Cluster ballooning
Cluster ballooning is an extreme sport and a form of ballooning where a harness attaches a balloonist to a cluster of helium-inflated rubber balloons. Unlike traditional hot-air balloons, where a single large balloon is equipped with vents enabling altitude control, cluster balloons are multiple, small, readily available and individually sealed balloons. To control flight, arrest a climb or initiate a descent, the pilot incrementally jettisons or deflates balloons. Ballast, e.g., bottled water, can also be jettisoned to facilitate ascent. Notable flights and balloonists The Swiss adventurer Auguste Piccard experimented with cluster balloon flight in Rochester, Minnesota, in July 1937. In September of the same year, inspired by Piccard, an American photographer for Paramount News used 32 weather balloons for a feature photography assignment near Old Orchard Beach in Maine. Suspended from the balloons by a parachute harness in order to take aerial film footage, his mooring rope broke and he was lifted approximately into the air. A clergyman, Father James J. Mullen, spotted the incident, and after a chase of some , used a 22-caliber rifle to shoot out three of the balloons, thus allowing the photographer to return safely to the ground. In the Lawnchair Larry flight, Larry Walters,