Don’t Try This At Home

A six-year-old boy has floated off in a balloon in Colorado. I’m guessing no flight plan was filed with the FAA. This sounds like one of those “Honey, I shrank the kid” things. I’ll bet Mom’s not happy. Here’s hoping for the best.

But the story seems to be updated sort of weirdly. It’s not clear that he was ever in the balloon. Maybe he ran away after accidentally releasing it, afraid that he’d be in trouble.

[Late afternoon update]

Fortunately, it looks like my guess was correct. He was hiding, safe and sound.

22 thoughts on “Don’t Try This At Home”

  1. I hope the kid didn’t find a way to fall out while it was airborne.

    I’d been thinking the worst-case sceanrio was the balloon would come down and the kid would be found dead inside from lack of hypothermia. This is worse.

  2. In the photos I’ve seen, the balloon doesn’t appear to be large enough to lift a 6 year old boy. My 5 year old granddaughter weighs 44 pounds so it seems likely that a 6 year old boy would weigh about 50 pounds. I don’t think he was ever on board. I certainly hope he wasn’t.

  3. Unfortunately I was in a place where I could neither turn off or tune out CNN for the last several hours. Apparently there was an instrument basket under the balloon when it took off, but it fell off at some point. šŸ™

  4. A news report said it was 20 ft in diameter and 5 feet thick. This would give it a lifting capacity of about 80 lbs, less tare weight. So it is conceivable that it would be able to lift off with the kid inside. I certainly hope not, though.

  5. My God I hope he ran away. I can’t read these stories. I wish they wouldn’t print them unless they had happy endings.

  6. I LIKE BALLOONS THEY FLY!!! They fly as high as ducks! And Tornadoes!!! I fly higher than stupid bat boy, squeek squeek squeek.

  7. Oh come on. What’s in the Telegraph story only suggests “free range” parenting, which in general is a good thing, notwithstanding the occasional accident. For all we know, the mother from Connecticut quoted — who’s husband runs a child-proofing business for heaven’s sake, what kind of severely constricted sphincter business is that? — might well be one of our modern Ultimate Hygiene fruit loops who won’t let the kids touch actual dirt.

    It’s possible they were irresponsible about the balloon, although so far it seems more likely that the older kid lied to get his brother in trouble, and then the parents freaked out and called the police before searching the house, which is stupid but understandable. But it’s also possible we’re just looking at a srange accident. These things happen. Sometimes it’s nobody’s fault, and trying to make it someone’s is a mistake.

  8. Whew. When, after leaving my previous comment, I heard that a witness claimed to have seen something fall from the balloon, I thought that was it for the kid.

    Very glad to have been wrong.

  9. Off topic, but related to previous discussions on this site — hope you don’t mind Rand.

    Another excellent opportunity to improve the economics of sub-orbital commercial space flights, although the government is the customer: Pentagon Eyes Spaceplane for Speedy Recon

    Twenty years after the U.S. Air Force first retired its SR-71 spy plane, and 11 years after a handful of the Mach-3 jets was briefly returned to military service, the military has finally identified a candidate to replace the famed Blackbird. The Pentagonā€™s secretive National Security Space Office is navigating a minefield of budgetary perils, bureaucratic expectations and industry inhibitions, to turn a experimental, civilian ā€œspace planeā€ into a high-speed, responsive reconnaissance craft.

    I presume their would be painted a cool black color…

    H/T Space Transport News

  10. No, that was in, Andrea. But I don’t see anything too bizarre in storm chasing. In Colorado, it’s pretty plausible: they have remarkable weather, and you can see it and chase it from a long way off. It isn’t that strange a thing to do in Fort Collins. It didn’t say they slept in their clothes every night, and I would guess they do not, only when they expect something interesting to happen.

    I dunno if my habit of getting up at 3 AM to do a dayhike in Rocky Mountain National Park up one of the 12,000′ foot mountains, when I lived in Boulder, was any weirder, frankly. And the fact that the whole family is enthusiastically involved in an outdoors vaguely scientific activity, at least nature-oriented, instead of each individually vegetating in front of a screen — Mom blogging, Dad watching ESPN, kids Warcrafting — strikes me as a positive, on the whole.

    The “wife swapping” is not sexual swinging, but appearing on the “Wife Swap” “reality” show where wives switch households for a week or two, and the whole thing is filmed, so the TV audience can guffaw at the city mouse/country mouse mismatching. I agree only a doofus would agree to be exploited on primetime TV, but…well, this is America, they’re not that bright, and maybe they got a pile of money. Anyway, aside from that inanity I know no great evil of them.

    I’m aware that the Zeitgeist is to severely criticize parents in a situation like this, but having reared four of my own to near adulthood — the eldest leaves for college next year — I tend towards more charity. Things happen, even when you do your best, and expectations of parents are insanely unreasonable enough already. Besides, too often the most unforgiving criticism comes from those who have reared exactly zero children, and that kind of Pharisaic arrogance pisses me off.

    I don’t mean to criticize you, by the way. Reacting more to commentary I’ve seen elsewhere.

  11. In Colorado, itā€™s pretty plausible: they have remarkable weather, and you can see it and chase it from a long way off. It isnā€™t that strange a thing to do in Fort Collins.

    Using a balloon to carry instruments into a tornado does not seem plausible to me. Nor does storm chasers “searching for extraterrestrials.”

  12. Is that right, Ed? So how do you feel about dedicating your entire professional life to searching for ETs by analyzing radio noise?

    I’m not saying I think it makes any sense, but there ought to be a civility gap between “that’s not my cup o’ tea” and “you’re nuts.” Even in a judgmental, Puritan society such as ours.

    My God I am so sick of the fact that the only place where we seem able to exercise a little Christian charity is in differing sexual tastes. What a pity the family wasn’t into actual wife swapping, a.k.a. “polyamory.” That would put criticism of them beyond the pale of civility, according to our modern standards, whereas merely having silly ideas about family leisure-time activities and being a slightly narcissist blowhard make you totally fair game.

  13. Using a balloon to carry instruments into a tornado does not seem plausible to me.

    Which way do the winds in the vicinity of a tornado blow?

  14. Iā€™m not saying I think it makes any sense

    Well, you did say, “It isnā€™t that strange a thing to do in Fort Collins.” Even storm chasers seem to find their behavior strange:

    “While most storm chasers track a storm from behind, Heene and Stevens followed the July 2007 storm by trying to intercept it head-on.”

    Heeneā€™s former business partner, Barbara Slusser-Adams, told Fox News that she split from Heene last fall in part because of the dangerous situations experienced by the young boys, particularly during Hurricanes Gustav and Ike.

    ā€œI had some problems with that,ā€ Slusser-Adams said of Heeneā€™s desire to take his boys toward the Texas coastline to track Gustav. ā€œI did not feel I wanted to join them on that venture.ā€

    That aside, I don’t think most people in Fort Collins are building perpetual motion machines and finding photographic evidence of military installations on Mars. Do you?

    I also think you’re being naive if you believe the title of that show was not intended to be sexually titillating, whatever the actual content was.

  15. In one of his Youtube videos, “psyience detective” Richard Heene says he know believes the world will end in 2012 as predicted by the Mayan calendar.

    In another, he asks people to send him photographic evidence that Hillary Clinton is a shapeshifting reptilian.

    I have to go with Andrea on the “nuts” thing.

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