Ask Adam Savage: How Lead Balloon Changed MythBusters

oh sorry one slate there you go adam savage in my cave and i am taking questions  today from tested patrons about mythbusters   and i'm answering them here in this forum hi uh  today's question comes from jeffrey mccullough   who says uh his favorite myth is lead balloon  mine too it's my favorite well i can't even say   favorite you can't name you can't say which one of  your kids is your favorite this is it's it's it's   the myths are like my kids i can't choose one as a  favorite i'm glad led bloon is your favorite it's   a really important myth for me but what jeffrey  says is i've heard you talk about it before but   the other day you mentioned the problems you had  with the suppliers equipment failing the day you   were to get the materials this is true um so  to just give you oh and jeffrey wants to know   are there other stories about that about uh  lead balloon in so many ways lead balloon is a is a super important part of the biography  of mythbusters uh the myth is that a lead   balloon is something that's impossible hence  the name of the band led zeppelin who were told   when they embarked upon their uh uh band that  it would go over like a lead balloon right like   like a concrete airplane a lead balloon is  supposed to be impossible this is a perfectly   testable proposition so the question is not can  you make a balloon out of lead well that is the   first question then the question is how big do you  want to make it um so when we started to look at when we started to look at lead i'm trying to  work through the how we built the narrative   ah the first the first thing we need  is for the balloon to be airborne   yeah that's i can make a bag out of almost  any sheet material and i can fill that bag   with air but when you say  balloon when you say lead balloon i think the average person thinks of  a balloon as something that's floating   not a not a bit of latex with some air captured  in it it is literally got some helium in it   so we were really clear that whatever  balloon we made out of lead had to float   and that meant that we started doing this math  of like you get uh you get increased returns the   bigger you get because you are encompassing more  air more volume in uh the relationship between   the surface area and the volume gets better and  better and better for buoyancy the larger you go   the difficulty is lead is literally the material  consistency or has the tensile strength of   wet or damp toilet paper i'm not joking  it is it is one of the most volatile   delicate materials i have ever worked with so we  started doing math uh how big can the balloon be   uh then we also started discussing like what  was our balloon gonna look like and jamie was   like well we could just make a long bag and  i pointed out but that's like sure you could   make a bag but can we can we try and make it  as round as possible and jamie admitted yeah   that should be round is better than a long tube  sure um that led to this whole how do you make oh man how do you use a material that does not  want to be touched or handled very much at all   and make a sphere in order to hold helium  uh and it turns out a little bit of air um   we settled on building a cube and we had to build  a methodology to make that cube flat uh so where   we laid each piece one at a time and taped only  the oh man there was so much planning into this   but you asked for stories that i hadn't  told before and one of them is that jamie   jamie hated this story he both loved  this story and he hated this story part of the reason he hated it was because he  knew how volatile and difficult rolled lead is   to work with and in the beginning we were looking  at the standard thickness you can get lead in   not the standard thickness but the thinnest that  is like regularly available is i think about   three or four or five thousandths of an inch  thick yeah um not much thinner than that's used   for shielding and other stuff other other types  of processes but three or four thousandths of   an inch thick was actually way too thick for  us our balloon was going to have to be like   20 feet in diameter and that was never ever ever  gonna work um that's just too much to encompass   so then we started reaching out to companies  to find out how thin they could make the lead   and our spec was we could make a i think a 12 foot  diameter balloon that was a cube with its edges   like puffed out um using lead that was  0.001 1000 of an inch thick about 40 uh about so sorry about 5 000 of an inch thick  which is roughly an eighth of a millimeter   there you go that's the translation i was doing  in my head and we had a company that promised   to deliver us this stuff and yeah their equipment  broke as they were trying to make it so we showed   up on a tuesday ready to shoot the story and  it was like the lead's not here because the   equipment broke we're gonna have to wait several  months um or find another company to do it um and then even then as we were going we were  playing with the thicker lead and it was so   awful and seemed so impossible that jamie kind  of wiped the story from his head he was like   i don't want to do this story and then when the  equipment broke jamie took it on himself to call   around and he found a company in germany called  epstein foils and epstein foyles made our lead   in record time and they beat our mark we  wanted one thousandth of an inch thick   they went 30 percent thinner than that  the lead they delivered to us was point 0.007 of an inch thick yeah seven ten thousandths   of an inch yeah seven tenths of one thousandth of  an inch it was crazy crazy thin and then when we   got that stuff in and i started playing with it  that's when jamie got that i think i do remember   this specific point where i was like jamie jamie  look this is totally possible and there was no   inertia with his ability to change his mind  heinemann was one of my favorite things about the   man he looked at and was like oh yeah no we can do  this but we're gonna have to be really careful and   i'm like i know and that led to what felt like a  week of staring into the future each of us trying   to figure out all the ways in which building this  balloon could go wrong and circumventing them   and in the end we we built up a set of of of  contingencies for keeping this balloon from   failing that we used every single contingency and  the balloon did not fail it successfully flew with   helium in fact it was big enough where we needed  to add some air because it was too buoyant yeah   ah and the reason it's such an important  story for mythbusters is because well   every time we outline a story we're gonna  film it and then it's gonna go to the editors   and as you can imagine the editors like to know  what they're going to get so they would be across   our outline and they would see our outline of our  story and they would make a rough plan and think   okay this is going to be a b story the a story  was always the big episode story the b story was   the slightly smaller um the time split we had 42  minutes so it's usually like the a story was like   a 25 minute story and the b story was a 15 minute  story those ratios changed but that was roughly it   so we submitted the outline to the editorial team  about lead balloon and they were like great this   is going to be a nice b story and then their first  cut came in of just that story at 55 minutes long   but it was supposed to be like 15 minutes long  uh we cut it down they cut it down they did   a beautiful job the narration i can't  remember who was producing that one um   it might have been dan tapster could have been  chris williams hard to say but in the end that   was the a story of the episode that we filmed  and what it told us was that we could build thrilling narratives doing pointless absurd things  there's no explosions there's no fire lead balloon   is literally uh 30 minutes of storytelling about  two dudes trying to just like do something that's   really hard to do and succeeding at it and that's  a great story it also was great because we were   both super involved in the in the execution  and that change you know that some stories   one of us or the other wasn't completely plugged  into that happened a lot um you can't expect us   to consider every story a home run but that one  was a home run for both jamie and i and i submit   that that's also what made the narrative really  exciting to watch because you could tell that we   were involved we were thrilled and that is another  thing that we realized was we can tell really cool   stories about stuff that's pointless and absurd  as long as we're totally into it because it's   one of the most important takeaways i have from  15 actually now 18 years of television production   is that the best stories are the one in  which the person that story is happening   to is really involved in the story it sounds  ridiculously simple when you say it like that but think about your favorite reality hosts   your favorite reality hosts are plugged right in  man richard hammond yeah phil keegan right these   these are legends they they watching them go is  exciting almost no matter what they're saying   i aspire to to that kind of presentation i've  quoted this line from raymond chandler a whole   bunch in talking about this but he says an  adventure story would be no adventure if it   did not happen to a person fit for adventure and  that i submit is that one of the things we learned   on lead balloon is we learned that the kind  of adventures that we found thrilling and   thus could tell thrilling stories about were  weirder and stranger than what seemed obvious   at first glance and that allowed us to go looking  for weirder and more fun stories that's how we did   good god that's why we did square wheels  smooth ride it's why we did the golf ball car   both of those stories driven solely by  interest from jamie or i um yeah absolutely   the best stories to watch are going to be the  ones in which the people they're happening to   are actually interested in what's going on yeah  i again i know that sounds ridiculously simply   stupidly obvious but if you watch a lot of reality  television you might not see as much of that   as you think you're seeing yeah so lead  balloon was people ask a lot about what   our favorite stories are favorite myths and  the most excelsior this the worst that and   it's impossible to choose for all those years of  making the show any specific moments but there are   episodes or occurrences like lead balloon penny  from the empire state building stories like that   which altered forever the way i saw how to make  the show and change the way i thought about making   the show those are the moments i remember those  are the moments that stick with me thank you for   that terrific question uh jeffrey i appreciate  it tested patrons please keep submitting your   questions and i will continue to answer them  stay safe and i will see you guys next time

Channel: Adam Savage’s Tested

Views: 1,866,117

Rating: 4.8995395 out of 5

Keywords: tested, adam savage, adam savage mythbusters questions, ask adam savage mythbusters, adam savage tested mythbusters, ask adam savage, mythbusters tv show, adam savage questions, ask adam savage tested, adam savage answers, behind the scenes mythbusters, adam savage high speed, lead balloon mythbusters, jamie hyneman, adam savage jamie hyneman, adam savage talks about jamie hyneman, adam savage and jamie hyneman relationship, lead balloon stories, mythbusters stories

Id: h70kbIzPgig

Length: 13min 9sec (789 seconds)

Published: Thu Mar 04 2021

Reddit Comments

[u/BriefAbbreviations11]

I read somewhere that Adam and Jaime don’t get along anymore, is this really a thing? My juvenile brain wants them to be best buddies, making crazy shit, for life.

[u/Bevier]

Does he have a cold or something? He sounds different.

[u/WSBKingMackerel]

Sauce for those interested (mobile link)

https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=HZSkM-QEeUg

[u/Ecstatic_Hovercraft4]

Nice video, watched it during lunch yesterday...