"Well, not eggzactly. The kid was earthbound, in an attic, no less. If the dad put him up to it, for shame. If the kid concocted/executed the idea himself, pin a medal on him."
The kid let it slip, in a live interview - "we did it for a show."
Or something very close to that. Apparently the family has been pitching themselves as a reality show to everybody in town, but no one's been biting. What's bothered me since the first clip ran is that there's no way a helium balloon that size would EVER carry that much weight. It's just not that big, and it's covered in tinfoil (okay, the teevee said 'tinfoil' but it looks a lot more like mylar) and even without the kid onboard, it never got much in the way of altitude.
Plus, if it did have a kid onboard, flying as low as it did, it would have been really, really easy to bring it down safely. It seemed mostly like a pretty good visual - especially since the dad seemed to have been shooting video the whole while. Add to that that the dad also built it, from scratch, and that he does this kind of thing a lot, it just begs credulity that 60-80 lbs of kid could have snuck onboard unseen, or that he (the dad) would have been unclear about the amount of lift involved and how that would have changed.
Pretty obviously a publicity stunt, though not a very well-thought-out one.
Life Continues, Despite
Evidence to the Contrary
Steven