The Harvard-Yale hack. Outcome: partial success.

After working on constructing the balloons, beavers, detonators, and control electronics for nine hours friday, I went at 11:00am yesterday for the deploy. We did some final prep work and integration tests, then got ready to transport everything to Harvard.

We were hoping to launch just before halftime, but by the time we were ready to load the balloons into the cars, it was already the third quarter. The first three cars held three balloons and four people. I was assigned as the central balloon wrangler, so I went in the first car. We had lots of fake "Harvard Mars Week 2000" fliers, and we were handing them out and talking to people about the non-existant upcoming conference.

Fortuitously, the perfect place to launch from (upwind of the stadium) was right where the tailgate party was taking place. We were surrounded by very very drunk Harvard jocks who could care less about some dorks with big mylar balloons talking about Mars. Also, the Harvard cops generally stay away from the tailgate party to avoid busting 90% of the undergraduate population for underage drinking.

It took forever for the next car load to arrive. With only four minutes left in the game, we finally got the last balloon on site. As quickly as possible, we attached each balloon to the central maillon and taped a detonator deflator to it. The deflator wires were attached to the electronics box, which, in turn, was attached to the beaver bag. We stripped off the false front panels on each balloon, removing the Harvard "H" and revealing the letters "MIT."

Stan made a call to Jeremy, who was inside the stadium, to get the all-clear for launch... and off it went. There was an amazing amoung of wind, and the giant mass of balloons promptly accelerated to about 25 miles per hour. It worked perfectly. It went straight for the stadium and was about 100' over the wall when it reached the edge.

After a moment, Jeremy sent the release code to the balloon and the shape of the beaver bag changed as a single beaver popped out. It's parachute opened and it glided down into the stadium. Everyone cheered. The drunk Harvards were confused.

The rest of the beavers seemed to be stuck in the bag and we were getting a little anxious that all of this effort would only lead to one beaver being dropped. But after another 10 seconds or so, the bag decided to release the remaining 11 beavers which all came down in a huge flotilla. It was great.

The detonator code was then sent to the balloon and several of the balloons were flattened as the wind pushed the helium out of the freshly burned holes. We didn't want the electronics package to come hurtling down on someone, so we left one balloon with no deflator. Unfortunately, we underestimated the bouyancy of a single balloon and, despite carrying 7 empty balloons and the electronics package, it continued its meteoric rise into the sky, clearly traveling away from us at high speeds.

Several of us walked around the stadium to see if there was any sign of the beavers. We ran into Jeremy and he told us what it looked like from inside. The first beaver was right on target, landing right in the crowd. The remaining beavers dropped just on the far side of the far wall, probably in the street. By the time the first beaver had dropped, the game had been over for about 10 seconds. He says no one was paying any attention to it.

We saw what might have been the parachute from the first beaver sitting in the stands; there was no sign of the other beavers. This probably means that someone picked them up, and that's just fine. We all walked back to Nick's place and watched the video that Jeremy's girlfriend had shot of the event. Unfortunately, her camera proficiency left a bit to be desired.

When the balloon first comes over the edge of the stadium, there's a great shot if it. Then, just as it drops the first beaver, the camera goes crazy. I guess she was excited. Then she zooms in on the beaver bag and watches it until the remaining beavers drop, at which point she loses it again and that's all we see. But it's still a really cool video, to see this big ass balloon come flying at high speed over the stadium. It was really moving.

We celebrated at dinner, then everyone went to sleep. We were exhausted.