I have to admire the simplicity of it, but if he were American he would be in quite a bit of legal trouble with the Federal Aviation Administration (FAA) for about a dozen violations of the rules regulating the flight of “unmanned free balloons” and for good reason. Those rules save lives.
http://www.ecfr.gov/cgi-bin/text-idx?rg ... 0.1.3.15.4That balloon is cruising at the same altitude as passenger airliners. Even with a payload of only eleven grams, Leo Bodnar’s clever little circumnavigator is a potentially fatal air traffic hazard. If Bodnar doesn’t receive some kind of well publicized and meaningful punishment, the inevitable copycats will sooner or later have us listening to television journalists reciting yet an other body count.
Beyond that we are also forced to imagine how we will respond when those who have cold-bloodedly targeted airliners filled with passengers in the past now litter the world’s air lanes with thousands of inexpensive and virtually undetectable aerial mines equipped with contact detonators. Sorry for the negativity, but short-sighted thrill-seeking hobbyists risk too much to be ignored with stunts like this.