<story><title>Man flies over South Africa in a chair tied to helium balloons [video]</title><url>https://www.theguardian.com/world/video/2017/oct/26/man-flies-over-south-africa-in-a-chair-tied-to-helium-balloons-video</url></story><parent_chain><item><author>jimmies</author><text>Launching high-altitude helium balloons has been the activity some friends and I do for fun. Over the course of 2 years+ we&amp;#x27;ve been doing this, we had over a dozen of successful launches where we could retrieve the payload.&lt;p&gt;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&amp;#x2F;software so I personally think it&amp;#x27;s a great way to hook them up with computers and really understand them. This is one of those instances of &amp;quot;doing crazy stuff&amp;quot; kids are interested in.&lt;p&gt;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&amp;#x27;d be baffled and outraged when it was reported that with all the amazing things we could do, we didn&amp;#x27;t know peep about a missing airplane. The little phone in our pocket knows and tracks every step we take, you&amp;#x27;d think - what&amp;#x27;s so hard about keeping communication with an object in the line of sight? I think all we don&amp;#x27;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&amp;#x27;s a different story: Many times we&amp;#x27;d had flawless successes communicating with the payload, sometimes we just couldn&amp;#x27;t do it for some mysterious reason with the same equipment. I&amp;#x27;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&amp;#x2F;under the sea.&lt;p&gt;As a side note, I can&amp;#x27;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.</text></item></parent_chain><comment><author>ksrm</author><text>Some of Leo Bodnar&amp;#x27;s balloons have circumnavigated the Earth multiple times. The small foil balloons don&amp;#x27;t expand like a latex balloon does, so they can hold a stable altitude without bursting.&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http:&amp;#x2F;&amp;#x2F;www.leobodnar.com&amp;#x2F;balloons&amp;#x2F;&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;http:&amp;#x2F;&amp;#x2F;www.leobodnar.com&amp;#x2F;balloons&amp;#x2F;&lt;/a&gt;</text></comment>
<story><title>Man flies over South Africa in a chair tied to helium balloons [video]</title><url>https://www.theguardian.com/world/video/2017/oct/26/man-flies-over-south-africa-in-a-chair-tied-to-helium-balloons-video</url></story><parent_chain><item><author>jimmies</author><text>Launching high-altitude helium balloons has been the activity some friends and I do for fun. Over the course of 2 years+ we&amp;#x27;ve been doing this, we had over a dozen of successful launches where we could retrieve the payload.&lt;p&gt;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&amp;#x2F;software so I personally think it&amp;#x27;s a great way to hook them up with computers and really understand them. This is one of those instances of &amp;quot;doing crazy stuff&amp;quot; kids are interested in.&lt;p&gt;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&amp;#x27;d be baffled and outraged when it was reported that with all the amazing things we could do, we didn&amp;#x27;t know peep about a missing airplane. The little phone in our pocket knows and tracks every step we take, you&amp;#x27;d think - what&amp;#x27;s so hard about keeping communication with an object in the line of sight? I think all we don&amp;#x27;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&amp;#x27;s a different story: Many times we&amp;#x27;d had flawless successes communicating with the payload, sometimes we just couldn&amp;#x27;t do it for some mysterious reason with the same equipment. I&amp;#x27;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&amp;#x2F;under the sea.&lt;p&gt;As a side note, I can&amp;#x27;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.</text></item></parent_chain><comment><author>ldarcyftw</author><text>Sounds pretty cool. Is there a website&amp;#x2F;forum&amp;#x2F;place to start?</text></comment>