Wednesday, July 11, 2007

Fun with Gas

Helium and Anti-Helium


Last weekend, Kent Couch settled down in his lawn chair with some snacks — and a parachute. Attached to his lawn chair were 105 large helium balloons. ... Nearly nine hours later, the 47-year-old gas station owner came back to earth in a farmer's field near Union, short of Idaho but about 193 miles from home. Walters paid a $1,500 penalty for violating air traffic rules.

Mr. Coach can thank Larry Walters for establishing that $1500 pittance of a fine.  All this serves as a nice segue into my Anti-Helium video. :)

5 comments:

Anonymous said...

This one could be titled "Why we win."

Anonymous said...

Did anyone else think he sounded like Rocky Balboa? Yo, Adrian!

Anonymous said...

I'm with molonlabe28 this is a "USA UAS USA" story!

Having flown in hot air balloons twice (albeit in a basket not a lawn chair) the ride is very smooth since your going with any wind.

Of course balloons don't "land" they crash more-or-less in a controlled way.

Anonymous said...

Yeah, the only problems there are if you sit in a room full of it you die because you aren't breathing any oxygen and if you heat it up above about 600*F it becomes sulphr hexifluorine and kills you on the first breath.

Anonymous said...

SF6 while not toxic is a sufficant. Fill your lungs with it for more than a couple of breaths, it will displace any O2 and don't bother waking up.

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