Cluster ballooning

[1][2] In September of the same year, inspired by Piccard,[3] an American photographer for Paramount News used 32 weather balloons for a feature photography assignment near Old Orchard Beach in Maine.

Suspended from the balloons by a parachute harness in order to take aerial film footage, his mooring rope broke and he was lifted approximately 700 feet (210 m) into the air.

A clergyman, Father James J. Mullen, spotted the incident, and after a chase of some 13 miles (21 km), used a .22 caliber rifle to shoot out three of the balloons, thus allowing the photographer to return safely to the ground.

In defending against charges later filed against him by the FAA, he stated that he intended to rise just a few hundred feet (about 100 metres), but underestimated helium's lifting power, causing his tethering strap to break prematurely.

Ground observers lost track of him when he floated out above the ocean, and he was missing until part of his body was recovered by an offshore oil rig support vessel on 5 July 2008.

Just two months later, in June 2008, FAA licensed pilot Jonathan Trappe attached a cluster of balloons to his standard, unmodified office chair and flew it to an altitude of 14,783 feet (4,506 m).

Trappe departed near Challock, England, crossed over the White Cliffs of Dover at St. Margarets Bay, and made landfall again over Dunkirk, France.