He flew to 4,900 metres in a garden chair — the true story of “Lawnchair Larry”

Larry Walters tied 42 weather balloons to a chair and ended up among passenger aircraft. The real story is remarkable, but not exactly as it is presented on social media.

It sounds like a story invented to go viral. Yet it really happened. On 2 July 1982, 33-year-old truck driver Larry Walters took off from a garden in San Pedro, California, sitting in an ordinary aluminium lawn chair.

Walters had bought 45 large weather balloons. He used 42 of them and filled them with helium. He named his improvised flying machine Inspiration I.

He took a parachute, a CB radio, an altimeter, a compass, water for ballast, a camera, two litres of Coca-Cola and an air pistol. He intended to pop the balloons gradually to control his descent.

The rope broke and the chair disappeared into the sky

Contrary to the viral post, Walters did not plan simply to hover a few metres above the garden. He initially wanted to test the contraption while tethered by a rope at about 30 metres. He then planned to travel towards the Mojave Desert at an altitude of 2,400 to 2,700 metres.

But the rope broke. The chair began rising at about 240 metres a minute. It eventually reached 16,000 to 16,500 feet — almost 4,900 metres.

Walters entered controlled airspace. Airline pilots saw him and alerted air-traffic services. He contacted them by radio and admitted that it was an “unauthorised launch”.

The flight did not last only 45 minutes. In a later account, Walters estimated that he was in the air for about an hour and a half. The Los Angeles Times reported a duration of about two hours.

The dangerous return and the fine

At 15,000 feet, he began shooting the balloons. He managed to pop seven, but then dropped the air pistol. As helium escaped, the chair began to descend. Walters also emptied the water he was using as ballast to limit the speed of the descent.

The balloon ropes eventually became tangled in power lines in Long Beach. The area lost electricity for about 20 minutes, but Walters came down without serious injury.

The US Federal Aviation Administration initially proposed a $4,000 fine. After his appeal, the final fine was reduced to $1,500. When a reporter asked why he had done it, he replied: “A man can’t just sit around.”

“Lawnchair Larry” later appeared on the television programmes of Johnny Carson and David Letterman. His chair is now held by the Smithsonian’s National Air and Space Museum.

Did he really inspire Up?

There is no reliable evidence that Walters’s story inspired Pixar’s Up. Director Pete Docter has explained that the idea began with a drawing of a floating house and a desire for “escape”. He did not name Walters as an inspiration.

The resemblance is clear, but it is not enough to prove a connection. By contrast, Walters’s life was documented as the basis for the musical 42 Balloons.

The viral photograph is fake

The image in the post is not an authentic photograph of the flight. It is a digital reconstruction, probably generated with artificial intelligence. It shows the man holding a long gun, whereas Walters had a small air pistol. He did have a camera, but later revealed that he did not take a single photograph during the flight.

The flight with the chair, 42 balloons, an altitude of 4,900 metres, pilots’ reports and a landing in power lines are real. The 45-minute duration, a final $4,000 fine, the photograph and the connection to Up are inaccurate or unsubstantiated.

Key sources: Smithsonian, The New Yorker, Los Angeles Times, and a Pete Docter interview.

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