Geostationary Banana Over Texas

Argentinian-born artist Cesar Saez is building a giant banana, to be filled with helium and floated in a geostationary orbit over Texas:

Basically, the banana will be constructed like a blimp. Filled with helium, it will float between 30 and 50 km up in the sky. It will have a semi-rigid structure made of bamboo and a skin made with synthetic paper. Thanks to extra load in gas and a valve system, it will keep its shape at all times. The final size of the piece will be 300 meters in length. The expected launching date is August 2008 from around Baja or Sonora, north-west of Mexico. The total costs for this project is roughly estimated at one million dollars.

Link - via [flasher] and Boing Boing


I'm one of those Texans who is NOT thrilled at having my beautiful blue sky marred by an obnoxious oversized fruit. Yeah, it might be funny for a DAY. But after a few weeks I'm gonna be sick of the thing.

--TwoDragons
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Art is a lovely thing. The concept is neat. But at a price of a million dollars, it's a shame. They could spend that same million dollars on helping people that really need it and that would be a lot nicer than a fake banana in the sky.
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Sounds to me like it's just going to be be a fancy balloon.

Actually a geostationary orbit is a geosynchronous orbit directly above the equator at a altitude of 36,000 km.

Neither of which this project will be able to do.

I'm calling BS on the whole project. It'll never do what they say.
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Hey, I remerber that, in the biginning of the year people were shocked because a gouvernemental organism for art promotion here in Canada give 65 000$ to this ass hole for is giant banana. I never thought he'll do it for real... I wonder who give the rest of the million?
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let art art itself
let $$$ for the needy be taken off bogus military spending
let's all in the first world remember the third world that grows and ships alot of our foodstuffs.
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Dudes that is the fakest faked photo I've ever faked. Christ there is so much many shadow and perspective issues it makes my stomach churn. Oh GOD... blarg
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From the website, in the team presentation section : "Various individuals that preferred to remain anonymous"

Yeah, you understand why: a lot of them forgot their foil hat.

Anyway, looks like a fun hoax to me.
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there's definitely something wrong with that photo, its not right at all.

and the whole thing sounds like a waste of time, although relatively spectacular with they actually do it
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Well, I like the idea of messing with Texas. How do
you like that big banana in your sky, Tex?

I'm concerned, however, that when the banana falls it
may hurt someone.
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Fake photos are easier and cheaper than spacecraft, and of equal value when the point is performance art.

This has been around for nearly 2 years but boingboing can make anything "new" again.
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