Recently I used an excel file to estimate the miles that I travel in my car every month. Well it turns out to be 1428 miles a month with 78% of the time for work. I was pretty shocked. I'm literally driving my car to the ground. If anyone knows Tucson, they would know that it is extremely inefficient to travel around town. With highway exits blocked off to most major streets to town, this whole setup really forces you to learn your streets around town. Now here is the thing I don't understand, we live in a three dimensional world and yet we have limited our day-to-day travel to a 2-D plane. With all the space above us, why are we not using it? I'm proposing the use of personalize hot air balloons.
For one, hot air balloons runs on propane and is probably much cleaner than cars (all you are doing is heating up trapped air). So every where you go is no different than starting up a barbecue grill. Second, there will be less traffic because we are now using available space that we haven't been using before. Third, it will probably be faster to get to where you want. I can see where I live from where I work so with a hot air balloon, it will be a straight shot. Fourth, it will probably be way fun and a lot less stressful because of no more traffic jams, stop lights or watching out for that pesky police officer.
Now, not all of my inventions are without the need of details to be figured out. For example, parking. You can imagine how complicated it can be with everybody's balloon bouncing each other around. I propose this fix. May there can be some giant hanger that you can steer towards and hang your deflated balloons at. Another problem that may arise: landing and taking off quickly. How about this, don't land the balloon! Just throw a rope over and descend that way. And for going up? Just mount a towing hook at the bottom of the balloon and give it a remote control. So the next time you are done with grocery shopping, just lower the hook and up you go.
Now don't get me wrong, I'm not trying to replace my beloved Honda. However, when you travel and get stuck in traffic as much as I do every month, a hot air balloon may actually be not that bad of an idea.
