Could a kid float away on a balloon?

Last week's new stories about 6-year-old Falcon Heene floating away in a giant saucerlike balloon over Colorado got people wondering about more than the intentions of Heene's family. For instance, is such a thing even possible? How much was this like the animated movie "Up," where a lonely old man ties thousands of balloons to his house and sails away to find a happier place?

One answer came from Christopher Beamat the online magazine Slate. He reported that you'd need a fair amount of helium to get aloft: "A standard gas balloon -- as opposed to a hot-air balloon -- requires about 1,000 cubic meters, or 35,000 cubic feet, of helium. That's about 120 of the tall helium bottles you might find at the party store. To fly a smaller craft, like the experimental balloon that soared around Colorado, you'd need a lot less. A single tank of helium typically lifts about 14.4 pounds. So to lift a 50-pound 6-year-old you'd need about 4 tanks."

An even more entertaining calculation came from Ken Denmead writing on Wired magazine's GeekDad blog. Denmead performed "some rough, back-of-the-napkin calculations to show that it was, in fact, "totally conceivable" for Falcon to have been carried away. But anyone should have realized it wasn't happening. "Look at the shape of the balloon in flight. If there had been a 50-pound weight in the bottom of the balloon, it would have deformed the shape, just like the weather balloons we're all familiar with. The bottom would have been pulled downward by the ballast of a passenger. But it wasn't. It held its unladen shape, and even began to obviously deflate without being stretched out by its hypothetical (and ultimately nonexistent) load."

-- Margaret Shapiro