Look out kid! You’re being attacked by a couple of Imperial Walkers! These impressive balloon animal AT-ATs were created by Balloon Guy Entertainment, who previously blew up a Balloon Bag End from The Hobbit.
What’s that you say? You don’t have a tow cable to take them down? That’s okay, kid, all you need is a pin.
[via Facebook]
Is there any other way to improve the balloon as we know it? You know, those staples that are at any decent social event like a birthday party or a celebratory experience. Most of these balloons are filled with helium, where cutting off their string would send these balloons up to the sky before they finally pop. Alternatively, balloons are great to be used in a water fight, although cleaning up after that could prove to be rather messy. Here is an interesting take on what the humble balloon could be – in the form of the £9.99 Illoom Balloons.
The Illoom Balloons will be able to add more than just a dash of color to any party with their glowing ability, where it will arrive in a range of bright shades. The balloons themselves are capable of maintaining their glow for up to 15 hours, and they are extremely easy to activate – all that you need to do would be to pull the tab, and you’re good to go. All of the Illoom Balloons would contain a minute LED each, where all you need to do is to pull the tab, and the light is activated. Follow that act up by blowing the balloon, or to fill it up with helium. Simply brilliant!
[ Illoom Balloons light up the air copyright by Coolest Gadgets ]
Water balloon fights are fun and they are a mandatory part of childhood. Adults love to get in on the action too whenever we get the chance. So if you are looking for some fun lighting that has a bit of nostalgia and a playful attitude, check out these water balloon pendant lights.
These unique and playful lights are inspired by water balloons inflating under a faucet. They were designed by Torafu Architects and they were displayed at the IFFT interior design show in Tokyo last month.
They’re not light bulbs in the usual sense, though they do have the shape. Each of these glass bulbs is backlit by an LED which highlights the bubbles and curves in the glass. They look like they emit a nice soft glow.
Too bad you can’t pluck them from their leads and throw them at each other for a light/fight show.
[via Spoon & Tamago via Neatorama]
I’m not a huge fan of heights. It’s not necessarily that I’m afraid of being up high, I simply dislike the thought of an abrupt stop if I should fall from some undisclosed height. This is the reason I could never venture tens of thousands of feet into the air in a gigantic capsule suspended underneath a massive helium balloon. Yet, that is exactly what World View wants to offer people.
World View sees its service as a much cheaper alternative to taking a trip aboard Virgin Galactic. Virgin Galactic will take you on a trip in SpaceShipTwo up to 68 miles above the Earth’s surface for a price of about $250,000 per passenger. World View will take you to a significantly lower altitude of 100,000 feet for a not exactly cheap $75,000 ticket price.
The company plans to use a large capsule connected to the bottom of a massive helium balloon. 100,000 feet isn’t high enough for passengers to experience weightlessness, but World View says it’s all about the view. The capsule could stay aloft for hours or even days for scientists performing experiments. After each mission, the capsule will be gently returned to Earth using a large parachute.
World View has announced its service as the FAA is set to make a public determination on its craft. The FAA believes that the capsule used by World View will be classified as the spacecraft and will have to meet space safety standards. The capsule will hold six passengers and two pilots.
[via Discovery]
Inflatable buildings are definitely an interesting way of creating temporary structures, like for concerts, weddings, etc. This particular blow-up building concept has been in the works for at least a year and it looks pretty impressive.
Arata Isozaki and Anish Kapoor collaborated to make this concert hall dubbed Ark Nova. The concert hall will tour the areas of Tohoku, Japan that have been ravaged by the March 2011 earthquake and tsunami.
It takes about two hours to inflate the building, and it can hold about 500 people. It’s filled with wooden benches made from tsunami-damaged cedar trees.
Ark Nova makes its debut in Japan today. It will be interesting to see if other mobile venues like this start popping up.
[via Telegraph via Spoon & Tamago]
This Iron Man balloon armor is perfect. As long as you don’t run into any pin-wielding bad guys or bad guys with flamethrowers. Or if the air pressure around you doesn’t pop your suit. Okay, maybe it’s not that practical, but it is still awesome.
This armor was lung-blown and hand-assembled by balloon artist Jeff Wright. It is made of balloons and nothing but balloons. It took him only about 10 minutes to assemble (though I’m sure it took much longer to plan out.) It’s made from 364 skinny party balloons in all and it can be worn into battle, though I wouldn’t recommend it.
I love how the arc reactor looks too. But why the sad face? Maybe he knows how fragile his armor really is.
[via Tastefully Offensive and Laughing Squid via The Awesomer]
While Google’s Project Loon moonshot project first broke cover, the pilot for its internet via high-flying helium balloon service launched in New Zealand, but a post by the team today is about research flights in the US. There’s no mention of plans to try offering the service on domestic latitudes, but the tests are allowing Google to tweak its power systems, design and radios. The one specifically mentioned involves stratospheric flights over Fresno, investigating the effect of the city’s radio interference on Project Loon’s transmissions. We’re not sure how much closer this puts us to popping up an antenna outside to get our broadband connection bounced from a balloon flying at about 60,000 feet, but more pics and details are available at the link below.
Filed under: Internet, Alt, Google
Source: Project Loon (Google+)
We know, we know, Google has the whole hot air balloon thing covered. But this idea is a bit different. It consists of a group of “helikites,” or small load-bearing balloon-kite hybrids, which can quickly be launched to form a network of LTE or WLAN masts up to an altitude of 2.5 miles, providing data coverage following an earthquake or tsunami. A standalone rugged suitcase, or “Portable Land Rapid Deployment Unit,” contains everything needed for activation in tough conditions. Researchers behind the project, including German R&D firm TriaGnoSys, have even found a way to integrate the temporary network with existing cell towers that remain in tact on the ground — a feature that makes the system suitable not only for emergencies, but also for expanding mobile coverage during planned events in remote locations. Of course, the helikites would eventually drift apart and lose connectivity, probably after around four days depending on the wind, but these things never travel quite as far as you’d expect.
Filed under: Cellphones, Science, Internet, Alt
Via: Technology Review
Source: EAI PSATS (PDF download)
If Google Fiber is the company’s attempt at bringing superb Internet connections to developed areas, Project Loon is Google’s plan to connect areas that may otherwise have no access to the Internet at all. These can be rural areas, urban areas with coverage gaps, areas struck by disaster and areas where nerds are having birthday parties.
Google says it will launch balloons to an altitude of about 20km (appx. 12 mi.). Each balloon can supposedly cover a ground area about 40km (about 25 mi) in diameter and provide “speeds comparable to 3G.” Each balloon is made of plastic that’s about 49 ft. wide and 39 ft. tall when fully inflated.
A solar panel will power the electronics onboard each balloon. The panel will also charge a battery on each balloon so that it can still work at night. On the ground, users will connect to the balloons using antennas with – guess what – balloon-shaped covers. Here’s a slightly more technical explanation of Project Loon:
Astro Teller, Captain of Moonshots? Come on. How can you argue against a guy with a name and title like that? The first Project Loon balloons will be launched in South Island in New Zealand this month. Check out the Project Loon website if you want to learn more. Also, alert the Resistance.
[via Electronista]
The Raspberry Pi camera has been out for less than two weeks, and it’s already skirted the final frontier. Armchair astronaut Dave Akerman strapped the $25 shooter to the equally inexpensive Raspberry Pi, put it inside a protective case shaped like the berry that inspired the product’s name, and then attached it to a weather balloon. Three hours and quite a few vertical miles later, his experiment was recovered by a stranger not too far from the launch site, who called the phone number written on the side of the Linux powered microcomputer. The resulting photos are beautiful (see more at the source link), and required no help whatsoever from NASA.
Via: Gizmodo
Source: Dave’s World
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