Would you take this ride? Balloon ride will take passengers to edge of space – IOTW Report

Would you take this ride? Balloon ride will take passengers to edge of space

WaEx-

The Grand Canyon will need to make some space for a tourist attraction set to debut in 2024.

For $50,000, World View will take passengers up 100,000 feet in the air in a helium balloon and allow them to view Earth through a 5-foot-wide window. The hexagonal pod, designed by U.K. firm PriestmanGoode, will not actually make its way into space, but it will allow its passengers to view the curved edge of the planet, according to Fast Company.

“What we’re trying to do is to make sure everyone is just totally blown away. … Nobody has experienced that size of a window on an aircraft. You’ll hopefully be gobsmacked when you look out,” said Daniel MacInnes, design director at PriestmanGoode. more

26 Comments on Would you take this ride? Balloon ride will take passengers to edge of space

  1. BTW, “edge of space” is a bit of a stretch. 100,000 feet is about 20 miles. That’s really really high, to be sure, but the altitude commonly regarded as the beginning of “space” is 50 miles, 2½ times higher.

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  2. The thing about balloons is that the aren’t under power. That means the pilot only has up and down. Not directional steering.

    I used to see hot air balloons all the time until a few years back when a tourist balloon went into high tension wires. All aboard were fried.

    I don’t see any balloons around here anymore.

    Balloon ride? No thanks.

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  3. The space tourism thing will have it’s Titanic moment someday.

    A lot of details will be different of course, but any spaceship that goes out there afterwards will still be collecting frozen corpses.

  4. Fifty thousand? 2024? Federal Reserve Dollars?

    I’m in. Sofa coins ‘ll cover that.

    Oh. Wait. They’re gonna’ expect me to drive there? Guess it’ll depend on who rules Thunderdome.

  5. @TRF: I remember lawn chair Larry. Do you know what happened to him? He was 33 yo, he went up 16,000 feet until he started shooting out the balloons with a pellet gun. At that altitude, I bet he froze his butt off. Sadly Larry killed himself at the page of 44.

    “Lawnchair Larry,” as he’d subsequently be known, never made a second flight. He took his own life in 1993 at age 44.

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