If you watched any of the Balloon Boy footage that broke around this time last week–and who among us didn’t?–perhaps you saw disgraced Balloon Dad Richard Henne explain to the media scrum outside his house exactly what he planned to do with his helium-fueled flying saucer. (This was before it was revealed to be a hoax.)
He told reporters he envisioned a day when people did not need their cars to get to work, when they could float 50-100 feet above the roads, their aircrafts tethered to overhead wires with some sort of rope or wire. (Cuz, ya know, those catenary wires work so well on the New Haven Line.)
“It’s a low-altitude vehicle,” he said, “and we’re working on a way to perhaps get rid of modern vehicles, so we can just levitate, and go to work at 50 to 100 feet, to and from work. And this works off a million volts to move horizontally. It uses helium to levitate, much like a blimp.”
Heene’s credibility may not be all that high these days; the phrase “full of hot air” certainly comes to mind. But at least somebody’s tinkering with those spaceships that we all thought we’d be taking to work by 2009.
[image: picture-book.com]