Judging from the videos that pan from the moon to the balloon: the balloon was about 3x smaller in the sky than the moon. Knowing the altitude of the balloon was 68,000 feet, we can fudge the distance from the observer to the balloon as 100,000 feet. Knowing the distance to the moon and the radius of the moon we can use like triangles to estimate that the balloon was ~285 feet across, +/- 20% for estimates.
Edit: updated the estimate. I got radius and diameter mixed up.
This is a clever method and I appreciate that you posted the Wolfram alpha link - always happy when people show their work and I did not realize that you could do things like include (diameter of moon) as variables with it. This is a nit, but if you're busting out an AI enhanced calculator there is no need to make a 40% rounding of 70K to 100k. I got ~200 ft across.
Indeed and trying to estimate how much someone panned across a clear blue sky with more than 20 degree precision isn't how I wanted to spend my Saturday. 80% of the answer for 20% of the effort.
What is real football? I've heard of association football (shortened to soccer by the British), rugby football, Australian rules football, American football and Canadian football but I've never heard of real football.
And which one of those do you figure "real football" refers to? Can you take a wild guess?
It's like saying "the real Albert Einstein", as opposed to good Albert Einstein the baker, who is a local celebrity because of his amazing Apfelstrudel.
I guess it is confusing for Americans to find themselves as the cultural minority in some environment.
I was wondering if there was perhaps another variant of football that I had not heard of called "real football" since there are so many different types. So if real football simply refers to football then why did the OP ask: "Which football? Real football or American football?" if it's apparently so obvious?
>And which one of those do you figure "real football" refers to? Can you take a wild guess?
You no doubt believe that Newton, Henry VIII, Edward the Confessor, William the Conqueror, Canute, Arthur and Launcelot, and Boadicia 1) all played association football, 2) called it the one and only "football", and 3) all other "football" sports around the world are bastard versions of it.
The word "Football" dates from the 13th century. <https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Football_%28word%29> The sport of association football, no. While people have no doubt been kicking round things for entertainment for thousands of years, association football as a sport is no older than other football codes like American, rugby, Gaelic, and AFL; all date from the mid to late 19th century. That's why English-speaking countries have differing meanings for "football", because it refers to the most local popular football code *no matter what that is*. Let me repeat: Association football has no primacy, seniority, or priority here. It is not the "first sport" or "the elder sport" or the "original sport" among football codes.
>I guess it is confusing for Americans to find themselves as the cultural minority in some environment.
"Soccer" is a British English word c. 1889. <http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/magazine-22633980> According to Stephen Szymanski of the University of Michigan, until 1980 "soccer" and "football" were interchangeably used in Britain <https://web.archive.org/web/20140627210952/ns.umich.edu/Rele...>, when "soccer" became less popular because of a mistaken belief that it is an Americanism. The word still is in use in Britain; see TV shows like Soccer Saturday.
Let me repeat: The association and American varieties of football are merely two of several codes that all emerged in the mid-19th century from people in various countries attempting to formalize in some way the informal sport of "running with/kicking the leather-covered thing" that has existed for thousands of years. Not, as the average Briton who thinks the word "soccer" is a product of 1970s American culture vaguely believes, Americans seeing British association football in action and rudely deciding to change the "mother sport" by changing the shape of the ball and letting players carry it.
I guess OP means The football that is played or watched by the majority of people in the world. Other football games have order(s) of magnitude less fans fwiw.
Had this discussion in Japanese the other day. One sport is called soccer サッカー and the other is football in both languages, and then you just have to hear about European languages calling it something similar at companies with an international basis. If you really don't care about either you just call it アメフト so nobody is happy.
It's just under 73 washing machines laid on their backs end-to-end.
That does assume, though, that you got the tallest possible washing machine, which stands at a whopping 47 inches, compared to the industry average of a puny not-even 41 inches.
(It's honestly mind-blowing to me that I could get this data [1] in a few seconds, when it might've been nearly impossible in a sane amount of time ~10 years ago. But I'm also enjoying just citing it really casually.)
Edit: updated the estimate. I got radius and diameter mixed up.
http://www.wolframalpha.com/input/?i=100000%2A%28diameter%20...