[patrickwalton]

I'll bet the main problem here is that they flew over restricted airspace. Basically the entitled Western half of Utah is restricted for Dugway and the salt flats, which is unfortunate, because it's the area that would be easiest to recover your balloon from. I did a high-altitude balloon in Utah a few weeks ago and had no problems, but we stuck to Eastern Utah (https://twitter.com/mpatrickwalton/status/176000350831999008...).

[dylan604]

possibly, but again, contacting ATC would have made this a non-issue. ignorance of the rules/regulation is not an excuse.