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Many months ago I posted that Utah-based real estate company had built a house modeled after the one from “Up”. Well that’s been sold now, so unless you’ve got enough money to build a customized house, there goes your opportunity to live in in Carl and Ellie’s home.
But it’s not your only chance to check out real-life versions of the most famous flying home since Dorothy’s Kansas abode. Last year National Geographic built a wooden house-sized structure and lifted it into the air using balloons. It was all part of a feature for the National Geographic’s “How Hard Can It Be?” program.
Somehow the experiment, unlike fictional house on which it was based, managed to fly under the radar when the show first aired in fall 2011. But a few weeks ago the internet exploded with pictures and video of the event, which is why I’m able to bring you details of it now. Blog site My Modern Metropolis has pictures and details from the event.
The main difference between the house that was actually launched in the air and the one that was sold in Utah is the furnishings. The airborne house has all the painting details right on the outside, but the inside is empty. Also, while National Geographic’s team of scientists, engineers, and world-class balloon pilots may have used the same base material as Carl from “Up,” their methods differed from his in the details.
In the movie it’s implied that Carl, a retired lifelong recreational balloon salesman at a zoo, launched his house using thousands of the regular latex balloons he used to sell every day. National Geographic employed ones that were a bit more professional; we’re talking lift-and-flotation-device grade. The team used 300 eight-foot weather balloons for their experiment. They tied the balloons to the 16’ x 16’ 18-foot-high house.
Now for the big question on everyone’s minds: did they succeed? The exciting answer is yes. The house launched from an airfield in the Los Angeles area–with two human passengers inside–and flew for about an hour reaching an altitude of over 10,000 feet. Not only did the experiment probably set a record for the most effort anyone’s ever put into recreating a scene from a movie, or at least an animated film, it broke an actual record for the largest balloon cluster flight ever attempted.
Anyone who’s as disappointed as I am that they missed this particular episode of “How Hard Can It Be?” or for whom that doesn’t matter because they don’t get the National Geographic Channel anyway (also like me), take heart: National Geographic has posted a clip of the episode on their website. It includes footage of the house launching off and of it airborne, and you can find the clip here.
How cool is it that we’ve reached an era when the soaring whimsy previously possible only in films can actually be made into reality? I thought of Walt Disney a lot when I read this story; I could imagine him doing something just like this to promote one of his films. It’s exactly the sort of innovation he pursued both in his films and in technology.
Related Articles:
Pushing “Up” into New Territory
Disney Park Secrets: The Mark Twain Riverboat
*(This image by Crystl is licensed under the Creative Commons Attribution 2.5 License.)
