Portmanteau into space: balloonatic


Knowing JD's appreciation of portmanteau words I made a note of one I heard coined by the splendidly named Barth Netterfield during a TV documentary about the BLAST project (a clever low-cost international programme involving the use of balloons to take telescopes into space; well worth a look on Google).

Barth, who was the programme's Canadian Principal Investigator, coined a word to describe anyone crazy enough to explore the history of the universe by balloon: balloonatic.

A clever name and a clever idea: after enough setbacks to make the documentary gripping stuff, the technology worked perfectly.

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