Lawnchair Larry: the man who ascended 16,000 ft in a chair tied to helium balloons

Friday, 12 July 1982, Larry Walters tied 42 helium-filled weather balloons to his lawn chair and prepared for takeoff. Aided by a “ground crew” of his girlfriend and some buddies, Larry – armed with a sandwich, a cold beer, and a B.B. gun – prepared for a leisurely ascent above Los Angeles, thereupon which he’d slowly float over the Mojave Desert before landing back home. 

Instead, the rope holding his makeshift flight apparatus snapped, and Larry shot up 16,000 ft (4,876 m) in his ‘Chair Force 1’. By the time he found a way back to the ground, he landed himself a unique spot in American aviation history (and the record books) for highest altitude reached by a chair attached to balloons. 

Born in Los Angeles, California, Lawrence Richard "Larry" Walters grew up with dreams of spaceflight. 

“I was always fascinated by balloons,” Larry said in a profile in the New Yorker. “When I was about eight or nine, I was taken to Disneyland. The first thing when we walked in, there was a lady holding what seemed like a zillion Mickey Mouse balloons, and I went, ‘Wow!’ I know that’s when the idea developed. I mean, you get enough of those and they’re going to lift you up! 

“Then, when I was about thirteen, I saw a weather balloon in an Army-Navy-surplus store, and I realized that was the way to go – that I had to get some of those big suckers. All this time, I was experimenting with hydrogen gas, making my own hydrogen generators and inflating little balloons.”

Sadly, Larry’s dreams of becoming a pilot never materialized – his vision was too poor – and after serving as an Army Cook in Vietnam, he became a truck driver instead. But he never lost the desire to fly, and in 1972 he said he had a revelation that “it’s now or never, got to do it.”

To Larry’s credit – he did prepare thoroughly for the attempt, purchasing: a “darn sturdy little chair”; a two-way radio; an altimeter; a hand compass; a flashlight; extra batteries; 
a medical kit; a pocket knife; eight plastic bottles of water to be placed on the sides of the chair, for ballast; a package of beef jerky; a road map of California; a camera; two litres of Coca-Cola; and a B.B. gun, for popping the balloons.

He assembled his aircraft by taking an ordinary lawn chair and attaching milk gallons full of water to the sides for support, then connecting 42 helium-filled balloons in four groups. Theoretically, he’d gently ascend by releasing the ropes holding him to the ground, and he’d descend by shooting the balloons and releasing the water jugs.

When curious cops saw Larry and his “ground crew” inflating a suspicious amount of giant helium balloons the midnight before his attempt, he just waved them off, saying they were shooting a commercial.

But an 150-ft tall balloon tower is hard to miss, and soon the neighbourhood was outside, watching Larry get into his contraption, dubbed the Inspiration I. Wearing a parachute and a life vest (but no seatbelt!) he planned on ascending about 300 ft while attached to a rope to scope out the area, but instead, the Inspiration rose at about 800 ft per minute, quickly snapping his tether to the earth. 

Via the two-way radio, Larry could hear his girlfriend begging him to pop the balloons and come back down. But despite the anxiety, up in the air he finally felt free.

“I wasn’t going to hassle with her,” he said, “because no way in heck, you know, after all this – my life, the money we’d sunk into this thing – and just come down. No way in heck. I was just going to have... have a good time up there.

“The higher I went, the more I could see, and it was awesome. Sitting in this little chair, and, you know, Look! Wow! Man! Unreal! I could see the orange funnels of the Queen Mary. I could see that big seaplane of Howard Hughes’s, the Spruce Goose, with two commercial tugs alongside. Then, higher up, the oil tanks of the naval station, like little dots. Catalina Island in the distance. 

“The sea was blue and opaque. I could look up the coast, like, forever. At one point, I caught sight of a little private plane below me. I could hear the ‘bzzz’ of its propeller – the only sound. I had this camera, but I didn’t take any pictures. This was something personal. I wanted only the memory of it – that was vivid enough.”

When he finally got to 15,000 ft, the air was getting thin, and the temperature dropped. Figuring it was time to go, he shot down seven of the balloons, and had just placed the gun in his lap to check the altimeter when a big gust of wind caught the balloons and he pitched forward. The gun tumbled out of his lap and plunged 3 miles to the ground – stranding Larry in the clouds.

“To this day, I can see it falling – getting smaller and smaller, down toward the houses, three miles down – and I thought, ‘I hope there’s no one standing down there’,” he said. “It was a terrifying sight. I thought, 'Oh-oh, you’ve done it now. Why didn’t you tie it on?' I had backups for most everything… it never dawned on me that I’d actually lose the gun itself.”

Without means to control his descent, Larry floated up to 16,000 ft, where the air was thin and frigid. Later, the Federal Aviation Association estimated that if Larry had not popped those seven balloons before losing his gun, he would’ve ascended to 50,000 ft and “been a popsicle”, as he said.

Luckily, the helium in the balloons began to leak, and he began to gradually drop – relieved he didn’t have to jump out with a parachute, but dreading the incoming landing he’d have to make without his gun to regulate his altitude.

At about 13,000 ft, he was able to get a hold of a confused air traffic emergency responder on the radio, who repeatedly asked: “what airport did you take off from?” and “did you say you have a cluster of 35 balloons?!” At the same time, incredulous pilots were reporting sights of a chair attached to balloons floating in their airspace.

Having now made contact with Planet Earth to say he’s okay, and coming down, Larry focused on his descent, cutting open the water jugs with a penknife to try and control his speed. 

“I looked down at the ground getting closer and closer, about three hundred feet, and, Lord, you know, the water’s all gone, right? And I could see the rooftops coming up, and then these power lines,” he explained.

“The chair went over this guy’s house, and I nestled into these power lines, hanging about eight feet under the bottom strand! If I’d come in a little higher, the chair would have hit the wires, and I could have been electrocuted. I could have been dead, and Lord knows what!”

“It’s ironic,” Larry continued. “Because the guy that owned the house, he was out reading his morning paper on a chaise longue next to his swimming pool, and, you know, just the look on this guy’s face – like he hears the noise as I scraped across his roof, and he looks up and he sees this pair of boots and the chair floating right over him, under the power lines, right?

“He sat there mesmerized, just looking at me. After about fifteen seconds, he got out of his chair. He said, ‘Hey, do you need any help?’ And guess what? It turns out he was a pilot. An airline pilot on his day off.”

The city had to turn off the power for that neighbourhood to get Larry down, and by the time he climbed on to a stepladder and back down after his 90-minute flight, he was promptly arrested by police. They were unable to find a law that Larry broke, and miraculously let him go – as he walked away, he told a reporter the reason he flew was because “A man can’t just sit around.”

Later, F.A.A. Safety Inspector Neal Savoy said: "We know he broke some part of the Federal Aviation Act, and as soon as we decide which part it is, a charge will be filed. If he had a pilot's license, we'd suspend that, but he doesn't.” Larry was eventually fined $1,500, for charges including operating an aircraft within an airport traffic area "without establishing and maintaining two-way communications with the control tower."

Although Larry was able to catapult some of his newfound fame into an appearance on the David Letterman Show and across different interviews, he sadly passed away on 6 October 1993, aged 44. Before his death, he was able to donate his curious aircraft to the Smithsonian, and now Inspiration I sits at the National Air and Space Museum in Washington D.C., as testament to the incredible heights reached by inventors like Larry.

Header image: Alamy