Power Your Home with Helium Balloons - io9 Comments

Power Your Home with Helium Balloons

RocktheDebit — Sat, 12 Apr 2008 11:14:43 PDT

@rebrad: Lowering home values? How is free energy detrimental to a home's value? Maybe it doesn't fit the white-picket-fence image, and I suppose it wouldn't work in a Historic District, but I don't see how it's any tackier than a satellite dish or massive aerial antenna.

RocktheDebit

Power Your Home with Helium Balloons

corpore-metal — Fri, 11 Apr 2008 12:42:37 PDT

Actually this reminds me of something I read here:

[www.worldchanging.com]

Imagine scaling these things up in size and anchoring them by enormous tethers above cloud level. Make them into gigantic rotors to spin in wind currents. The spinning generates electricity.

corpore-metal

Power Your Home with Helium Balloons

92BuickLeSabre — Fri, 11 Apr 2008 07:04:04 PDT

slingshot terrorism

92BuickLeSabre

Power Your Home with Helium Balloons

Dabby — Fri, 11 Apr 2008 05:07:48 PDT

Yeah, sure, they're gorgeous now - but just wait 'til the birds start crapping on them.

Dabby

Power Your Home with Helium Balloons

Gopherit — Thu, 10 Apr 2008 23:18:25 PDT

Those would work great in Arizona...until our monsoon season...oh, I'm sorry: Summer Rainy Season. They'd be a lot of fun then, but for all the wrong reasons.

Gopherit

Power Your Home with Helium Balloons

rebrad — Thu, 10 Apr 2008 20:40:09 PDT

My neighborhood association has a covenant against such items as unsightly and lowering home sale values.

rebrad

Power Your Home with Helium Balloons

bdavis007 — Thu, 10 Apr 2008 20:14:50 PDT

I'd love to see a CGI-scape of the Los Angeles basin with 30% of the structures using this - I'm thinking seizure inducing...

bdavis007

Power Your Home with Helium Balloons

Mathmos — Thu, 10 Apr 2008 18:34:43 PDT

@Annalee Newitz: I mentioned mining Helium 3 in the context of the Phobos real estate story. Anyway, guess I'm confused. I thought it was Nazis who have a moonbase, on the dark side.

Mathmos

Power Your Home with Helium Balloons

amorphous — Thu, 10 Apr 2008 18:18:33 PDT

Can you make puppies out of these?

amorphous

Power Your Home with Helium Balloons

wingbatwu — Thu, 10 Apr 2008 18:05:30 PDT

Instead of helium, we could fill the balloons with hydrogen we make by electrolysis with the electricity produced by the solar balloons.

oh wait...

wingbatwu

Power Your Home with Helium Balloons

codydog — Thu, 10 Apr 2008 17:26:19 PDT

Some hippie invented the solar balloon years ago. Basically a black plastic balloon inside a clear plastic balloon.

Goes up fine, won't come down until dark, not the best time to land a balloon..

Back to the old drawing board.

codydog

Power Your Home with Helium Balloons

Freddie Freelance — Thu, 10 Apr 2008 17:01:25 PDT

You could leave out the Helium completely if you use a large enough Geodesic Sphere:

[www.theweebsite.com]

Freddie Freelance

Power Your Home with Helium Balloons

victheremin — Thu, 10 Apr 2008 16:47:41 PDT

How about using some of the energy produced to keep the balloons aloft instead of using helium? Although I guess heating the air inside might be environmentally detrimental. Great idea though.

victheremin

Power Your Home with Helium Balloons

aspiringexpatriate — Thu, 10 Apr 2008 16:47:06 PDT

So Amarillo *is* good for something? Who knew?

aspiringexpatriate

Power Your Home with Helium Balloons

Annalee Newitz — Thu, 10 Apr 2008 16:29:13 PDT

@Mathmos: Didn't you even read that article? Nothing to worry about -- we can start mining helium from the moon! You know, using that moon base we've got.

Annalee Newitz

Power Your Home with Helium Balloons

Mathmos — Thu, 10 Apr 2008 16:17:28 PDT

There's a Helium shortage

[www.wired.com]

Mathmos