Adventurer recreates scenes from film Up by attaching helium balloons to office chair and soaring 15,000ft
Attaching 55 helium balloons to his trusty office chair, adrenaline junkie Jonathan Trappe managed to soar to nearly 15,000 feet.
After spending two years in training and upwards of £45,000 on the adventure, this was the technical project manager’s first ever cluster balloon flight.
In scenes reminiscent of the film Up – in which an explorer floats his house using helium balloons – Mr Trappe fulfilled his long-held daydream of breaking free from his desk and taking to the skies.
He reached a height of 14,783 feet after strapping the industrial-strength balloons to the steel-cased chair and setting off from an airport in North Carolina.
Each balloon weighed just one-and-a-half pounds, but was capable of lifting 14 pounds.
‘I took two years before this flight gaining my Federal Aviation Administration licence to fly helium balloons as well as hot air balloons,’ said Mr Trappe.
‘We took off at the break of dawn after spending four hours during the night inflating each individual balloon.” Using 55 canisters of helium, one for each balloon, Mr Trappe ascended at 32 mph – or 521 feet per minute. And in case of disaster he carried an emergency parachute which he hoped he would never have to use.
Wearing clothes he would normally wear on a trip to the ski slopes, Mr Trappe battled temperatures of -15c. ‘It was cold up there and I had to use an oxygen mix like mountaineers,’ he said.
Someone needs a remedial math lesson…
32 MPH is 2816 feet per minute. An astounding rate of climb for a ballon, helium or otherwise. 521 Feet/min is roughly 6 mph. A much more beliveable number.
Tim
I think it would be kinda fun,except for the cold
-15C in those shoes?
He didn’t spill ice cubes from his drink over Dallas did he?
Interesting that he was heading into -15C temperatures and yet didn’t wear long socks. Wonder if he got frostbitten ankles?
Cool .. would like do it myself some day.
Didn’t a Catholic priest do this last year for charity and went missing found dead?
@ Ana: Yep. These things don’t usually end well.
Well, the British dailies aren’t renowned for their precision, and that is the source of this article. The rate of climb was about 500fpm, which is indeed closer to 6mph. (Pilots don’t tend to think of rate of climb in mph.) If you look at the instrument in the photo, you’ll see the rate of climb was 180 feet per minute (as indicated by the 1.8) and the altitude was 9,950 feet.
The peak speed over the ground was 32 mph.
They also didn’t get the temperature quite right. It reached 103-degrees fahrenheit on the surface that day—- it was a scorcher. Even in the dead of the night, it was warm on the airfield. There was no temperature device on the aircraft to give a precise reading. It was indeed a bit chilly at altitude, but it was above freezing the entire time. -15 centigrade is inaccurate.
More details on the website:
http://clusterballoon.com/ChairwayToHeaven.asp
http://clusterballoon.com/BlueberryCluster.asp