BALLOONACY!
Daredevil Blaine’s 25,000ft helium stunt – just like in Disney film, Up
‘Feels like I’m floating on air’
HE has been frozen, buried alive and stuck in a box for 44 days.
But last night daredevil David Blaine hit new heights as he soared in the sky attached to 52 helium-filled balloons.
The magician braved temperatures of minus 34C as he reached the same height as a passenger jet, the curve of the Earth clearly visible. He let go at 24,900ft and parachuted to the ground, where he laughed, punched the sky and said: ‘Wow! That was awesome!’
Blaine, 47, claimed he was inspired to do the feat by the 1956 French film Le Ballon Rouge (The Red
Balloon), which he saw when he was five. But fans on social media likened it to the Disney/Pixar animation Up, in which a curmudgeonly widower floats off in a house tied to hundreds of balloons.
Blaine’s stunt went without a hitch as he took 50 minutes to ascend, going higher by dropping sandbags clipped to him.
While it looked like he was simply holding a clutch of balloon strings, he wore a special harness.
He started the flight without a parachute but eventually put one on, along with breathing apparatus as the air became thinner.
When he reached 6,300ft, he dropped the last of his weights and rose at 500ft a minute.
Blaine held on until 24,900ft, close to the point at which the human body starts to shut down.
He spoke to his nine-year- old daughter Dessa by radio and said, unsurprisingly: ‘It feels like I’m floating in the air.’ When he landed he told her: ‘This is all for you.’
He had wanted to do the stunt, which he called Ascension, over New York but relocated to Arizona due to safety concerns and wind conditions. In order to perform it, Blaine became a qualified hot air balloon pilot and learnt to skydive. His safety team included a professional skydiver.
Ascension was Blaine’s first televised magic trick since 2012, when he stood on a 22ft pillar in New York for 72 hours and had 1million volts of electricity passed through him. In 2003 Blaine spent 44 days inside a plexiglass box suspended 30ft above the banks of the Thames. Crowds mocked him and pelted the box with eggs.