>> ^Fusionaut:

Yeah, helium isn't flammable. My first thought was hydrogen but what do I know?


Hydrogen is the only gas that's enough lighter than air to lift a balloon which burns.

Yeah, helium isn't flammable. My first thought was hydrogen but what do I know?

Is that some kind of recreation or something? Looks like an iron cross on that thing. Also, helium isn't flammable, and based on the boom, they're using...methane?

Are the bubbles filled with heated air, helium or hydrogen? My bath bubbles are never that buoyant.

This video has been declared a duplicate by the original submitter; transferring votes to the original video and killing this dupe - dupeof declared by Hybrid.

*dupeof=http://videosift.com/video/If-You-Give-Russians-Some-Vod-No-Helium

*dupeof= http://videosift.com/video/If-You-Give-Russians-Some-Vod-No-Helium

So sorry, but this is a *dupeof http://videosift.com/video/If-You-Give-Russians-Some-Vod-No-Helium.

Dude...I don't know if it's the helium that makes it sound like that, but their accent sounds a lot like the accent of somebody who speaks Tagalog.

It's crappy engineering like this that effectively killed one of the most brilliant concept in aviation. Blimps are without question, -the- most efficient design for heavy airlifting. No fuel wasted on lift makes them remarkably cost-effective. But letting designers do idiotic things like use hydrogen as the lifting gas (instead of the non-flammable helium, and/or paint the body with thermite, or build some ridiculous scaffold to hold four partial helicopters has made it so nobody will ever seriously consider them again.

^ ^ ^ It doesn't take a genius to figure out that this is fake. If you saw the episode where they saw how many balloons it took to lift a kid, there's no way a person could inhale helium, blow a bubble and have it support them like that.

>> ^cybrbeast:

Damn, 2:30 kid and parent being hit, you see the helium balloon fly up. Terrible.


When I saw that the first thing I thought was, "I'm going to comment about it!" But... you beat me to it

Damn, 2:30 kid and parent being hit, you see the helium balloon fly up. Terrible.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Weather_balloon

Seems like it would be fairly trivial to have a parachute inside the balloon so that the equipment would safely descend when the balloon let rip. You wouldn't have to worry about deployment, then, which might otherwise include extra weight in the form of sensors and/or some sort of mechanical chute deployment.

On further thought, I guess it depends on how thoroughly the balloon is destroyed. The remains of the balloon could interfere with the chute opening.

>> ^dag:

I wonder what the absolute top altitude of a weather baloon is? I guess at some point, the helium is heavier than the surrounding near vacuum. It would be helpful if there was something - other than a rocket that carries all its reaction mass with it - that could reach space.

>> ^dag:

I wonder what the absolute top altitude of a weather baloon is? I guess at some point, the helium is heavier than the surrounding near vacuum. It would be helpful if there was something - other than a rocket that carries all its reaction mass with it - that could reach space.



"The highest altitude ever achieved by one such unmanned research balloon was 51,820m; this balloon was launched from Chico, California in 1972" (32.2 miles)
http://hypertextbook.com/facts/2003/ValerieChang.shtml