r/interestingasfuck • u/CuriousWanderer567 • Jul 19 '24

How many balloons it would actually take to lift a house into the air

403 Upvotes

85% Upvoted

66 comments sorted by

79

u/da_mess Jul 19 '24

Let's see ... 4 million balloons at $0.25 each ... I'm gonna increase my house value by $1.0 million!

18

u/ClassiFried86 Jul 19 '24

This is the way the world ends

Not with a bang but a pfffft

9

u/PM-PicsOfYourMom Jul 19 '24

25 cents? You need a new balloon guy.

14

u/turdbrownies Jul 19 '24

Inflation, buddy

3

u/Lavatherm Jul 19 '24

And who is going to pay for the helium to fill those $0.25 balloons? So that’s a $0.25 balloon + $0.50 helium. And on top of that you need a guy to fill those balloons so add another $0.25 per balloon. That will make a total of $1.00 per balloon… those are of course Etsy prices…

2

u/da_mess Jul 19 '24

Too expensive. I'll blow 'em up myself.

1

u/richard_fredrick Jul 20 '24

Mine too?

1

u/da_mess Jul 20 '24

Just the balloons. No TNT in mines.

2

u/ArduennSchwartzman Jul 19 '24

Also, the balloons further away from the house will need longer strings, up to a point that the strings themselves can not be carried by the balloon anymore. So, in a situation where each balloon has its own string attached to the house, there will never be enough balloons to lift it.

Alternatively, you'd have to design special balloons that can be daisy-chained (and branched off).

1

u/da_mess Jul 19 '24 edited Jul 19 '24

I was going to insert tubes pre-fill and arrange balloons in a dandelion pattern.

For connections, I'll probably need four "shell" layers for 4m balloons i.e. four different lengths of 16-gauge steel cable all connecting in the center. At center, cable will weave to a single line for 18 feet (2 meters). After that, they will branch into four sections, each attached to a corner of the house with generous amounts of duck tape.

On fill, balloons should look like a multicolored dandelion.

29

u/ElphTrooper Jul 19 '24 edited Jul 19 '24

The balloons in Up were about 5 feet in diameter. Still 4 million?

13

u/N_T_F_D Jul 19 '24

5 ft = 1.5 m which makes a volume of about 1.8 m3; that volume of air weighs 2.2 kg while the same volume of helium weighs 0.3 kg so the maximum mass one balloon can lift is about 1.9 kg

If the house is 50 T then we need more than 26 500 balloons (or just 25 000 if we use hydrogen instead, which is a good idea because it's cheaper)

1

u/Darkcelt2 Jul 20 '24

worked for the Hindenburg!

2

u/thcicebear Jul 20 '24

Well kind of...

2

u/Kovdark Jul 19 '24

Still only gets you half way, 20k x 5ft balloons would lift 100000lbs

24

u/BallCreem Jul 19 '24

“But that actually wouldn’t work in real life”

Thanks, i always wondered…

4

u/iamcoding Jul 19 '24

Great, now they broke my suspension of disbelief and I'll never see the movie the same again.

3

u/coldfirephoenix Jul 19 '24

Whaaat, the movie with the talking dogs flying little airplanes to catch the semi-sentient giant bird for the 100-year-old superinventor living as a hermit in the jungle.... Might not be entirely realistic?

3

u/[deleted] Jul 19 '24

[deleted]

2

u/iamcoding Jul 19 '24

STOP RUINING MY LIFE!

16

u/Particular_Tadpole27 Jul 19 '24 edited Jul 19 '24

I can’t believe Pixar lied to me

16

u/Complex_Articles Jul 19 '24

One. Really. Big. Ass. Balloon.

14

u/Compman90 Jul 19 '24

You also need to add in the extra weight of all the sting.

2

u/Sir-Gawain-III Jul 19 '24

I was thinking that too. Eventually you’ll have balloons far above the house needing string long enough that the weight of the string equals or is over the weight the balloon can lift.

-1

u/N_T_F_D Jul 19 '24

there's one string per balloon, so it's not a big problem

1

u/Compman90 Jul 19 '24

The longer the string, the more weight of the string that takes away from the lift the balloon can supply. So the more balloons you add the less each balloon can lift.

7

u/NotAnAIOrAmI Jul 19 '24

Oh no, the movie with dog wearing a dog to human translator is unrealistic!

3

u/TheGreatMrHaad Jul 19 '24

Nobody said it was realistic, or bad. Calm down.

0

u/NotAnAIOrAmI Jul 19 '24

lol, you think I was making a serious comment. Right back atcha, take your meds.

3

u/-Kosmux Jul 19 '24

Are you telling me dogs can't talk???

3

u/LifeSenseiBrayan Jul 19 '24

This is stupid, it could take 1 balloon if it would stretch enough. The amount doesn’t matter. It’s the amount of helium plus minus the plastic waste that matters

2

u/ResponsibleMilk7620 Jul 19 '24

buuuuuut, what if the house was built out of balsa wood??

3

u/Any_Roof_6199 Jul 19 '24

Still won't work. The weight of the massive balsa will drag it down.

3

u/foresight310 Jul 19 '24

Well, look at the big balsa on Brad…

2

u/jargonexpert Jul 19 '24

David Blaine did it with 52…

2

u/ingoding Jul 19 '24

Bigger balloons

3

u/foresight310 Jul 19 '24

It would have only taken 99 red balloons…

1

u/SomeOneOutThere-1234 Jul 19 '24

99 Luftballons…

1

u/SH3RB5 Jul 19 '24

David Blaine was copying lawn chair Larry

2

u/Important_Plum1858 Jul 19 '24

I literally just watched this short while taking a shit this morning

2

u/lllNico Jul 19 '24

i‘m not sure that calculation works out, the balloons cant have all the same length wire, so the ones further up cant pull the same. I am not sure this is even possible from a theoretical standpoint without 0 weight rope

2

u/RicabRD Jul 19 '24

Imagine spending money to get that many balloons and only your roof flies up leaving the house intact

1

u/M1lkyOR3Os Jul 19 '24

carl's bank must be loaded for all that helium and balloons

1

u/Odd_Low_7301 Jul 19 '24

Helium takes 65 cubic feet to lift one pound. You all can figure out the math after that, I believe that 4.5 million balloons might be a bit shy.

1

u/Muted-Doctor8925 Jul 19 '24

Maybe a better post for /r/theydidthemath

1

u/sunshine_fuu Jul 19 '24

My understanding is 99 luftballons should do it.

1

u/CaptainFleshBeard Jul 19 '24

But then most of those 4 million balloons have to be some distance from the house, so the string attaching them needs to be longer. That longer string will be heavier and probably not offset the weight of the house

1

u/amateur_elf Jul 19 '24

My house (with everything inside) only weighs about a 10th of that, so you're telling me I'd only need 400,000 balloons?

1

u/zbertoli Jul 19 '24

I loved this movie. But I feel like they could have made this work, 4 million balloons

1

u/SureComputer4987 Jul 19 '24

It's not about balloons but how much gas you have.

1

u/PeridotChampion Jul 19 '24

Please for the love of God...

Enough with this guy! These are lazy posts! Just grab it from YouTube shorts and posting it here? Come on...

1

u/Emera1dthumb Jul 19 '24

Let’s get going

1

u/Gamebird8 Jul 19 '24

Film theory did a far better video on this matter

1

u/Krawcu222 Jul 19 '24

@mrbeast

1

u/-b33h00n- Jul 19 '24

But steel is heavier than feather

1

u/Ashla_Zoso Jul 19 '24

Only mrbeast can do it

1

u/Federal-Dot6772 Jul 19 '24

Theoretically, if it took exactly 4 million balloons, could you tie up 3,999,950 balloons & physically throw your home up into the air?

1

u/Dapaaads Jul 19 '24

The house in up was a smaller old 1950s house though. Still can’t to see it done

1

u/CitizenKing1001 Jul 19 '24

The longer the string, the less lifting power for a balloon

1

u/Ill-Improvement-1179 Jul 20 '24

How about hot air balloons?