CO - Richard & Mayumi Heene charged in Balloon Boy hoax, Fort Collins, 2009 - #1

[BuzzieCat]

Up close and personal pictures of the Jiffy Pop Thing.

http://liveshots.blogs.foxnews.com/2009/10/18/balloon-boy-questions/

Please scroll down the page a little. There is a picture of the balloon at the right side of the screen but it won't take you anywhere. Scroll down a little further and you can browse through 5 pictures of the balloon and 1 picture of a note on the Heene's door saying they are tired and are not doing any interviews.

ETA: That bucket is apparently a bucket of sand testing the capacity of the balloon.

The following site has a video of the balloon in police custody. Not sure how long that video will stay there. You can see how torn up it is and there's a view of the "high voltage" warning on it.

http://www.necn.com/Boston/Nation/2009/10/18/Heene-balloon-held-as-evidence/1255908341.html

 

[mycroft]

As seemed obvious on even the live the video of the object flying and crashing, the balloon could not have lifted the child:

Balloon 'not capable of lifting off' with the boy, Colorado police say
Alderden said they came to a "bizarre" finding, that the section actually could handle 37 pounds without breaking. However, in order to go airborne with those 37 pounds inside, the base would need to be attached to a more powerful balloon, he said.

There were plenty of qualified people expressing this opinion at the time. It took a strange amount of time for them to grasp this IMO. The scale of the thing didn't even look close.

 

[jjenny]

As seemed obvious on even the live the video of the object flying and crashing, the balloon could not have lifted the child:



There were plenty of qualified people expressing this opinion at the time. It took a strange amount of time for them to grasp this IMO. The scale of the thing didn't even look close.

The sheriff had explained this during the press-conference. The father gave them the parameters of the balloon, and they contacted the Colorado State University professor, who told them the balloon could carry the boy. But when they got the actual balloon, and measured the parameters, the weight of the balloon was 18 pounds off from what the father told them. So in order for anyone to grasp this, they would have to know the parameters of the balloon, and the balloon that could have carried the boy is apparently only 18 pounds different from the actual balloon that couldn't. So I fail to see how anyone here could have known for sure balloon would not be able to carry the boy, not knowing the exact parameters of it.

 

[WhyaDuck?]

Technical aside: Might be time for a second thread, without the "breaking news" bit in the title.

This one is getting a wee bit elephantine.

 

[SuziQ]

New thread:

Colorado Balloon Boy Hoax #2 - Websleuths Crime Sleuthing Community

 

[JBean]

I moved it to crimes. cuz it is.

 

[Mazama]

What a couple! They met in acting school, this really doesn't surprise me.

It appears that no one knows for sure where Falcon was during this hoax. He might not have even been at the home.

I hope they face severe charges. What kind of message are they teaching their children? It's OK to lie and make up stories and make people believe that a 6 year old boy might be in extreme danger all to get your own freaking TV show!...good grief!

http://edition.cnn.com/2009/US/10/18/colorado.balloon.investigation/index.html?eref=igoogle_cnn

Book em Dano!

:cow:

Maz