Here’s a wonderful example of life imitating art. Inspired by the events of Pixar’s charming action-adventure, Up, scientists and engineers over at National Geographic set about turning a house into a makeshift airship.
They attached 300 coloured weather balloons to a lightweight yellow house in an attempt to lift it off its foundations. The team successfully launched the flying house from a private airfield, and the two balloon pilots onboard the contraption flew it for an hour and reached an altitude of over 10,000 feet. It secured the team a world record for the largest balloon cluster flight ever attempted.
Have a look at the news report from Good Morning America below and some images from the build after the jump.
This build is part of National Geographic’s upcoming series entitled How Hard Can it Be? and unlike Jeremy Clarkson, they will probably get things to work.
BONUS: If this project ever needed a backing soundtrack, it should be Pogo’s fantastic remix, Uplar, which is made entirely from various chords and voice samples taken from Up.
[via My Modern Metropolis]