Floating house inspired by 'Up'

A team of scientists has created a real-life version of the cartoon balloon house in the hit 2009 movie Up.

PHOTOS: Floating house inspired by 'Up'

In the cartoon world created by Pixar, 78-year-old retiree Carl Frederickson sets out to fulfill his lifelong dream of exploring South America by tying thousands of balloons to his house.

National Geographic proved over the weekend Frederickson's dream was not all hot air.

Using 300 helium-filled weather balloons, a team of scientists, engineers, two balloon pilots and dozens of volunteers managed to fly a house to an altitude of 3000m over California's High Desert for a new National Geographic Channel show called How Hard Can It Be?.

"It's probably close to impossible to actually fly a real house," the show's executive producer Ben Bowie said.

Instead the team custom-built a house, measuring 4.8m x 4.8m x 5.5m, that would be light enough to be lifted by the balloons.

"What you can do … is fly a lightweight house and you can fly it safely with people on board," Bowie said.

The lightweight house flew for about an hour.

Each balloon was nearly 3m tall and contained an entire tank of helium.