Launching high-altitude helium balloons has been the activity some friends and I do for fun. Over the course of 2 years+ we've been doing this, we had over a dozen of successful launches where we could retrieve the payload.
For kids, this is a great inspiration and educational opportunity, especially for those who are interested in technology and programming. We used Arduinos and Raspberry pis in many components of the payload, from the tracker to the data logger. They get to program and control the behavior then test the hard/software so I personally think it's a great way to hook them up with computers and really understand them. This is one of those instances of "doing crazy stuff" kids are interested in.
For adults, it involves many fun aspects too. Specifically for geeks, the best feature is the optimization of weight, reliability, and features for the payload. Some people did get crazy with party balloons that carry impossibly light and efficient payloads that last for over a year with full tracking and sensory information. It can get surprisingly technical when you want to communicate with the payload reliably from the ground (over the radio wave). You'd be baffled and outraged when it was reported that with all the amazing things we could do, we didn't know peep about a missing airplane. The little phone in our pocket knows and tracks every step we take, you'd think - what's so hard about keeping communication with an object in the line of sight? I think all we don't appreciate enough is how advanced and amazing our cellular network is. When you have cellular communication, you have everything, the economy of scale is real and it works. With (amateur) radio, it's a different story: Many times we'd had flawless successes communicating with the payload, sometimes we just couldn't do it for some mysterious reason with the same equipment. I've grown to be much more sympathetic to people who have to work with that vast amount of distance, space, and power envelop when it comes to tracking some flying object on the sky, let alone on/under the sea.
As a side note, I can't imagine launching such a huge object such as yourself tied to a cluster of balloons to the sky could be something the authority is too fond of.
Some of Leo Bodnar's balloons have circumnavigated the Earth multiple times. The small foil balloons don't expand like a latex balloon does, so they can hold a stable altitude without bursting.
I didn't include a plug, but since you asked we have a website: http://hab.education/ which has video and some information. That website also links to a twitter handle and a facebook group. The founder of our group is extremely active on Twitter. The facebook group is quite active in terms of discussion too, with the obvious condition that you have to have a facebook account, something that I didn't think over very carefully when we built it.
It will surely burst when it reaches about 100k ft. We attach a parachute to the payload to make it descend gradually. Other than that, there is no control over where it's going to land. However, because the payloads are small styrofoam boxes, they don't pose a very serious danger in the rare case that they land on roads. Flight predictors are really surprisingly good at simulating where the payloads will land, so it's usually not a huge surprise.
We'd rather be safe than sorry. So far, nothing really bad has been reported in the HAB community. It will leave a bad stint if something blows up on someone's face.
The balloon is supposed to burst, the payload should have a descent parachute. It's a problem if the balloon doesn't burst and drifts into busy airspace.
For kids, this is a great inspiration and educational opportunity, especially for those who are interested in technology and programming. We used Arduinos and Raspberry pis in many components of the payload, from the tracker to the data logger. They get to program and control the behavior then test the hard/software so I personally think it's a great way to hook them up with computers and really understand them. This is one of those instances of "doing crazy stuff" kids are interested in.
For adults, it involves many fun aspects too. Specifically for geeks, the best feature is the optimization of weight, reliability, and features for the payload. Some people did get crazy with party balloons that carry impossibly light and efficient payloads that last for over a year with full tracking and sensory information. It can get surprisingly technical when you want to communicate with the payload reliably from the ground (over the radio wave). You'd be baffled and outraged when it was reported that with all the amazing things we could do, we didn't know peep about a missing airplane. The little phone in our pocket knows and tracks every step we take, you'd think - what's so hard about keeping communication with an object in the line of sight? I think all we don't appreciate enough is how advanced and amazing our cellular network is. When you have cellular communication, you have everything, the economy of scale is real and it works. With (amateur) radio, it's a different story: Many times we'd had flawless successes communicating with the payload, sometimes we just couldn't do it for some mysterious reason with the same equipment. I've grown to be much more sympathetic to people who have to work with that vast amount of distance, space, and power envelop when it comes to tracking some flying object on the sky, let alone on/under the sea.
As a side note, I can't imagine launching such a huge object such as yourself tied to a cluster of balloons to the sky could be something the authority is too fond of.