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MONDAY, NOVEMBER 23, 2009
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4

Going Up? 9.4M Balloons Should Do It

But different sources give widely varied estimates

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(Newser) – Pixar stuck 20,622 balloons on a house to achieve liftoff in its animated Up, which wouldn't come close to doing the trick in real life, writes Nina Shen Rastogi on Slate's Explainer blog. If the old Carl character were using typical party balloons, he'd need somewhere around 9.4 million of them, writes Rastogi.

If Carl used bigger balloons, say 3-footers, he would need far fewer, somewhere around 100,000, according to calculations in Wired. The filmmakers' tech guys, meanwhile, told Ballooning magazine it would take 23.5 million balloons, though they didn't specify size. And if, as in the movie, Carl really intended to rip his house from its foundation using balloon power, forget it. It's just a cartoon, after all.

Pixar says Carl's house could lift with 23.5 million balloons.
Pixar says Carl's house could lift with 23.5 million balloons.   (Shutterstock)
In this image released by Disney/Pixar Films, animated characters Russell, left, and Carl Fredricksen are shown in a scene from the film,
In this image released by Disney/Pixar Films, animated characters Russell, left, and Carl Fredricksen are shown in a scene from the film, "Up."   (AP Photo/Disney/Pixar)
In this image released by Disney/Pixar Films, animated character Carl Fredricksen is shown in a scene from the film,
In this image released by Disney/Pixar Films, animated character Carl Fredricksen is shown in a scene from the film, "Up."   (AP Photo/Disney/Pixar)
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4 comments
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paul123
Jun 5, 09 1:53 PM CDT
mythbusters did something like this, only it was with a human in a chair. It was pretty cool, and it required a huge amount of balloons. Reply
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Yourself
Jun 5, 09 3:28 PM CDT
yeah, and i remember on mythbusters one of the things they'd forgotten to take into account was the weight of the balloons themselves. When you get that many balloons involved it almost became counter productive at some points.. rather interesting to watch them do it. Reply
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IN RESPONSE:
shonangreg
Jun 5, 09 9:16 PM CDT
Each balloon lifts itself. I don't see how adding more added any weight that wasn't figured in -- except for longer and longer string needed for the balloons further out.
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IN RESPONSE:
Mr.C
Jun 6, 09 8:41 PM CDT
one of the ways to calculate it would be to use the lift per volume of whatever gas they use (which is known)
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