A Man Ties 42 Weather Balloons to a Lawn Chair. He Reaches 16,000 Feet.

Larry Walters wanted to fly. A lawn chair and 42 weather balloons proved sufficient.

On Friday, 2 July 1982, Larry Walters sat down in an aluminum lawn chair in San Pedro, California.

Attached above him were 42 helium-filled weather balloons.

The chair had a name: Inspiration I.

Walters had spent years thinking about balloon flight. His equipment for finally attempting it included water jugs for ballast, a CB radio, a parachute, food—and an air gun.

The gun was the descent system. Once he had flown high enough, he intended to puncture selected balloons and gradually return to Earth.

The plan assumed that ‘high enough’ would remain reasonably close to the ground.

Instead, when the chair's tethering arrangement failed, Walters shot upward.

And kept going.

He eventually reached approximately 16,000 feet.

That placed a man sitting beneath weather balloons in controlled airspace near Los Angeles International Airport, where commercial pilots began reporting an unusual object to air-traffic controllers.

The unusual object was Larry. In a lawn chair.

Walters began puncturing balloons with the gun. Then he accidentally dropped it.

The remaining balloons gradually lost enough lift for him to descend. Balloon lines eventually became entangled in electrical wires in Long Beach, briefly interrupting power locally.

Walters reached the ground alive.

The Federal Aviation Administration now faced a problem almost as unusual as the flight itself: determining which aviation rules applied to a man who had entered controlled airspace in patio furniture. It eventually fined him.

The chair survived too. Decades later, the Smithsonian's National Air and Space Museum acquired it for the national collection.

Walters had wanted to prove that a person did not need to remain earthbound merely because conventional aviation was unavailable.

On one Friday in 1982, he demonstrated this rather more thoroughly than planned.