Balloon Boys

I don’t understand the fuss over hapless Richard Heene and his wife.  They should not be going to jail, because clearly, they were conducting an experiment to see how solar-powered balloons could generate power for homes without the eyesore and noise of those humongous wind towers.  Balloon boy, sadly, only hid in the rafters because the experiment went awry, meaning that another season of “Wife Swap” with a family that drives SUVs and leaves the lights on all day would not be in the works.  Furthermore, had they explained this to Larry King, he would not have understood a word of it.

  If I were Richard Heene, I would have given that story . . . certainly it’s more believable than the cockamamie (cockamamie, wasn’t that the wife’s name?) story he have to the local cops, who gave a brilliantly amusing fake out as they were trying to solve this pathetic story.

  Well, it turns out entrepreneurs from Australia to California are experimenting with using balloons that can serve as an alternative energy source, creating electricity currents that exceed the Heene family’s 50 minute balloon ride to nowhere.  One innovator envisions balloons rising in the air, working like a piston, pulling up a tether that turns a generator on the ground—and revving that generator as the balloon falls three kilometers after losing its buoyancy.

  Another idea Heened, I mean, hatched, in California involves a concave dish, looking like a deflated Mylar balloon, that traps the sun’s rays, directing them to a solar cell in the dish’s center . . . and delivering power to the grid at eleven cents an hour . . . no word yet as to how this start-up’s project turned out.  Still another inventor envisions helium-filled balloons, covered with fabric coated with solar cells, stacked on towers:  an application that would be cost-effective in areas that are off the grid, such as remote desert regions.

  Check out the links and see for yourself what you think.  And I apologize in advance for co-opting the Colorado floating fiasco . . . but someone has to keep the story alive other than TMZ, and well, there could be some decent technologies here!

  Word has it that if Mr. Heene fends off these legal challenges, he’ll be the star of Carbon Neutered, I mean Carbon Neutral . . .