.leobodnar.com/balloons/

Sounds pretty cool. Is there a website/forum/place to start?

I didn't include a plug, but since you asked we have a website: http://hab.education/ which has video and some information. That website also links to a twitter handle and a facebook group. The founder of our group is extremely active on Twitter. The facebook group is quite active in terms of discussion too, with the obvious condition that you have to have a facebook account, something that I didn't think over very carefully when we built it.

Are there any safety issues with this? Air traffic control? What if balloon bursts and payload falls to earth.

What are the rules on launches?

It will surely burst when it reaches about 100k ft. We attach a parachute to the payload to make it descend gradually. Other than that, there is no control over where it's going to land. However, because the payloads are small styrofoam boxes, they don't pose a very serious danger in the rare case that they land on roads. Flight predictors are really surprisingly good at simulating where the payloads will land, so it's usually not a huge surprise.

We'd rather be safe than sorry. So far, nothing really bad has been reported in the HAB community. It will leave a bad stint if something blows up on someone's face.

Regarding authority, we often file a NOTAM-Notice to Airmen (https://sites.google.com/a/mtlsd.net/citizen-science/ib1/not...).

The balloon is supposed to burst, the payload should have a descent parachute. It's a problem if the balloon doesn't burst and drifts into busy airspace.

This sounds like a lot of fun. How high do they go? Do you have to do anything regarding air traffic safety?

The original is Larry Walters, of course.

[0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Larry_Walters

Indeed. I am always amazed that they don't pass out when they cross 15,000'.

Who are "they" exactly?

I assume they are "the people who makes these flights".

Well, smarty pants, who are these numerous persons who flew in their lawn chairs strapped to helium balloons to 15K feet? There must be heaps of them since they manage to keep ChuckMcM in a state of constant amazement.

If you followed the Wikipedia link there were 5 imitators listed, and the current story makes 6. These are the ones that got enough coverage to warrant an entry. I know personally an EMT who responded to a call of one person who tried this over Lake Tahoe and "crashed" into the lake, but it wasn't in the papers or in the Wikipedia article.

And only two reached 15K altitude, so your original comment rings hollow as there's basically no basis for being "always amazed" at this fact.

So do you have a problem with me or with the grammar? If its me my email is in my profile and I'm always ready to listen to feedback.

If its the grammar, my amazement comes from not one story of someone trying this stunt including extra oxygen. Many of the stories include the notion of a pellet gun to shoot individual balloons for altitude control. That sets up an additional failure mode where you pass out from lack of oxygen before you can shoot a balloon. That people fail to consider and plan for the failure modes of this stunt is always amazing to me.

I know that man, he's Tom Morgan, founder of a company called The Adventurists.

They are probably best known for organizing the Mongol Rally and the Rickshaw Run, among other charity rallies.

I participated in the Mongol Rally 2009 and for me was the experience of a lifetime.

This is their website if you are interested in learning more about them: https://www.theadventurists.com

I participated this summer and I would agree - it’s an amazing experience. The fact that the Adventurists still have a very personal approach with everyone taking part even though there were over 300 teams this summer is testament to how cool those guys are!

How does he safely maintain altitude? The helium balloons will expand as he rises (due to the lower pressure at higher altitudes), eventually popping. It's how weather balloons descend. Is he counting on a slow descent after some initial fraction of the balloons pop? That's quite a bet.

I don't want to be a party pooper, but...

Helium is scarce enough to stop using it for this kind of purposes.

http://www.bbc.com/news/magazine-24903034

Crisis averted: https://www.livescience.com/60607-helium-reserve-discovered-...

Sounds like Tanzania soon has a monopoly position.

If it was a big deal, no doubt the price would rise.

Markets are not rational. Even if they were, there's too many externalities not captured by the helium market price. Think of the negative side effects on science and health care.

this isn't inspired by the movie "Up." July 2, 1982 Larry Walters tied his lawn chair to balloons and carried an air pistol to shoot balloons to control the amount of lift. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Larry_Walters

When he landed his quote to the press before his arrest was:

"It was something I had to do. I had this dream for twenty years, and if I hadn't done it, I think I would have ended up in the funny farm."

This is called Cluster Ballooning: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cluster_ballooning

Guinness Book of World Records even has a category. I told my Dad I wanted to do it and he almost grounded me right then and there.

In 2008 a brazilian priest did the same in Santa Catarina. No one has ever saw him again after the launch.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Adelir_Ant%C3%B4nio_de_Carli

Well, not to get too macabre, but people eventually did see (part of) his body, found floating in the ocean a few months later.

Also don’t want to mock the dead, but this note made me shake my head:

> His training for the stunt included jungle survival and mountain climbing courses, but apparently did not include instruction on use of his GPS - in a telephone call he made during the flight, he stated that if someone could just explain how to use his GPS he could relay his position to rescuers.

Why does the English Wikipedia page has more information on this than the Portuguese version is a mistery to be explained.

What could possibly go wrong?

Well, a Brazilian priest attempted a similar feat in 2008[1]. He won the 2008 Darwin Award for it [2].

[1] https://gizmodo.com/5022283/sad-ending-flying-priest-found-d...

[2] http://darwinawards.com/darwin/darwin2008-16.html

> Darwin Award

Making fun of people dying. Fucking sick stuff.

It's also logically crap. Often it's people (as in this case) doing things outside the normal. Things as hackers we should celebrate.

It's also often people in extreme poverty just trying to make a living, aka the fucking sick part that we as rich educated people make fun of cause we don't have to do dirty things like recycle metal from unexploded ordnances cause rich.

Hey, tell me about it. There was a tragic accident at my school, when a structure collapsed and killed several students, because it had insufficient engineering oversight. But, eh, Darwin Awards had to make a joke, so they collectively gave it to all the victims, who were getting up at the crack of dawn to volunteer on a group project, and following all the safety rules they were given.

That's weird because it directly contradicts most rules of Darwin Awards, that the people must be mature (well I don't know what kind of school it was), that they must be the ones responsible for their death (from what you say, the engineering is what killed students later) and that it must be because of "extraordinary misjudgment" on the part of the people both responsible and victims (who are supposed to be the same).

Can you link to your story on their website in order to contact them and withdraw the award since it breaks the rules?

I dug into it a bit further, and apparently the story is that the Darwin Awards used to be more crowd-sourced, but as a direct result of the incident I'm referring to, they instituted heavy moderation and apologized for any distress caused by their seeming approval of a tasteless article. So it's a little more forgivable than I realized. My opinion gelled back when the story was still in progress, but I didn't hear about the conclusion.

If you want to read the details, just google "aggie bonfire", or "darwin award aggie bonfire".

That is sick.

IIRC it's based on upvotes. And the most upvoted ones are also about criminals meeting prompt demise: http://darwinawards.com/darwin/darwin1993-06.html

Top in 2017 -

Petty criminal, probable drunkard.

Workplace accident, I wouldn't say criminal.

Probable drunkard, not criminal (I also once made a ethernet ladder, yes it does not work well, no I didnt use it at a deadly height)

Not criminal, a bit silly. Funny because racism. I'd guess alcohol related.

Not criminal, probably alcohol involved, just a vehicular accident.

1 and 3 I'd also say involved mental illness. True if you want to be harsh we don't want the mentally ill or those susceptible to drug abuse to breed. I kinda think killing them off is not great why not just sterilize them?

Larry Walters who this story would have been inspired by (Not sure why people are saying the movie Up) also got a honorary Darwin award. He killed himself eventually. So he had issues I guess. But he was a legend as far as I'm concerned I'd prefer a world full of him over people making fun over people dying.

I still very much enjoy this one about Ronald Opus: http://www.darwinawards.com/legends/legends1998-16.html

I agree we should respect people and no mock them for making mistakes that they pay the ultimate price for. It doesn't matter that they're doing it for fun instead of some desperate survival need. Early aviators gave us aeroplanes and balloons by taking foolish risks and many died, but we glorify a few survivors because of their important contributions.

For some reason, many kinds of deaths are protected from mockery by society, but not adventure accidents. Those are fair game and bring out the cruel uncaring side of otherwise seemingly nice people.

If the Darwin awards included death from alcoholism or suicide, any mention of them would be blotted out from the "polite" internet like HN. Somebody will probably complain about me linking mental illness to accident deaths just to enforce the social more that we must not disrespect certain arbitrary groups of people but other groups are fair game.

The problem is that some people are engaging in needlessly risky activities, they then put the people that rescue them at risk. For example, in the UK we regularly have people rescued from mountains who are woefully ill equipped, like this guy:

http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-wales-north-west-wales-41306122

Yet properly equipped mountaineers can get unlucky and die anyway. The difference between death by hypothermia because you climbed a mountain in only your underpants and being well equipped but getting hit by an avalanche? In the first case the coroner has a verdict of "death by misadventure" because you took unnecessary risks.

It's become a sort of joke in croatia, tourists in flip-flops trying to hike into mountains (famous stereotype is of czech tourists), and currently the rescue by HGSS (mountain rescue) is free of charge, and they often have to deploy a military helicopter (they don't have their own), which is costing the tax payers a pretty penny. The rescuers are mostly volunteers.

Examples of irresponsible behavior : http://www.dailymail.co.uk/travel/travel_news/article-368792...

https://www.lonelyplanet.com/news/2017/08/08/croatian-mounta...

There are some candidates that died under influence, but they did so in a spectacular way: http://darwinawards.com/darwin/darwin2017-06.html

And they don't check their sources. Several of the most popular "awards" from the early years were fake, e.g. the "JATO rocket strapped to pickup" thing.

Or perhaps based upon a kernel of truth?

https://www.wired.com/2000/08/rocketcar/

I believe the adage is, 'Play stupid games, win stupid prizes.' The Internet is full of terrible things. There's a site that keeps track of spree killing totals and celebrates new high scores. Well, there was. I'm not sure it exists anymore and I'm too lazy to Google.

I so want to do this :)

Do it then!

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