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Comment by ceejayoz | Hacker News Reader

Of this small, thin, lightweight sort? Nothing.

The engines will fairly happily mulch an entire human (warning: graphic; https://imgur.com/a/1T5YQ). A Mylar balloon isn't gonna faze it.

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An airliner can completely lose a single engine in flight without much of a problem. But the engine in that picture is significantly damaged.

That's not true. Bird strikes are a thing and cause flameouts. You can't even takeoff/land on dirt runways with most jets because the dust will damage the engines.

Smack someone with a goose, then smack them with a Mylar balloon. Compare the results.

You don't want to routinely ingest gravel from a dirt runway (nor balloons!) into your engines. Having one pebble kick up off the runway won't cause an issue.

You suggested an engine will "happily" consume a human which suggests it would continue functioning, you're getting blowback because you are making statements that indicate you don't know what you're talking about.

Out of curiosity, do you have more context regarding this picture (like when/where it happened)?

El Paso, Texas, 2006. NTSB report DFW06FA056.

https://www.ntsb.gov/about/employment/_layouts/15/ntsb.aviat...

That engine is totaled.

That engine took at least 150 pounds worth of bony human in, turned them into mulch, and did no damage to the rest of the aircraft. The other engine also remains intact. Pico balloons are measured in grams.

A Mylar balloon isn't going to do anything like that much damage.

First, we're not talking a tiny 12 inch party balloon. Weather balloons are easily 20 feet wide at altitude.

But more importantly, you've always got a sizable package of hard electronics dangling off the balloon for sensors and telemetry. Ingesting that is going to cause damage, guaranteed.

> First, we're not talking a tiny 12 inch party balloon.

Click the link, look at the photo. These are not large weather balloons.

The article even says "The club’s silver-coated, party-style, “pico balloon”..."

> Weather balloons are easily 20 feet wide at altitude.

But this is not a weather balloon in question but a pico balloon. 14 cfr § 101.1 4 provides the limits on them.

> you've always got a sizable package of hard electronics dangling off the balloon for sensors and telemetry

Both the weight and the density of the payload package is limited by law.

> Ingesting that is going to cause damage, guaranteed.

Excuse me but i am going to believe the FAA on this over your say so. They say pico balloons are fine and they are extremely risk awerse. If they say it is fine then they are fine by a wide margin.

Why are birds a hazard then?

Because they are more substantial, and because you tend to hit them on takeoff/landing, which is the dangerous part of flight.

You hit a bird at 30k feet and you've got plenty of options - including the second engine.

Also usually when bird strikes cause real problems it's a flock of birds, not a single one.

A bird is usually not an issue (unless it's huge like a condor or something).

The problem is ingesting a whole flock. Turbofans are designed to fling debris (rain, hail, gravel, birds) out to the bypass via centrifugal force. However, too much material (or insufficient thrust) causes the impeller to bog down, so more junk gets sucked into the burn chamber, which can cause a flameout.

Did you see the fan blades in the pictures you linked to?

They’re chipped, cracked, and bent. That’s anything but happy.

I bet the balloon and, more importantly, the payload would indeed faze it.

> They’re chipped, cracked, and bent.

After processing a hundred and fifty pounds or more of human being. If that plane had done so at 30k feet, it'd have been an entirely survivable emergency.

There’s a difference between survivable and happily mulching.

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