• dual_sport_dork 🐧🗡️@lemmy.world
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    3 days ago

    Absolutely, but the scale of the balloons is a bit off. Nobody would be walking shoulder to shoulder like this. For a normal-ish 170lb/77kg individual your personal balloon would have to be a little under 6.5 meters across assuming it were filled with helium.

    Yes, I did the math.

    • surewhynotlem@lemmy.world
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      3 days ago

      You did the basic math, with your spherical balloon. What about giant cylinders? Then you could really pack it in.

      • dual_sport_dork 🐧🗡️@lemmy.world
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        3 days ago

        Sure. You could do a cylinder of three quarters of a meter across which seems like a reasonable footprint for someone to stand in. That’d only have to be, uh, 325.5 meters tall to have the same volume.

          • ReanuKeeves@lemm.ee
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            3 days ago

            Your asshole “buddy” constantly throwing sharp objects at your balloon causing you to be wet all the time and laughing as you ask your mom if she can mend your massive cylinder for the 13th time this month

            • NeatoBuilds@lemmy.today
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              3 days ago

              I’ll just compress more helium and make the balloon metal so its stronger and holds more in a smaller space

              • sushibowl@feddit.nl
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                3 days ago

                I think holding more helium in a smaller space is the opposite of what you want. The lifting force is equal to the weight of the air being displaced, so you want as little stuff as possible in as big a volume as possible.

                Maybe if you went the other way round and compressed the atmosphere?

              • ReanuKeeves@lemm.ee
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                3 days ago

                Your buddy has figured out that all they need to do is snip the ropes on your cylinder which will make it fly away and now you gotta ask your mom to buy you a new cylinder until your whole family is broke and homeless

      • You could use spherical balloons with really long, but different length, strings for each person. Of course you’d have to avoid tangling your balloons together while walking around like that and given wind can vary with elevation…

    • tyler@programming.dev
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      3 days ago

      You could use hydrogen, which is less dense than helium. Then if it catches on fire like the Hindenburg you’d already be in the water.

      • perestroika@lemm.ee
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        2 days ago

        It wouldn’t help. The thing that gives you lift is the mass of displaced air. Difference from the (lack of) mass of the lifting gas is minimal.

        • tyler@programming.dev
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          20 hours ago

          It would, but less than the density difference, since you’ve removed weight from the balloon thus gravity has less of a pull on the balloon. My wife (a PE in thermodynamics) was the one that verified that comment before I posted it, hence why I didn’t say it would increase lift by the difference in density.

    • Neverclear@lemmy.dbzer0.com
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      3 days ago

      Note that you wouldn’t need 77 kg worth of bouyancy from the balloon. The shoes would provide some lift, more if you made them out of some type of foam.

    • afronaut@slrpnk.net
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      3 days ago

      What if the balloons were long and vertical like the ones in Dune? That could allow them to walk closer to one another.

      • dual_sport_dork 🐧🗡️@lemmy.world
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        2 days ago

        I addressed that in another comment here. The long and short of it (very long, as it happens) is that the volume you’d need is still the same. So your elongated balloon would have to be well beyond what most people would consider to be ridiculously tall. 325.5 meters tall, in fact, given the 0.75 meter diameter I assumed to start with. I figure most people could probably stand in a 0.75m circle provided they didn’t wave their arms around a bunch.

      • dual_sport_dork 🐧🗡️@lemmy.world
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        3 days ago

        This I am fairly certain we do not have the technology to achieve. Anything vacuum filled that large would need to have walls so thick so as to completely negate any buoyancy effect. I don’t know of any modern material that would simultaneously be rigid, strong, and light enough.

        • A_Union_of_Kobolds@lemmy.world
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          3 days ago

          Cool sci-fi concept tho

          What other sorts of random issues would be solved by this super material :opens notepad: I mean, everything, right? It would have to be so strong, so light and so economical. You could make actual BattleMechs from it that wouldn’t just sink into every surface they walk on. Shit, Dyson Spheres I guess.

          …so why would we use weird balloon floaties? Isn’t it fun how technology answers it’s own questions?

    • Cruxifux@feddit.nl
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      3 days ago

      Ok but hear me out

      One really BIG balloon with rope systems you could hook on to so multiple people could walk around under the same balloon area.

      • Hoimo@ani.social
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        3 days ago

        If everyone is connected to the same balloon anyway, you could even do without the balloon and build a structure over the water to hang your ropes from.

      • BootyBuccaneer@lemmy.dbzer0.com
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        3 days ago

        Revolutionary. I hear hot air is really good for inflating things. I wonder if you could use some sort of flame thrower to keep the balloon afloat.

    • sp3ctr4l@lemmy.zip
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      3 days ago

      Hope that lake doesn’t have any breezes or gusts.

      … Also, assuming you just did the calc for neutralizing the weight of said person…

      Even if there was no wind… they could not walk.

      Walking requires weight to work.

      A surface you can push off of.

      It seems like the picture shows one guy with walking sticks, which I guess might kinda work if the lake is less than about 2 or 3 feet, or under a meter deep… not too many lakes like that.

      Maybe something like stilts… or … huge snowshoe/flipper type things… might work?