To me, it doesn't really need to make sense why. I've seen others express incredulity over the idea that if it was a balloon, that Barber's team would not have deflated it in order to move it. We can't know every reason anyone would want something done in a particular way. Or what random ways someone might do something. Was Barber explicitly instructed to move the object as-is? (I think an untrained team deflating and folding up a 20ft diameter balloon on a rock/cactus/etc covered ground carries risk). Was the sling already wrapped and secured on the object when they got there?
Maybe I'm missing something from the interview, but Barber says the closest he got was 150ft because that's how long the cable on the helicopter is. Can someone explain how they would have attached the object to the helicopter? Like the missing steps here:
1. Helicopter is flown to the object, and hovers 150-200ft above the object.
2. ???
3. Object is now secured in a sling and the sling is attached securely to a 150-200ft long cable dangling from the helicopter.
In my mind (unless maybe some system of electromagnets or robotic sling attachments is used) someone had to be on the ground at the pickup site to wrap the sling around the object and attach the sling to the helicopter's line. This person (multiple people?) would be much closer than 150ft, and would be able to estimate how heavy the object was, and whether it was a rigid surface or was soft like an frameless inflated balloon. They'd also maybe have a better sense of what color it was, and would also be much more (compared to someone piloting a moving helicopter 150ft away) able to say whether the object was truly smooth like a polished pearl surface, or whether it had small seams/ridges/wrinkles like this egg-shaped balloon:
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Does the issue of how heavy this 20ft large egg never come up in the interview? I don't recall it being mentioned. The color, shape, size, surface smoothness, and its spiritual and gender aura all does, but not how much it weighs. Would the helicopter pilot know this from some instrument telling them the change in total mass of the helicopter (including cargo), or maybe a sensor on the cargo line? Even without an instrument measurement surely the pilot would have a rough sense of the change in mass from how the craft handled and felt when it lifted the cargo. Like they'd know whether the egg weighed as much as a large SUV (which Barber describes the size as) or whether it seemed like it was a hollow plastic shell.