The problem here has almost nothing to do with the atmosphere and nearly everything to do with the massive amount of energy required to cancel out the inertia of already moving at about 1000MPH radially relative to the center of the earth, assuming anon launches his magic balloon from the equator. The kind of energy that takes, oh IDK, a fucking rocket.
In other words, if you could actually float above the atmosphere somehow, you wouldn’t just stop relative to the surface of the planet because it’s not the air current that carries you along, but the fact that you started off moving along with the earth’s rotation and did nothing to slow down.
The problem here has almost nothing to do with the atmosphere and nearly everything to do with the massive amount of energy required to cancel out the inertia of already moving at about 1000MPH radially relative to the center of the earth, assuming anon launches his magic balloon from the equator. The kind of energy that takes, oh IDK, a fucking rocket.
In other words, if you could actually float above the atmosphere somehow, you wouldn’t just stop relative to the surface of the planet because it’s not the air current that carries you along, but the fact that you started off moving along with the earth’s rotation and did nothing to slow down.
Well that’s why they’re going really high up, so the earth rotates beneath them