Attaching 55 helium balloons to his trusty office chair, adrenaline junkie Jonathan Trappe managed to soar to nearly 15,000 feet.

After spending two years in training and upwards of £45,000 on the adventure, this was the technical project manager’s first ever cluster balloon flight.

In scenes reminiscent of the film Up – in which an explorer floats his house using helium balloons – Mr Trappe fulfilled his long-held daydream of breaking free from his desk and taking to the skies.

He reached a height of 14,783 feet after strapping the industrial-strength balloons to the steel-cased chair and setting off from an airport in North Carolina.

Each balloon weighed just one-and-a-half pounds, but was capable of lifting 14 pounds.

‘I took two years before this flight gaining my Federal Aviation Administration licence to fly helium balloons as well as hot air balloons,’ said Mr Trappe.

‘We took off at the break of dawn after spending four hours during the night inflating each individual balloon.

‘I lifted into the skies at 6.30am and carried in total 350 pounds of ballast held in water tanks, to aid in my ascent.’

Using 55 canisters of helium, one for each balloon, Mr Trappe ascended at 32 mph – or 521 feet per minute.

And in case of disaster he carried an emergency parachute which he hoped he would never have to use.

‘The flight was very wobbly, especially in an average office chair,’ he said.

‘I was beginning to think that it was best left tied to my desk.’

Within one hour, Jonathan rose to a height of almost 15,000 feet before natural wind currents took him back down to around 3,500 feet.

‘I then let out 30 pounds of my water ballast and rose again to almost 14,000 feet, at which point I popped four balloons to descend,’ he said.

Using only a sharp knife to burst the balloons, Mr Trappe explained the difference between bursting a normal party balloon and one used in cluster ballooning.

‘Every time you burst the balloon there follows a juddering shot,’ he said.

‘Even though the method of descent is rudimentary, it is nonetheless effective.’

Wearing clothes he would normally wear on a trip to the ski slopes, Mr Trappe battled temperatures of -15c.

‘It was cold up there and I had to use an oxygen mix like mountaineers,’ he said.

‘Even though it was a midsummer’s morning when I took off, it was freezing up at the top point of my lift.’

Finally acting out his fantasy of just floating away on his work chair, Mr Trappe documented his flight with his own camera while his crew of 20 snapped his take-off from the ground.

‘I spent two years testing for this flight, examining every permutation,’ he said.

‘I attached weights to different chairs to test the lift and flight of the balloons and was fully prepared for the flight.’

Returning to the ground more than three hours after take-off near Battleboro in North Carolina – more than 60 miles from his take-off point – Mr Trappe packed up his trusty chair and returned it back to his desk.

‘I still sit on the same chair at work,’ he said.

Via: DailyMail

Related posts:

1. Motorised Pool Chair
2. Iconic Aeron Chair inspires breakthrough snowboard bindings!
3. Osim uSpace Well-Being Chair is, Well, Awesome

This entry was posted on Thursday, January 21st, 2010 at 8:55 pm and is filed under Random Shit. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.