Flying a *REAL* Disney Pixar UP House Cluster Balloon.

Would you like to take a ride in the UP House over your city? For Real

  • Yeah !! You bet… I want to ride in it…
  • I’m scared of heights…but it’d be awesome to see it lift off… I’d go there to see it go up
  • It’d be cute to see if fly over the city… really magical.
  • Nah…that’s a dumb idea… a flying house? no way. bad idea…go away.

0 voters

Hey… who knows someone at pixar or Disney iin promotion and marketing.

A good friend of mine (Mark K.) who is an aeronautical engineer, an honest to goodness ‘rocket scientist’, but more importantly he’s a ballooning engineer, not only hot air, but specifically high altitude gaseous balloons and… especially cluster balloons. We’ve gone over the numbers and he can manufacture the real deal as the UP house and the cluster balloons…not only that…but he has about 3 gas rated balloon pilots in his current efforts. They are fully FAA qualified to engineer, manufacture and fly the UP House.

We’re not talking this is something that flies once, but capable of daily flight. Over Disney, over cities, cross the country. I know Mark well because my company ( USH2 dot com) supplies the hydrogen for his efforts. Both Mark and myself have a severe dedication to the furthering of the ballooning sports, and especially the very high altitude stuff, 100,000+ feet. There is tremendous science to be done there… so guys…who knows who? and shout out back to us… what do you think of the idea of a real Disney Pixar UP House and cluster balloon craft ? Not a toy, a manned craft, fully flyable and…who knows…it might be able to take passengers. Who wants to see this float over their city and who wants to take a ride in it for real ?? I think that a flight over each major US city would be an incredible way to promote the movie… the news coverage would be beyond BUZZ.

All my best
Steve :slight_smile:

It’s really great that someone would try and promote a Pixar movie by going to such ‘heights’ (xD), but a flying house supported by balloons is not really a safe idea, IMO. Sure, if you work out the specifics, it might actually take flight, but what happens when it does? What if birds put holes in those balloons? And what are you going to put in the house to ensure that you won’t be stabbed by a kitchen knife when you are in the house or crushed by a refrigerator? There are many things still to work out, and some of them could never be.

i would love to fly in that house…it would be the first ever flying person…no sheel around you or anything…this kind of imaginartional topic makes me write stories,what would it be like…hmmmm.

Its a model house…not a real working house. You can walk around in it, sit down, maybe even watch a movie in the house, but you are not running a refrigerator in it. Its probably a 3/4 scale house, bottom portion is all advanced composite material an the upper part is very light weight.

…and its a very very safe idea… it has to fly under FAA rules, this is an engineered aircraft, it has a pilot. It flies. Cluster ballooning in the hands of a rated ballooning pilot is very safe, you are in more danger walking out your front door… birds don’t poke holes in the balloons, in fact, the balloons don’t even “pop”.

This is a craft that is capable of hours of flight, not days of flight. Days of flight is possible but would be 10 times more complex than this design. Mark has already worked with pilots and designed balloons that have flown across the Atlantic. For those young’uns reading this…remember…we’re talking about professional engineers, rocket scientists, real to life AeroNAUGHTical engineers here. This is not larry in his lounge chair in the back yard flying over LA.

Steve

Basically some eggheads who have too much time on their hands. :unamused:

It sounds like a really… inspirational idea, though. Just hope you don’t meet up with storm clouds or a twister. Let’s not forget those good ol’ aeroplanes flying through.

I find it really funny that you say that. Its kinda negative toward dreamers, towards inventors. Those who see what can be via imagination and knowledge. In fact there is a specific type of person that this fits best. If you ever find out about the Keirsey Temperaments, it says there are about 16 major types of people. This is the way people think, the way they see things. Their thought process. This is not their ‘personality’, its their temperaments.

Its really funny that you make the comments about egg heads with too much time on their hands because it seems that two of the things you love the most were made by these egg heads. Both Walt Disney and Steve Jobs (Pixar) are of the Kiersey temperaments of ENTP (Extroverted, iNtuitive, Thinking, Perceiving). I’m the one that came up with the idea for my friend Mark and I too am an ENTP. That does NOT mean I am the same as Steve Jobs or Walt Disney… all 3 of us THINK the same. We see things like each other would but we are not the same personality nor do we have the same talents…but watch what you say about egg heads with too much time on their hands… they’ve been great people who have made a lot of things that you really like.

<It sounds like a really… inspirational idea, though. Just hope you don’t meet up with storm clouds or a twister. Let’s not forget those good ol’ aeroplanes flying through.>

  1. You don’t fly in bad weather

  2. According to FAA rules, PLANES keep an eye out for balloons, not the other way around. Plus you fly with a transponder and you are tracked by the FAA and they keep an eye out for you well and make sure no planes get too close…plus… its kinda hard to miss a 20 foot house and 200 to 300 feet of cluster balloons flying in the bright sunny blue sky… :slight_smile:

  3. You are so soo soooo correct. It is a very inspirational idea.

Steve

Oh, don’t get me wrong, I don’t mind the eggheads doing things that actually has some meaning to it. It’s this kind of… pardon my words but, in my friends’ words, they would probably put it as ‘stupid.’ If they make a great movie which is an art and a great entertainment, it’s meaningful and definitely beneficial. If they invent a new way for man to fly better (not fly as good as or less convenient than modern transportation [why would you fly with a balloon when we already have jet packs and airplanes?]), then it’s cool, as in neat and sleek.

FYI, Walt and Pixar are not two of the things I love the most; Detective Conan is the thing I love the most, Pixar only comes second, unfortunately.

It just looks like a really big time-wasting project to me. They say that Americans do the craziest things and pull the craziest stunts. They were right. Does this stunt benefit the environment? No, you do it just for the mere sake of promoting a fictitious item. In other words? Waste time! :stuck_out_tongue:

I’d like to see it go up, but supervised with people standing by in case something happens, 'cause you know those things have crashed before … :open_mouth:

||

The Graf Zeppelin flew around the world in less than 22 days.
en.wikipedia.org/wiki/LZ_127_Graf_Zeppelin
Flights from Europe to Brazil was a regular flight. The air ship few with Hydrogen as a lifting gas. The engines could just as easily run on hydrogen, but they ran on diesel. The water from the engines exhaust was captured and used as ballast. How much more efficient do you want to get ? the zeppelin flew with a safety record that is equal to or better than most forms of modern aviation. You WILL see zeppelins flying over your head in your life time again…and they’ll carry cargo as the main item, not people. There is hardly a more efficient way to get millions of pounds of cargo quickly across the ocean than in a zeppelin. Its either over a month by ship to go across the pacific (shipping time, not steaming time), a day or two for air craft and it will be a week for less for a lighter than air cargo aircraft. So the support of such an idea as the UP house and balloon for promotion very much helps promote further work in this area of flight.

ha… its fueled and lifted and run on hydrogen and he’s complaining about helping the environment…ha… funny.

The most important thing of all is people. If we never turned our eyes skyward and watched the birds in flight then we’d of never flown. Da Vinci would have a few interesting words for you regarding turning your eyes skyward…and seeing with your eyes and looking with your imagination and wondering if it could be done. The whole theme behind Disney and Pixar is imagination. What is, what could be, inspiration and imagination are their stock and trade and there is hardly anything more inspirational then seeing a quarter million of cubic feet spacecraft flying silently over your head as the pilot looks down at you and waves hello…

Steve

Hardly anything more crazier, too. :stuck_out_tongue:

Ah well, good luck on the flight, dude. slaps your back

i’d just do it for the fun…weeeeeeeeee…pop! [Game Over]

I would do it, but you would need billions and billions of ballons to get a single house in the air. I saw on Mythbusters that it took thousands of ballons to get a single kid in the air, so you would need a skyfull of ballons to lift a house.

the smallest balloons we would use would be about 1000 times bigger than a toy balloon like you saw on myth busters. It’d look like a toy balloon from a distance, it would be very pretty, but up close you’d see the balloon is bigger around than a full size person is tall.

This is also not to say we don’t have other lifting envelopes that are a 25,000 times bigger than a toy balloon that is obscured by the small balloons around it…

clusterballoon.com/Appearances.asp

Look on this website, this is about the smallest envelope we’d use… and we’d probably use a lot bigger. We’ve come up with some nice designs that would allow a minimal amount of labor to do daily flights without having to fill up…billions and billions and billions of balloons… and the ‘house’ would probably weigh less than 500 lbs. it looks like a house, you can walk around it like a house…but it flies light an aircraft under a lighter than air envelope and items containing the lifting gas look like a billion and billion and billion balloons but its not really.

Steve

I’d love to see your team pull this stunt off, just to prove the cynics (like Wboon, Al-Bob and TSS, heheh :slight_smile: ) wrong. Jeez, where’s your sense of adventure, guys? Laugh-Out-Loud. :smiley:
Prepares to get beaten by balloons

throws balloons :stuck_out_tongue:

Sense of adventure, or sense of recklessness? :wink:

Ooh, that sounds really cool! I fully support whoever wants to try and do this thing. :smiley: :laughing:

I Will!!! I Will!!!
i wonder where i can get that many balloons???

Maybe i could send up a small miniature house and include some crickets…

[chirp…chirp]

Usually, when it comes to people’s safety, I am a pretty conservative person. When I saw the idea of a flying house via ballons, I thought that it is a really fun and amazing concept, but at the same time I thought of the dangers that could happen (plane propellers can pop balloons, brids can fly into ballons, etc.)

Yeah, it would be cool, but can you imagine how many balloons it would take to lift a kid? According to MythBusters (I know, I’m a geek :stuck_out_tongue:) to lift a 40 pound child you would need about (From memory, I may be wrong) 3000-5000 balloons.