Flying Like A Human Balloon

I fly a lot in my dreams. Most of the time when I'm flying I'm doing so completely free like some kind of super advanced UFO capable of flying in any direction, in any curved trajectory, at any speed and any orientation, and able to change all of these variables by merely thinking about it. But last night, I had a different kind of flying dream.

I was wearing some kind of suit that could be inflated with helium or hydrogen that allowed me to reduce my weight to less than 10% of normal. So instead of weighing my usual 150lbs I would weigh less than 15 pounds. The result of this change in gravitational and atmospheric buoyancy is that it would be equivalent to walking around a planetary body with less than 1/10ths Earth's gravity. Wearing such a suit would make us twice as light as if we were on the moon. Since we would still retain all of our normal strength, this would give us a whole new level of freedom.

For example, if we could jump 18" high now, with this suit on we could jump over 50 feet high. If we were to go running and then jump, then it wouldn't be that difficult to jump a couple of hundred feet. Imagine donning one of these suits on, then start jumping all over town, from one roof top to another, or from one street to another? Your rate of ascent and decent would be one tenth of normal, so there would be little harm of landing hard. The biggest challenge then would be to avoid getting hit by oncoming vehicles. Probably best that you jump in an open space somewhere.

When I woke up from the dream, I sat down with pen and paper and tried to figure out the practicalities of making such a flying suit. Several obstacles remain in the way of doing this. First is the choice of gas used. Hydrogen would be the most ideal for weight and minimizing the volume of the suit. If the suit gets to bloated it wouldn't give your body much room to maneuver. Otherwise you'd have to place more volume above your head into a traditional balloon like structure, and the more you do this, the more drag you have during your jumps. Chances are such a suit would be impractical with today’s material technology. However, with the right nanomaterials it's possible to create a balloon suit that has no air at all - a vacuum suit. The suit would be inflated by the material form itself, displacing air with vacuum. This would result in the most gain with the least volume of displacement, possibly resulting in a suit that if cleverly designed would allow its user to hop around the planet as if she or he were only 1/10 their normal weight. Oh the possibilities could be fun. I could imagine a whole new range of sports evolving out of their use. Some for of Harry Potterish Quidditch perhaps?