The great balloon burial ground in the sky?

[klenke]

I kind of remember the events the way Crazyjz does. As I recall, it was the quick (last minute) thinking of a competant USSR field commander that averted the launching of a "retaliatory" missile strike. Else we might still be sweating things out in a fall out bunker.

Or maybe I'm thinking of "War Games". Perhaps the field commander played a game of Tic-Tac-Toe to decide.

[Dru]

Didnt Cyndi Lauper sing 99 Red Ballooons in between stints wrestling in the WWF???

[chucK]

quote:

---

Originally posted by mmcmurra:

I found a balloon on the trail to Private Idaho at Index that had a little pre-addressed card attached, asking whoever found it to put it in the mail along with some info about where it was found. Which I did.

I think the address was a Girl Scout-type organization in some nearby town. I remember looking up the town and calculating that the balloon made it all of 15 miles ... I was kind of disappointed at both the distance traveled and elevation gained.

---

Wow, nice lesson to be teachin' the youngsters! Maybe for their next project they can write notes on a whole bunch of plastic grocery bags and toss 'em off a bridge into the Skykomish.

Chuck

[Dru]

maybe they could write notes on a pigs head and hang it off the belay on princely ambitions or whatever??

[Dru]

uh oh... diffusion through latex... that sounds bad!

[Fairweather]

quote:

---

Originally posted by max:

Zenolith: Lucky, this seems to be a reasonable thing to assume. There have never been

any

communists, at best progressive soscialists. The incorrect tags communist, commie, etc. could best be justified as descriptions of their ultimate objective.

---

Whatever you want to call 'em, they're SOB's and they are responsible for more death and misery in the 20th century than any other religon or ideal. Stalin=20million dead, Mao=6million+? dead, Pal Pot=2million dead. These were citizens who were murdered/starved/shot/worked to death because they wouldn't submit to the "hive" mentality of communism. Sad thing is, there are still commie followers and revisers-of-commie history right here in the good 'ole USA.

Wow,heavy shit like that makes a mylar baloon flapping around at 10,000 feet on Little T kind of unimportant.... just put the remnants of the baloon in your pack and throw it away when you get back into town. It's no big deal.

[Zenolith]

quote:

---

Originally posted by max:

Zenolith: Lucky, this seems to be a reasonable thing to assume. There have never been

any

communists, at best progressive soscialists. The incorrect tags communist, commie, etc. could best be justified as descriptions of their ultimate objective.

---

Max, You are right of course. In case you didn't notice, my post was sarcastic. For that matter, this has never been a democracy.

[max]

quote:

---

Originally posted by Zenolith:

...my post was sarcastic.

---

Right on Z. Ditto.

[klenke]

Yes, it's interesting isn't it that no one really thinks about these runaway balloons being a litter contributor. I've never seen a mother scold her butterfingers kid for littering when he or she accidentally lets go of a balloon.

Oh, and to mmcmurra I'd like to introduce the age-old adage: "What goes up must come down." The distance traveled depends on the wind on the given day and the strength of the balloon skin, while the elevation it comes to rest on depends on where the balloon popped. If it pops above Mt. Baker, it could fall on the summit. If it pops over the Skagit River, it may come down on one of Concrete's radar trigger-happy cops.

[forrest_m]

found 3 mylar balloons with "happy birthday" printed on them in mcmillan cirque. funny thing was, it was my birthday.

[glacier_dup1]

Not particularly of local interest, but my folks have recovered the occasional weather balloon on their farm in Nebraska, but the best 'small-world' test occurred when they found a balloon released by a reservation school class in northern Arizona, which just happened to be the home town of one of my best friends. So even a small balloon, if it has a tough enough skin to get some elevation and get caught in high-altitude winds, can get some serious mileage.

[max]

quote:

---

Originally posted by glacier:

Not particularly of local interest, but my folks have recovered the occasional weather balloon on their farm in Nebraska...

---

My department at CU offers a course in which the freshman-level students design, build, launch, and generally drool over a weather balloon. Someone in this class this year told me about recovering it from a farmer in Nebraska or maybe Kansas. See thread on gun-toting locals (I sympathize!)

[max]

quote:

---

Originally posted:

...where the balloon popped.

---

A bit of geek trivia:

"Free range" latex-type balloons generally do not fail due to popping. The explanation I heard was that the low density gasses inside the balloon difused through the (barely) permiable latex. Similarly, atmospheric gasses difuse in (remeber: by the requirements of bananced forces, the pressures inside and outside the balloon are very close. Anyways, eventually the average density of the balloon is less than the average density of the atmosphere and the balloon descends. I can't say if this is true or not for mylar/laminate balloons. I suspect not in that mylar balloons are much less elastic, screwing with the "balanced forces" babble.

Source: I think I can trace this back to Wenatchee High Chemistry/Physics teacher of the 88-94 vintage whose name will remain unnamed. Maybe my split personality made it up.

[ 01-21-2002: Message edited by: max ]