This has nothing to do with social media. Or online political discourse. Or local community projects. It’s just freakin’ cool. And incredibly wasteful.
Real Life Up
Through Wired, we knew that such a flight was possible but never expected it to happen. As CNET describes it:
The adorable 2,000-pound, 16×16-foot yellow house took to the skies with the aid of 300 weather balloons that grow to 8 feet tall when inflated. From top to bottom, the entire aircraft measured 10 stories high and reached an altitude of 10,000 feet. It flew for about an hour at dawn from a private airfield east of Los Angeles. Oh, and there were people (of the non-animated variety) aboard.
The flight was part of a new series called “How Hard Can It Be?” to debut in the fall.
As awesome as the success of the challenge was, there are concerns about the anti-gravity materials. What was once deemed a long-term surplus just over a decade ago is now a key part of clinical cryogenics for MRIs (28% of helium use), pressurizing and purging of rockets (26%), welding (20%), and used to create the environment to produce fiberoptics, LCDs and food (13%). Helium has been in dwindling supply for a while. Projections were that the Earth will be helium free by the end of the 21st century.
In a report last year, Nobel Prize winner Robert C. Richardson suggested taking measures to ensure future supply:
First, prices should be raised by a factor of 20. “The world price of the gas is ridiculously cheap,†said Richardson, as a result of the U.S. policy. Second, substitutes can replace helium for certain areas—argon can be used in welding, for instance. Last, cryogenic helium users should recycle the gas in closed systems; already, MRI machines use such systems for their powerful superconducting magnets.
“That which God has taken 4.7 billion years to create will be dissipated in a little more than 100 years,†noted Richardson. “One generation doesn’t have the right to determine availability forever.â€
I wonder what became of the contents of the 300 balloons once NatGeo was done with its footage. We can hope the balloons were filled with the inexpensive (but explosive) Hydrogen instead.