3 ms·
> Cheap balloon I'm surprised this seems to be such a common point. Why is it believed that it was cheap?
by lcnPylGDnU4H9OF 4y ago
> Cheap balloon
I'm surprised this seems to be such a common point. Why is it believed that it was cheap?
- V99 4y agoThere's only so much you can spend on a bag of helium; anything is cheap compared to satellites or stealth long range recon aircraft.
- lcnPylGDnU4H9OF 4y agoThe bag of helium isn’t the expensive part I consider. I’m wondering how much computer hardware “the size of multiple buses” costs. I’m sure much of that is casing but much of it also is not. How much effort went into designing these things? There’s probably a significant price tag on these bags of helium all things considered.
- LarryMullins 4y agoJurassic Park taught me that heavy things are expensive. It stands to reason that light things must be cheap.
- kylehotchkiss 4y agoYeah, these balloons that can hold small car to school bus sized payloads are not like a commercially available thing. It seems like they'd require truckloads of helium, which is a hard gas to store and not always available in massive quantities (seems like it should be prioritized for keeping MRI scanners cool instead of balloons). The balloons are probably really hard to produce, not made in great numbers, and require specialized equipment and processes to launch without puncturing. Not quite an airplane's cost but this isn't the send-a-gopro-to-100,000ft type of trick that relied entirely on products available to consumers. It's also possible whomever is running this operation doesn't care about their staff at all and they just use hydrogen.