Lifting a Man with Helium Balloons? | I Didn't Know That

ever since I was a kid I've always wanted to have a go at lifting someone off the ground using helium-filled balloons and today my dreams come true Joanie I've done the calculations to get me airborne we're gonna need at least 30,000 of these yeah actually rich I was thinking of slightly bigger balloons when Tony said big balloons he meant big balloons at the size of those things our warp up and it's going to get bigger when this balloon is fully inflated it'll have a diameter of two and a half meters and it will hold over seven cubic meters of helium which is just about enough to lift seven kilograms off the ground we're just testing this balloon now this weight is just under seven kilograms and a cadet with Richards tipping the scales at our very healthy 96 kilograms the boys are going to need to fill around 14 of these monster balloons to have any chance of getting an airborne everything set everything that is except the weather while the boys have been busy in the hangar the perfect summer stay outside has been replaced by one with the wind gusting at up to 30 kilometres an hour not the ideal weather to fly balloons you ready for this oh yeah this thing is 1 and it is fighting like anything I don't do I'm ready to go up attaching all 14 villains in this wind was proving very difficult and it wasn't long before things started to go wrong look at that 6p Neil Armstrong think of the Wright brothers think of Richardson Johnny but try as they might in this wind the maximum they could attach with seven balloons and that just wasn't enough to keep Richard in the air for any length of time and after three to four hours of hard rock we were ready to fly once more this is it the point of no return it's time to get airborne right all the balloons are inflated are you ready rich I'm ready here we go now can you feel that I have now attached yeah that's quite a target Lee we did this experiment to find out how much helium it would take to get Richard off the ground and the answer is an awful lot just a little bit like footage now in the end we used 18 balloons which holds approximately 96 thousand litres of helium nearly Richard maybe get a little higher if you stopped eating so many pies oh really jealous

Channel: National Geographic

Views: 3,101,120

Rating: 4.7307067 out of 5

Keywords: National Geographic, Nat Geo, I Didn't Know That, Jonny Phillips, Richard Ambrose, science, cool, helium, balloons, lift, flight, raise, experiment, scientific, study, gravity, big, nature, video, national geographic, nat geo, natgeo, animals, wildlife, explore, discover, survival, documentary

Id: 3N-LGBdLaJ8

Length: 3min 19sec (199 seconds)

Published: Tue Jan 01 2013

Reddit Comments

[u/flibblesticks]

Helium is a resource of great importance in medical research and is running out. We should really stop squandering it on shitty tv shows.