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Re: Random, Miscellaneous, Anything Else
Posted: Tue Aug 04, 2026 1:53 pm
by drummyfish
Why did no one ever use the hot air balloon principle (or other lighter than air stuff like helium) to help moving heavy things from place A to B? I know you need like a billion liters of Helium to lift a small child, but something like a few weather balloons or a relatively small hot air balloon could LIGHTEN heavy load that would still be lifted and moved by people, they'd just be supporting less weight. Cranes are huge and heavy and complicated and expensive and can't operate in many places, a balloon in comparison is dead simple, cheap and usable practically anywhere, in the middle of a jungle or on top of a mountain. Use cases would be quite limited but I think I'd find at least one: imagine some extremely bad terrain unreachable by a crane where we'd have to move a lot of heavy objects from place A to B while also needing to move a lot of heavy objects from B to A: you'd set up the balloon (or multiple), hook it to the load at A, move it to B, hook the balloon to the object there, move it back to A and so on. Why has this never been seen? Or was it? I vaguely remember that Mythbusters actually tried to lift a small ship wreck from the sea floor to the surface by pumping it with a shitload of ping pong balls and AFAIK (not entirely sure) it kinda worked.
Re: Random, Miscellaneous, Anything Else
Posted: Tue Aug 04, 2026 8:04 pm
by satoridepon
drummyfish wrote: Tue Aug 04, 2026 1:53 pm
Why did no one ever use the hot air balloon principle (or other lighter than air stuff like helium) to help moving heavy things from place A to B? I know you need like a billion liters of Helium to lift a small child, but something like a few weather balloons or a relatively small hot air balloon could LIGHTEN heavy load that would still be lifted and moved by people, they'd just be supporting less weight. Cranes are huge and heavy and complicated and expensive and can't operate in many places, a balloon in comparison is dead simple, cheap and usable practically anywhere, in the middle of a jungle or on top of a mountain. Use cases would be quite limited but I think I'd find at least one: imagine some extremely bad terrain unreachable by a crane where we'd have to move a lot of heavy objects from place A to B while also needing to move a lot of heavy objects from B to A: you'd set up the balloon (or multiple), hook it to the load at A, move it to B, hook the balloon to the object there, move it back to A and so on. Why has this never been seen? Or was it? I vaguely remember that Mythbusters actually tried to lift a small ship wreck from the sea floor to the surface by pumping it with a shitload of ping pong balls and AFAIK (not entirely sure) it kinda worked.
Why would you need to build something that requires a crane in unreachable bad terrain? Anyways balloons are quite fragile and have to be big, not great in a construction site I think. Also helium is expensive as fuck, and with the state of balloons its not worth it. While cranes are possibly complicated (is it really though? they only do one job) and expensive you only see them on big or tall buildings which is expensive to build in the first place.
Re: Random, Miscellaneous, Anything Else
Posted: Tue Aug 04, 2026 9:01 pm
by drummyfish
satoridepon wrote: Tue Aug 04, 2026 8:04 pm
Why would you need to build something that requires a crane in unreachable bad terrain? Anyways balloons are quite fragile and have to be big, not great in a construction site I think. Also helium is expensive as fuck, and with the state of balloons its not worth it. While cranes are possibly complicated (is it really though? they only do one job) and expensive you only see them on big or tall buildings which is expensive to build in the first place.
Yes balloons may be big, but they hang in the air, don't have to be supported, don't get in the way. Cranes have limited reach and many other disadvantages -- overall they're probably better but I think you could find at least a few scenarios when a balloon would be better. Maybe when you need to transport a heavy thing over a relatively great distance through mud and hills and fragile bridges perhaps. Even if it's already expensive economy is always pushing towards saving costs, so if it can be done faster and without transporting a heavy machine, it's going to be done sooner or later by someone, isn't it? I mean even if it turns out to be a stupid idea for some reason, it still should have been tried by someone because, well, people try stupid shit all the time
I am just wondering why I never saw this attempted. And genuinely I still don't see why it would be stupid in the first place (still resisting to ask ChatGPT). I assume there is a real good reason for why it's stupid, I just don't see it yet.
Re: Random, Miscellaneous, Anything Else
Posted: Tue Aug 04, 2026 11:20 pm
by satoridepon
drummyfish wrote: Tue Aug 04, 2026 9:01 pm
Yes balloons may be big, but they hang in the air, don't have to be supported, don't get in the way. Cranes have limited reach and many other disadvantages -- overall they're probably better but I think you could find at least a few scenarios when a balloon would be better. Maybe when you need to transport a heavy thing over a relatively great distance through mud and hills and fragile bridges perhaps. Even if it's already expensive economy is always pushing towards saving costs, so if it can be done faster and without transporting a heavy machine, it's going to be done sooner or later by someone, isn't it? I mean even if it turns out to be a stupid idea for some reason, it still should have been tried by someone because, well, people try stupid shit all the time
I am just wondering why I never saw this attempted. And genuinely I still don't see why it would be stupid in the first place (still resisting to ask ChatGPT). I assume there is a real good reason for why it's stupid, I just don't see it yet.
Another problem I see is how you're moving it with balloons. Hot air balloons rely on wind in order to move and they also go very slow compared to something like a helicopter.
Re: Random, Miscellaneous, Anything Else
Posted: Wed Aug 05, 2026 9:32 am
by drummyfish
satoridepon wrote: Tue Aug 04, 2026 11:20 pm
Another problem I see is how you're moving it with balloons. Hot air balloons rely on wind in order to move and they also go very slow compared to something like a helicopter.
Yes, I finally gave up and asked ChatGPT and it said something along the lines that the wind is a problem because for considerable lift you need a large balloon and then it catches a lot of wind, plus some other reasons. Well, I'll take that for now, but I think there's some unrealized potential in airships and lighter than air tech -- not necessarily "air cranes", but transportation in general, or maybe even lightening up heavy things so that they can be placed on roofs of buildings or something like that? Tall buildings like skyscrapers have the problem of needing to support all the weight, maybe some advanced lighter than air tech could help relieve some of that pressure and then build taller buildings? I think this sort of technology has been neglected a lot since Hindenburg, right? But why doesn't it appear much in science fiction either, for example? I am also wondering if in the future we'll be able to invent material strong and light enough to make "balloons" with vacuum inside, that would be better than helium or any other lighter than air gas since it literally weights nothing and is available everywhere and for free. I dunno, it sounds like cool tech that's being overlooked, at least for science fiction
Re: Random, Miscellaneous, Anything Else
Posted: Fri Aug 07, 2026 6:35 pm
by satoridepon
Most users ever online was 547 on Fri Aug 07, 2026 5:57 pm
Oppai Oracle is becoming popular
Re: Random, Miscellaneous, Anything Else
Posted: Fri Aug 07, 2026 11:46 pm
by Deoster
satoridepon wrote: Fri Aug 07, 2026 6:35 pm
Most users ever online was 547 on Fri Aug 07, 2026 5:57 pm
Oppai Oracle is becoming popular
I believe, unfortunately, that most of those "guest users" are bots of some kind. I might be wrong though...
Re: Random, Miscellaneous, Anything Else
Posted: Tue Aug 11, 2026 11:54 am
by Hans Sepp
I did NOT ever expect Amlux's website to hit my twitter fyp anytime soon
Re: Random, Miscellaneous, Anything Else
Posted: Tue Aug 11, 2026 3:51 pm
by vulonkaaz
Hans Sepp wrote: Tue Aug 11, 2026 11:54 am
I did NOT ever expect Amlux's website to hit my twitter fyp anytime soon
can't be good when something so niche ends up shilled somewhere so mainstream
Re: Random, Miscellaneous, Anything Else
Posted: Wed Aug 12, 2026 1:45 am
by Amlux
Hans Sepp wrote: Tue Aug 11, 2026 11:54 am
I did NOT ever expect Amlux's website to hit my twitter fyp anytime soon
I haven't heard of novusolus. What kind of guy is he and what attention do you think it might bring? I don't plan on sticking around on xitter and seeing what users there are saying. I do get somewhat uneasy about attention from mainstream sites, but I suppose the potential effects all depends on who the person sharing it is and what kind of audience they have.
EDIT: Didn't realize you said fyp (for you page) and this might not be someone you follow. I took a quick look at his profile and it seems like he has a similar reach as my YouTube channel maybe. Well, nothing to do now but see if it brings any attention. I've always thought that if my channel ever broke something like 100,000 subs I would probably remove the site link from it just because lots more shitty people would be discovering it at that point. I even thought maybe like 50,000. But it's always hard to find a good number to choose arbitrarily to cut it off at.