5 ms·
Judging from the videos that pan from the moon to the balloon: the balloon was about 3x smaller in the sky than the moon. Knowing the altitude of the balloon w
by willis936 4y ago
Judging from the videos that pan from the moon to the balloon: the balloon was about 3x smaller in the sky than the moon. Knowing the altitude of the balloon was 68,000 feet, we can fudge the distance from the observer to the balloon as 100,000 feet. Knowing the distance to the moon and the radius of the moon we can use like triangles to estimate that the balloon was ~285 feet across, +/- 20% for estimates.
Edit: updated the estimate. I got radius and diameter mixed up.
http://www.wolframalpha.com/input/?i=100000%2A%28diameter%20of%20moon%29%2F%28distance%20to%20moon%29%2F3 http://www.wolframalpha.com/input/?i=100000%2A%28diameter%20...
- darkerside 4y agoSize of a football field, got it
- garyfirestorm 4y agoHow many washing machines?
- q7xvh97o2pDhNrh 4y agoIt's just under 73 washing machines laid on their backs end-to-end. That does assume, though, that you got the tallest possible washing machine, which stands at a whopping 47 inches, compared to the industry average of a puny not-even 41 inches. (It's honestly mind-blowing to me that I could get this data [1] in a few seconds, when it might've been nearly impossible in a sane amount of time ~10 years ago. But I'm also enjoying just citing it really casually.) [1]: https://www.wolframalpha.com/input?i=washing+machine https://www.wolframalpha.com/input?i=washing+machine
- petemir 4y agoWhich football? Real football or American football?
- vegasea 4y agoWhat is real football? I've heard of association football (shortened to soccer by the British), rugby football, Australian rules football, American football and Canadian football but I've never heard of real football.
- mda 4y agoI guess OP means The football that is played or watched by the majority of people in the world. Other football games have order(s) of magnitude less fans fwiw.
- telmo 4y agoAnd which one of those do you figure "real football" refers to? Can you take a wild guess? It's like saying "the real Albert Einstein", as opposed to good Albert Einstein the baker, who is a local celebrity because of his amazing Apfelstrudel. I guess it is confusing for Americans to find themselves as the cultural minority in some environment.
- vegasea 4y agoI was wondering if there was perhaps another variant of football that I had not heard of called "real football" since there are so many different types. So if real football simply refers to football then why did the OP ask: "Which football? Real football or American football?" if it's apparently so obvious?
- 4y ago
- blululu 4y agoThis is a clever method and I appreciate that you posted the Wolfram alpha link - always happy when people show their work and I did not realize that you could do things like include (diameter of moon) as variables with it. This is a nit, but if you're busting out an AI enhanced calculator there is no need to make a 40% rounding of 70K to 100k. I got ~200 ft across.
- Rebelgecko 4y agoI think some of that fudging was because the observer wasn't directly beneath the balloon
- willis936 4y agoIndeed and trying to estimate how much someone panned across a clear blue sky with more than 20 degree precision isn't how I wanted to spend my Saturday. 80% of the answer for 20% of the effort.
- evolve2k 4y ago60m (200ft) - 85m (285ft) for the rest of the world.
- ghayes 4y agoWhich, at 40ft (12m) per school bus, is 5-7 school buses.
- junon 4y agoJust a tip - put natural language variables in parenthesis. Helps disambiguate in a lot of cases and saves time in the long run if you use WA often.