How would the balloons be safer than a building?
well if a balloon falls to earth only the weight of the payload and balloon could do damage.
if a 62 mile high building falls
62 miles...SPACE starts here at 100 kilometers then you have 62 miles of building and payload and probably thousands of people falling on other people possibly even other states depending on location.
even a building that would be as high as the highest recorded gas balloon flights altitude would be practcally impossible to build.
Unmanned gas balloon
The altitude record for unmanned balloons was (1991 edition of Guinness Book) 51.8 km (170,000 ft). The vehicle was a Winzen-Balloon with a volume of 1.35 million cubic metres, which was launched in October 1972 in Chico, California, USA.
In 2002 Japan achieved a new record: an ultra-thin-film balloon named BU60-1 made of polyethylene film 3.4 µm thick with a volume of 60,000 m³ was launched from Sanriku Balloon Center at 6:35 on May 23, 2002. The balloon kept ascending slowly at a speed of 260 m per minute and successfully reached the altitude of 53.0 km (174,000 ft), establishing a new world record for the first time in 30 years.[4]
that is why I think that a combination of balloon and nano ribbon would be the best solution today with todays "used"
technology.
this is what the view would look like from the top of the building.
view from the top of the empire state building
.
