Flying house from Pixar’s animated movie “Up” was recreated in real life.
Team of engineers constructed basic structure of a house and used 300 balloons to make it fly. The project was commissioned by the National Geographic Channel for the “How Hard Can It Be?” TV show.
For more inspiration, check out: 15 Unusual and Creative Buildings
Taylor
how many whales did those balloons kill?
Mar 7th, 2011
Ben
Taylor- all we can hope is that it killed lots.
Mar 7th, 2011
bert
have to say this is incredibly cooooool…
Mar 7th, 2011
Josh3402
ONLY 300 BALLOONS?!?!?!? THATS IMPOSSIBLE! IT TOOK THE MYTHBUSTERS OVER 3000 JUST TO FLOAT A LITTLE 60 POUND GIRL! THIS IS SUPPORTING A ROOM SIZED HOUSE AND A FULLY GROWN MAN! THE VERY NOTION THAT THIS IS REAL IS INCONCIEVABLE!
I DEFY YOU, ILLOGICAL LAWS OF QUANTUM PHYSICS! AND IN THAT TURN TO MY OWN LAWS OF THE THE DENIAL OF THE FLOOR!!!
Mar 7th, 2011
ran
incredible…..science make it true haha
Mar 7th, 2011
Blurp*
@Josh3402: Dude… Did you see the size of those balloons? It’s obvious they used different sized ones. Each Balloon attached to that replica was handled by one person each. Since each balloon used in that experiment consumed one tank of helium.
Mar 7th, 2011
peppy
What a waste of money. Still they could of spent a couple more bucks and built a floor. Did they forget you’d see it?
Mar 7th, 2011
gunneos
how did it land, then?
Mar 7th, 2011
SJA
Up was depressing.
Mar 8th, 2011
Larna
I think its superb!! Regardless of how many balloons they use! UP movie is great and knowing this cud happen is sooo cool!
Mar 8th, 2011
Benjamin Christine
amazing! loved the animated film, this is just great! :)
Mar 8th, 2011
saaraa
There goes our helium supply!
Mar 8th, 2011
sarah
in one word.. how do i feel?
AMAZED! :)
Mar 8th, 2011
xoxo
Woow, that’s so coo!l :)
I want that house, it must be so much fun to fly like that!
The movie is so sweet!
Mar 8th, 2011
Christine
Tomorrow’s news : one man died crushed by a yellow house fallen from the sky.
Mar 8th, 2011
Nick Borgers
@Josh3402: MythBusters are not a reliable resource. They are theatrical effects experts that take a somewhat engineering based approach to problems and generate an answer. Some of the myths they undertake are well within their means to evaluate, some of them are not. It’s a TV show: they know it and you should remember it.
Mar 8th, 2011
Josh3402
@Blurp: Even so, it should not have worked even with the size of the balloons it does not matter.
@Nick Borgers: NO YOU ARE WRONG!!! MYTHBUSTERS ARE COMPLETELY RELIABLE!!! THEY EVEN DO ALL OF THE MATH AND CALCULATIONS BEHIND EACH AND EVERY ONE OF THEIR EXPERIMENTS!!! I went back and re-watched the “Up myth” episode and rechecked their work, and their math is totally correct!
Mar 8th, 2011
Dom
“illogical laws of quantum physics”. Made me laugh.
and who is this joker above; ‘size of the balloons does not matter’.
i am constantly amazed.
Mar 8th, 2011
Josh3402
@Dom: Well Dom, in every system, be it the governmental, mathematical, or physics, there will always be at least two laws that contradict each other, yet make sense when paired with other laws. These laws on their own are called the Illogical Laws, and let me tell you that quantum physics has a lot of them. Also, the size of the balloon DOESN’T matter, because if it is that big, it will probably be way to thin to hold all that helium and will pop. So the SIZE doesn’t matter, but the THICKNESS does.
Mar 8th, 2011
ugh
Those balloons are 30X the normal 11″ balloon
30×300=9000 normal balloons
Mar 8th, 2011
Pat
@Josh First off your reference to quantum physics has no correlation to this “experiment”being that helium is one of the simplest elements in quantum mechanics. And though the mythbusters do calculations on their experiments most of the myths they are looking at are theoretical at best, and everything is best guess backed by engineering and science. And yes the size of the balloons does matter because the whole experiment is about VOLUME.
Mar 8th, 2011
peppy
Josh, I agree. Girth is all that matters.
Mar 8th, 2011
jasard
@peppy: LOL.
Of course this is possible! If you watch the video, they mentioned that each balloon is approximately 8 feet tall filled with a tank of helium!!!
@gunneos: I, too, wonder how it landed.
Mar 8th, 2011
BiNc
I don’t get the first comment (by Taylor) …
What has THIS got to do with whales??
Could somebody explain it to me please?
Mar 9th, 2011
Heather
Amazing! But I guess they should’ve added a “don’t try this at home” warning to the video. Just imagine all those flying houses all over the world…
Mar 9th, 2011
Kenta-Rin
@Josh3402
If you love MythBusters (as I do) then you should know that it only took 16 weather balloons to life up Larry Walters, a full grown man.
The Mythbusters confirmed this in the third pilot episode.
MythBusters is a lot better than the reality show slop the other networks tend to vomit up.
Mar 9th, 2011
Luisifer
@ BiNc
Those balloons could easily kill large creatures like whales if the pieces get stuck in the animals’ insides.
Mar 11th, 2011
sally
many things from movies will be come true.
Mar 11th, 2011
James
@BiNc
From what I can tell, the first post is most likely a reference to the THQ fiasco during a promotion for their new video game Homefront, where they released 10,000 helium-filled propaganda balloons. These balloons eventually lost their buoyancy and fell into the San Francisco Bay and caused a lot of outrage with environmentalists and locals who were worried about the impact on marine life, and for the more self-centered, the impact on the aesthetics of the bay with all those red balloons floating in it. Despite the company assuring everyone that the balloons were 100% organic and 100% biodegradable, many were still concerned about how much harm the balloons would cause to the many animals likely to ingest the balloons before they biodegraded.
Sorry for the crazy eco-moment, but just figuring that the first guy was making a reference to that recent balloon controversy with his remark, because unlike the THQ balloons these are definitely whale-sized balloons. Though it’s obviously irrelevant since I doubt they just released the balloons to the elements, and definitely not over any bodies of water. Just my thought as a gamer and a tree-hugger.
“The More You Know”!
Mar 11th, 2011
gunneos
so, no one knows how it landed? :D
this is a cool thing to do still, i just hope they cleaned up after themselves (which i think they had to, since they put people up there).
Mar 14th, 2011
BiNc
Thanks to Luisifer & James for the answers.
That makes sense. Oh my, how horrible.
Let’s not excpect the worst ;)
Mar 14th, 2011
solaceinrage
If I remember the episode right, the mythbusters went with the cheapest balloons they could get, and they were so knackered that 1/3 or so of what they bought burst while filling, or after being attached. These people in the clip above were able to use optimum grade balloons, lighter and stronger cabling etc.
Its like saying its impossible for one brand of car to beat another. The components that go into it are the ONLY thing that matters, and the shoestring budget the Mythbusters had to work with was barely enough to get them off the starting line.
Mar 14th, 2011
Doink
@josh:
Mythbusters used normal baloons. These are king-size.
Mar 16th, 2011
Troy
@Josh3402
They used Weather balloons. Different to normal balloons.
Apr 10th, 2011
trolololol
wait, so HOW did these guys get down? like, seriously. did they do the up thing? where they cut the strings? i feel like that could end badly if they cut too many.
Apr 20th, 2011
Larissa
All I can think of is how expensive helium is!
May 12th, 2011
RIver
I, to wonder how they got down. There was people in there! I think these couldn’t have killed whales 1. because they were in a dessert :) and 2. because there was people who probably cleaned up the balloons once they go out… If they lived… :)
Aug 20th, 2012