Real Life “Up” Balloon Soars Over Mexico
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Pixar’s 2009 masterpiece Up is a magical five-time Academy Award nominated tale that captured the imaginations of children and adults alike. The story about life, love, friendship, and a house taken away by a bundle of balloons continues to inspire people, and this week adventurer Jonathan Trappe made animated fantasy a reality. Using 300 weather balloons attached to a yellow “house,” Trappe created a real-life Up house at the Leon International Balloon Festival in Mexico.
This unprecedented project is only a test flight for a more ambitious endeavor — the teaser for an epic film that will hopefully come soon. The house soared 10,000 feet over the Mexican plain for nearly an hour, but Trappe hopes to make an even bigger journey in the near future. He plans to strap 365 helium balloons to a row boat and float 2,500 miles across the Atlantic Ocean to France. The row boat is a cautionary element, just in case Trappe needs to ditch his mission into the ocean.
Trappe said of his profession, “I didn’t wake up one day and think, ‘I’m going to fly across the Atlantic.’ Every attempt before this was geared towards this flight. I’ve been training for a long time. It’s about living an interesting life, for me as the pilot and those watching. So, one day we can look back and say, ‘Humankind was able to pull this off. They did it.’”
The project is currently on crowd-sourcing site Indiegogo, with the aim to raise $299,999 by the end of the month. If the project gets funded, a television documentary will be made about the project. We think Up‘s protagonist, Carl Fredricksen, would certainly admire Trappe’s daredevil spirit, and we are rooting for the project to make it “Up” into the sky.
[via PSFK]
