Let the Balloon Boy myth-making begin!

• The hoax angle of this story was created and perpetuated by the local media affiliate of NBC ( 9news) in Denver. I think they expected the kid to crawl out of the balloon waving an Obama flag or be seriously injured but that never materialized and that pissed them off, hence the hoax story. They felt robbed and wanted more "meat" to keep the story alive while they dug into the families past for more dirt. Well they did succeed in creating a tabloid type circus out of this event to spike their ratings. Lesson: Never call the media for help under any circumstances.

• It turns out from watching the clip of the father talking about things afterwards this was supposedly part of working on an invention to have a balloon that can pull out of a garage and fly 50-100 feet above traffic. So it seems the guy must have explored how much weight balloons can lift and would have known it wouldn't have lifted the kid. (it didn't take much gas leaking out before it started to descend.. so it couldn't have lifted too much). It also seems an added motivation for the guy to try to get free publicity if he is seeking investors. The question is whether police or journalists bother looking into this. He likely has calculations around or had talked to people about its lifting capacity before this to indicate he knew full well the kid wasn't in the balloon.

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