IANARS but that balloon hardly looks big enough to ever have supported the weight of a six year old boy. Here’s hoping he was never even on board.
I was actually just thinking the same thing. A six-year-old weighs about as much as a cinder block. Does that thing look like it could lift a cinder block?
Bingo
thats what I came to say.
Unless it was designed to carry one hell of a camera, hows it going to lift a six year old ?
Ever see the mythbuster episode where they barely lifted a really small kid ? The number of ballons required was nearly mind boogling.
Now, mayyybbee he was holding it when a temporarily wind gust came up…but that wouldnt last.
My WAG is if the kid got lifted, it was for a short time and he is dead on the ground close to place it “took” off.
So what we have here is:
[LIST=A]
[li]The balloon took off with the kid in it, and sometime after liftoff but before touchdown he fell out.[/li][li]The balloon took off without the kid in it, and he’s hiding somewhere because he knows he is in trouble.[/li][li]The balloon took off without the kid in it, and he’s been hidden (by his father?) for all the publicity now being generated.[/li][/LIST]
I guess that means:
[ol]
[li]It will be a gruesome discovery of the body.[/li][li]The kid will be on all the TV channels, while authorities dither whether to charge his father.[/li][li]The kid may be on all the TV channels, while authorities charge his father.[/li][/ol]
And I. It seems quite small to lift anything.
I hope it’s B, but boy, is he ever going to be grounded!
Anything at all confirmed?
No, we’re just all speculating wildly at this point, much like the talking heads on the news channels. 
[Um – am I the only one whose computer got VERY unhappy when they clicked on the link in Post #59? (I’m not copying it here.) I’m not sure if it is a coincidence or not, but I reported it just in case there’s something nasty infecting Metafilter at the moment.]
Back on topic – I hope this is all a terrible mistake. I’m sick to my stomach thinking about that little kid.
To lift ~50 pounds you’d need about 4,000 cubic feet of helium.
Does that thing look like 4,000 ft^3?
Not to mention the weight of the plywood compartment.
This article suggests that the balloon could not support the child - it wasn’t designed to carry anyone.
http://www.9news.com/news/article.aspx?storyid=125161&catid=339#
According to howstuffworks, a cubic foot of helium can lift 28.2. g. CNN is reporting the balloon is 20 ft long (presumably they mean in diameter, and 5 ft high. If it was a perfect cylinder, that would make it 1570 cubic ft. Cut that in half for the saucer shape, and you get 785 cubic feet, which could lift 22 kg, or 48 lb. So it’s conceivable, given a light enough construction of the basket, that it could lift a small 6 year old.
Seems pretty pointless and stupid to me. Really, a six-year-old boy trapped in a flying-saucer-shaped balloon spinning out of control at 8,000 feet above the ground isn’t news because other bad stuff is happening to other people?
My thoughts on it:
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Whether 8,000 or 13,000 feet, that altitude is very survivable. I’ve flown open cockpit at 9,000 feet above sea level with no problem. Yes, the air is cold and thin, but it’s tolerable. The FAA recommends pilots use oxygen if they’re above 12,000 feet MSL for more than a half an hour (if I recall correctly) but you won’t die without it. Might get a little hypoxic/wonky/sleepy, but personally, if I was in a situation like that I think fear would be sufficient to at least keep me awake, and I’m an adult with experience in the air and possibly some clue how to survive the situation. I’d expect a six year old to be at least as afraid after any initial fun/thrill wears off. Depending on how he’s dressed, cold might be more of a problem than thin air - it could easily be below freezing at those altitudes. Hypothermia could be a problem.
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Yes, horrible as it may sound, he might have fallen out of/off of this contraption. I hope that was not the case, or if it was, it occurred very soon after take off so he would survive the experience.
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I’m not sure that’s large enough to lift a six year old. My husband (who is the family expert on calculating lift exerted by various gasses) estimates you’d need 800 cubic feet of helium to lift a 50 lb child, and that’s not including the weight of the balloon itself plus plywood appendage. It’s hard to calculate the exact dimensions from the news photos, but I’m not sure it’s large enough.
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Please don’t try this at home. Or anywhere else.
Ignore that^^.
Wonky math.
I believe a reporter on the ground when it landed said the bottom was made of cardboard, not plywood. Has that been reported otherwise?
Despite what comic books may lead you to believe, most reporters don’t have superpowers. They rely on external sources of information. And when the parents and the local authorities are saying there’s a six-year-old in a balloon, the logical presumption is that there’s a six-year-old in a balloon. Even so, I heard reporters on our local newscasts specify they didn’t know for certain if the child was inside.
If the child is alive, they won’t find him lounging in front of the TV eating string cheese. If at 6 I had done something really, really bad and wanted to hide, it would be a while before anyone found me.
If the balloon could lift him, it wouldn’t lift him very far since it started at 5000 feet. If he was in it, he would have fallen out early - no way that thing gets to 10,000 feet with that weight in it.
It is windy on the front range today. I’ll bet the kid took the balloon off it’s tether, then couldn’t hold on to it in the wind. He saw Dad’s expensive toy floating away and ran off and is hiding somewhere.
That was to lift 50 kg, right?
…
Hope the kid is somehow found OK 
The payload compartment looks completely closed off. So, if he somehow sealed himself in there, I don’t see how he could’ve fallen out, when there was no breach in the hull. So, if indeed, he did take off with it, he was either holding on to the tether, or was on top or hanging off the side somehow, then fell off pretty early on. If this is the case, chances are he’s dead or seriously injured somewhere. Yeek.
My bet: He accidentally let it loose, is terrified for screwing up, and is hiding somewhere.