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As a kid I filled up about 50 balloons with He, tied them to a road flare and..... it dropped like a rock at my feet. (This is where I learned how little lift Helium actually provides.) Back to the story: So I cut off an inch of the flare. Still dropped like a rock.. I continued until the flare was only about an inch long... At an inch it floated very gradually upward.
So I lit it and let it go. Now that's when I learned that burning road flares that aren't laying..on a ROAD, actually drip long streamers of burning sulfur. This I discovered as the whole contraption floated out of all reach and out across blocks of homes. I've never felt such helplessness and despair as I watched the drooling purple fire raining down across the houses and yards and I could do nothing about it.
I still remember some guy who loomed up out of the dark just as I launched it. He said. "Brilliant, just f***king brilliant."
Luckily no houses burned and no one died. Needless to say a bunch of idiot house burning candles in paper sacks just about make me ill at the thought.
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