Balloon Boy and Jetpack Guy Take to the Skies! Wacky History of Flight #4.

EPISODE 6: Balloon Boy and Jetpack Guy Take to the Skies! Wacky History of Flight #4. 

Well, we finally made it! This is the final episode of our look at the lesser known facets of the history of flight. I thought this would be a short task, but each week’s research unearthed more and more fascinating stories and interesting characters to the point where my shownotes for all four episodes put together check in at almost 25,000 words - enough for a short book. Maybe one day! 

Next week we launch into an entirely new series of episodes, which I hope should be fascinating too, as we learn about the immensely dangerous demon core that killed two fantastic physicists, as well as the pioneering toxicologist killed by a single drop of lethal poison that bled through her safety suit, and the still living particle physicist who was literally blasted in the face by a particle accelerator. But today’s episode is much lighter than that - both literally and figuratively. But before we get to that, let me do the typical podcast host drivel for a moment. SHARE THE SHOW. 

One example of those different times happened much more recently, and also involved a balloon and a backyard launch. “Live From Fort Collins: A Silver Saucer, a Missing Kid, and the Media’s Longest Two Hours”

 

October 15, 2009. Fort Collins, Colorado. A homemade, helium-filled craft shaped like a silver flying saucer, equal parts science project and shiny backyard UFO, just like Larry’s contraption, slips its leash and rises into the bright mountain air. Two parents, Richard and Mayumi Heene, ostensibly panic with fear their six-year-old son Falcon is inside that backyard UFO. Newsrooms do the fastest pivot known to man: from morning show banter to rolling Breaking News. National Guard helicopters scramble. Commercial planes adjust. America stares at live video of a silver dot drifting for miles and miles and wonders: Is there a child in that thing? 

 

By late afternoon, the balloon lands near Denver International Airport. Rescuers rush in, pry, peer—and find nothing. No child. Cue a wider-than-Colorado search. There are actually alarming and terrifying reports that someone saw “something” fall, and then, finally, the twist: The boy, named Falcon - you can’t make this stuff up! -  is alive, uninjured, and at home, discovered in a box tucked up in the rafters above the family’s garage. I remember this story, and if you do too, If you felt whiplash watching it live, imagine being the sheriff. Or the pilots chasing the balloon. 

 

What happened? Let’s rewind a few years, all the way back to 1997, where Richard and Mayumi Heene met at an acting school in Los Angeles and married. If you’re a detective, you just got a big fat clue. These two people met at ACTING SCHOOL. Unlike Agatha Christie, I just spelled it out for you. 

 They tried acting and stand-up comedy, produced demo reels for actors, and Richard worked as a handyman and storm chaser. Accounts describe him as a “shameless self-promoter who would do almost anything to advance his latest endeavor.” He chased tornadoes (once on a motorcycle) literally and said he flew a small plane around the perimeter of Hurricane Wilma in 2005. The Heenes took their kids along storm-chasing and UFO-hunting; they also appeared on a tv show called  Wife Swap twice—once as a fan-favorite return for the show’s 100th episode. Reality-TV pitches (including The PSIence Detectives) were floated before 2009; network interest, not so much. By the way, I’m happy to report that Wife-Swap - a show I’ve never watched - has been off the air for five years, which I think is a good thing for the collective nation’s psyche. 

Enter the saucer. Richard - Mr. Heene, the dad, called the contraption an early prototype of a vehicle people could “pull out of their garage and hover above traffic.” He also claimed that with “the high voltage timer” on, the balloon would “emit one million volts every five minutes for one minute” to move left and right—statements that set off approximately one million eyebrow lifts among engineers, and probably more groans and laughs than that.

The craft was about 20 feet in diameter and 5 feet high, built from plastic tarps taped together and covered with aluminum foil, tied up with string and duct tape. The gondola area was a thin plywood/cardboard box, also lashed by string and duct tape. At full inflation, the balloon held a little over 1,000 cubic feet of helium, with lift estimates ranging—under ideal conditions—from roughly 65 pounds at sea level to 48 pounds at 8,000 feet, so this podcaster ain’t flying around in that thing.

Fort Collins sits around 5,000 feet; authorities later measured the balloon and concluded it couldn’t lift a 6-year-old of Falcon’s size. M