READ THE PASSAGE AND ANSWER THE QUESTIONS THAT FOLLOW.
Hot air balloons fly because they are lighter
than air. The balloon itself is actually
called an envelope as it is not sealed on the
underside. The hole, or opening, underneath
enables hot air to be pushed into it which
is lighter than the air around it and so the
balloon rises in the sky. When you attach a
basket underneath that can carry passengers,
it can become an ideal activity for tourists
as they can soar high above the landscape
below and experience a unique view.
This form of travel is associated with
adventure and romance. ‘It is brought to
life in fiction, like in film adaptations of the
ingenious travel book ‘Around the World in
80 Days' that plots Phineas Fogg's famous
journey to circumnavigate the globe, and
‘Up' a film in which an elderly man uses
more than just one balloon.' Here, the story
focusses around a house that can fly as it
has a lot of balloons attached to it. These
are not filled with hot air but with helium
which is a gas that is lighter than air, so
it rises and so does the house. ‘This may
sound like an imbecilic and impossible idea
in reality, but it is not.'
In the 1980's an American truck driver
invented what is now called cluster
ballooning, when he attached weather
balloons to his garden chair and allegedly
flew 15,000 ft. up into the air. More recently,
a British man has succeeded in reaching
a height of 8,000 ft., whilst strapped to a
camping chair attached to 100 helium filled
balloons. To descend, he had to cut balloons
off one by one and this enabled him to land
safely just north of Johannesburg, South
Africa. He did not fly all the way from home,
the climatic conditions in South Africa were
better for his crazy adventure, so he and his
team decided to give it a go there instead.
The balloons he used were not quite like
those in the movie, they were bigger and
stronger, but still multicoloured. In 2015,
a Canadian man made a similarly inspiring
flight, but he ended up with a large fine for
dangerous operation of an aircraft.
As a man can be lifted by helium balloons,
this may mean that it is possible to lift a
house, high up into the atmosphere, in a
similar way. However, this might depend
on what the house was like. In the film
mentioned previously, the house is made of
wood and does not have any foundations,
so it is light and not attached strongly to
the ground. This makes it the ideal type of
house to be transported with balloons. If you
wanted to move a brick house instead, this
might prove tricky. For one, it is likely to
fall apart if you remove it from its concrete
foundations, and even if it is still in one
piece, will probably be just too heavy to
lift with balloons, no matter how many.
In the future, it is likely that someone will
try this feat, the question is, how high can
a house fly?
Choose the most suitable title or heading for the passage.
A Balloons in the Sky
B Full of Hot Air
C Best Views of South Africa
D Houses that are Different
