Inaeronautics, aballoon is an unpoweredaerostat, which remains aloft or floats due to itsbuoyancy. It may use hot air as a lifting gas, or it may use gas that is not air like hydrogen or helium. A balloon may be free, moving with the wind, ortethered to a fixed point. It is distinct from anairship, which is a powered aerostat that can propel itself through the air in a controlled manner.
Many balloons have abasket,gondola, or capsule suspended beneath the main envelope for carrying people or equipment (including cameras andtelescopes, and flight-control mechanisms).
"Aerostation out at Elbows, or The Itinerant Aeronaut" print illustration and poem (1785)
Aballoon is conceptually the simplest of all flying machines. The balloon is a fabric envelope filled with a gas that islighter than the surrounding atmosphere. As the entire balloon is lessdense than its surroundings, it rises, taking along with it a basket, attached underneath, which carries passengers or payload. Although a balloon has no propulsion system, a degree of directional control is possible by making the balloon rise or sink in altitude to find favorable wind directions.
There are three main types of balloons:
Thehot air balloon orMontgolfière obtains its buoyancy by heating the air inside the balloon; it has become the most common type.
Thegas balloon orCharlière is inflated with a gas of lowermolecular weight than the ambient atmosphere; most gas balloons operate with the internal pressure of the gas the same as thepressure of the surrounding atmosphere; asuperpressure balloon can operate with thelifting gas at pressure that exceeds that of the surrounding air, with the objective of limiting or eliminating the loss of gas from day-time heating; gas balloons are filled with gases such as:
hydrogen – originally used extensively but, since theHindenburg disaster, is now seldom used due to its high flammability;
coal gas – although giving around half the lift of hydrogen,[1] extensively used during the nineteenth and early twentieth century, since it was cheaper than hydrogen and readily available;
helium – used today for all airships and most manned gas balloons;
other gases have includedammonia andmethane, but these have poor lifting capacity and other safety defects and have never been widely used.[2]
TheRozière type has both heated and unheated lifting gases in separate gasbags. This type of balloon is sometimes used for long-distance record flights, such as therecent circumnavigations, but is not otherwise in use.
Both the hot air, or Montgolfière, balloon and the gas balloon are still in common use. Montgolfière balloons are relatively inexpensive, as they do not require high-grade materials for their envelopes, and they are popular for balloonist sport activity.
Hot air balloons, San DiegoHot air balloon taking off
The first balloon which carried passengers used hot air to obtain buoyancy and was built by the brothersJoseph and Etienne Montgolfier inAnnonay, France in 1783: the first passenger flight was 19 September 1783, carrying a sheep, a duck, and a rooster.
The first tethered manned balloon flight was by a larger Montgolfier balloon, probably on 15 October 1783. The first free balloon flight was by the same Montgolfier balloon on 21 November 1783.
When heated, air expands, so a given volume of space contains less air. This makes it lighter and, if its lifting power is greater than the weight of the balloon containing it, it will lift the balloon upwards. A hot air balloon can only stay up while it has fuel for its burner, to keep the air hot enough.
The Montgolfiers' early hot air balloons used a solid-fuelbrazier which proved less practical than the hydrogen balloons that had followed almost immediately, and hot air ballooning soon died out.
In the 1950s, the convenience and low cost of bottled gas burners led to a revival of hot air ballooning for sport and leisure.
The height or altitude of a hot air balloon is controlled by turning the burner up or down as needed, unlike a gas balloon where ballast weights are often carried so that they can be dropped if the balloon gets too low, and in order to land some lifting gas must be vented through a valve.
A man-carrying balloon using the light gas hydrogen for buoyancy was made by ProfessorJacques Charles and flown less than a month after the Montgolfier flight, on 1 December 1783. Gas balloons have greaterlift for a given volume, so they do not need to be so large, and they can also stay up for much longer than hot air, so gas balloons dominated ballooning for the next 200 years. In the 19th century, it was common to use manufacturedtown gas (coal gas) to fill balloons; this was not as light as pure hydrogen gas, having about half the lifting power, but it was much cheaper and readily available.
Light gas balloons are predominant in scientific applications, as they are capable of reaching much higher altitudes for much longer periods of time. They are generally filled with helium. Although hydrogen has more lifting power, it is explosive in an atmosphere rich inoxygen. With a few exceptions, scientific balloon missions are unmanned.
There are two types of light-gas balloons: zero-pressure and superpressure. Zero-pressure balloons are the traditional form of light-gas balloon. They are partially inflated with the light gas before launch, with the gas pressure the same both inside and outside the balloon. As the zero-pressure balloon rises, its gas expands to maintain the zero pressure difference, and the balloon's envelope swells.
At night, the gas in a zero-pressure balloon cools and contracts, causing the balloon to sink. A zero-pressure balloon can only maintain altitude by releasing gas when it goes too high, where the expanding gas can threaten to rupture the envelope, or releasing ballast when it sinks too low. Loss of gas and ballast limits the endurance of zero-pressure balloons to a few days.
Asuperpressure balloon, in contrast, has a tough and inelastic envelope that is filled with light gas to pressure higher than that of the external atmosphere, and then sealed. The superpressure balloon cannot change size greatly, and so maintains a generally constant volume. The superpressure balloon maintains an altitude of constant density in the atmosphere, and can maintain flight until gas leakage gradually brings it down.[3]
Superpressure balloons offer flight endurance of months, rather than days. In fact, in typical operation an Earth-based superpressure balloon mission is ended by a command from ground control to open the envelope, rather than by natural leakage of gas.
High-altitude balloons are used as high flying vessels to carry scientific instruments (likeweather balloons), or reach near-space altitudes to take footage or photos of the earth. These balloons can fly over 100,000 feet (30.5 km) into the air, and are designed to burst at a set altitude where the parachute will deploy to safely carry the payload back to earth.[4]
Early hot air balloons could not stay up for very long because they used a lot of fuel, while early hydrogen balloons were difficult to take higher or lower as desired because the aeronaut could only vent the gas or drop off ballast a limited number of times.Pilâtre de Rozier realised that for a long-distance flight such as crossing theEnglish Channel, the aeronaut would need to make use of the differing wind directions at different altitudes. It would be essential therefore to have good control of altitude while still able to stay up for a long time. He developed a combination balloon having two gas bags, theRozier balloon. The upper one held hydrogen and provided most of the steady lift. The lower one held hot air and could be quickly heated or cooled to provide the varying lift for good altitude control.
In 1785 Pilâtre de Rozier took off in an attempt to fly across the Channel, but shortly into the flight the hydrogen gas bag caught fire and de Rozier did not survive the ensuing accident. This earned de Rozier the title "The First to Fly and the First to Die".
It wasn't until the 1980s that technology was developed to allow safe operation of the Rozier type, for example by using non-flammable helium as the lifting gas, and several designs have successfully undertaken long-distance flights.
A tetheredhelium balloon gives the public rides to500 feet (150 m) above the city ofBristol, England. The inset shows detail of the gondola.
As an alternative to free flight, a balloon may betethered to allow reliable take off and landing at the same location. Some of the earliest balloon flights were tethered for safety, and since then balloons have been tethered for many purposes, including military observation and aerial barrage, meteorological and commercial uses.
The natural spherical shape of a balloon is unstable in high winds. Tethered balloons for use in windy conditions are often stabilised by aerodynamic shaping and connecting to the tether by a halter arrangement. These are calledkite balloons.
A kite balloon is distinct from akytoon, which obtains a portion of its lift aerodynamically.
A modern Kongming LanternBartolomeu de Gusmão's prototype airshipPassarola devised 1709.
Unmanned hot air balloons are mentioned in Chinese history.Zhuge Liang of theShu Han kingdom, in theThree Kingdoms era (220–280 AD) used airborne lanterns for military signaling. These lanterns are known asKongming lanterns (Kǒngmíng dēng孔明灯).[5][6] The Mongolian army learned of theKongming lantern from the Chinese and used it inBattle of Legnica during the Mongol invasion of Poland.[7]In his work „Il volare non e imposible come fin hora universalmente e stato creduto” ("Flying is Not Impossible, as was commonly believed until now"), the Polish nobleman and scientistTytus Boratyni presented the concept of flight using a gas lighter than air.[8] In 1709 the Brazilian-Portuguese clericBartolomeu de Gusmão made a balloon filled with heated air rise inside a room inLisbon. On August 8, 1709, in Lisbon, Gusmão managed to lift a small balloon made of paper with hot air about four meters in front of king John V and the Portuguese court[9][10][11][12][13][14] He also claimed to have built a balloon namedPassarola (Big bird) and attempted to lift himself from Saint George Castle in Lisbon, landing about one kilometre away. However the claim of this feat remains uncertain, even though there is record of this flight in the source used by theFAI the exact distance and conditions of the flight are not confirmed.[15]
On 1 December 1783, ProfessorJacques Charles and theRobert brothers made the first gas balloon flight, also from Paris. Theirhydrogen-filled balloon flew to almost 2,000 feet (600 m), stayed aloft for over 2 hours and covered a distance of 27 miles (43 km), landing in the small town ofNesles-la-Vallée.
The first Italian balloon ascent was made by CountPaolo Andreani and two other passengers in a balloon designed and constructed by the three Gerli brothers, on 25 February 1784. A public demonstration occurred inBrugherio a few days later, on 13 March 1784, when the vehicle flew to a height of 1,537 metres (5,043 ft) and a distance of 8 kilometres (5.0 mi).[16] On 28 March Andreani received a standing ovation atLa Scala, and later a medal fromJoseph II, Holy Roman Emperor.
De Rozier, together withJoseph Proust, took part in a further flight on 23 June 1784, in a modified version of the Montgolfiers' first balloon christened LaMarie-Antoinette after the Queen. They took off in front of the King of France and KingGustav III of Sweden. The balloon flew north at an altitude of approximately 3,000 metres, above the clouds, travelling 52 km in 45 minutes before cold and turbulence forced them to descend pastLuzarches, betweenCoye etOrry-la-Ville, near the Chantilly forest.
The first aircraft disaster occurred in May 1785 when the town ofTullamore,County Offaly, Ireland was seriously damaged when the crash of a balloon resulted in a fire that burned down about 100 houses, making the town home to the world's firstaviation disaster. To this day, the town shield depicts aphoenix rising from the ashes.
Several early works about ballooning were published following these early flights, using the now obsolete termaerostation to refer the construction, operation, and navigation of balloons.Tiberius Cavallo'sThe History and Practice of Aerostation was published in 1785.[17] DramatistFrederick Pilon wrote a play calledAerostation in 1785.[18] Other books were published on the subject, also referring to it as aerostation,[19][20][21] including byMonck Mason.[22]
Henri Giffard's tethered passenger balloon prior to an ascent from Tuilerie Garden in 1878.Balloon landing in Mashgh square,Iran (Persia), at the time of Nasser al-Din Shah Qajar, around 1850.
Jean-Pierre Blanchard went on to make the first manned flight of a balloon in America on 9 January 1793, after touring Europe to set the record for the first balloon flight in countries including theAustrian Netherlands, Germany, theNetherlands andPoland. His hydrogen filled balloon took off from a prison yard inPhiladelphia, Pennsylvania. The flight reached5,800 feet (1,770 m) and landed inGloucester County, New Jersey. PresidentGeorge Washington was among the guests observing the takeoff.Sophie Blanchard, married to Jean-Pierre, was the first woman to pilot her own balloon and the first woman to adopt ballooning as a career.[23]
On 29 September 1804, Abraham Hopman became the first Dutchman to make a successful balloon flight in theNetherlands.[24]
Gas balloons became the most common type from the 1790s until the 1960s. The French militaryobservation balloonL'Intrépide of 1795 is the oldest preserved aircraft in Europe; it is on display in theHeeresgeschichtliches Museum in Vienna.Jules Verne wrote a short, non-fiction story, published in 1852, about being stranded aboard a hydrogen balloon.[25]
The earliest successful balloon flight recorded in Australia was by William Dean in 1858. His balloon was gas-filled and travelled 30 km with two people aboard.[26] On 5 January 1870, T. Gale, made an ascent from the Domain in Sydney. His balloon was 17 metres in length by 31 metres in circumference and his ascent, with him seated on the netting, took him about a mile before he landed in Glebe.[27]
Henri Giffard also developed a tethered balloon for passengers in 1878 in theTuileries Garden in Paris. The first tethered balloon in modern times was made in France at Chantilly Castle in 1994 byAerophile SA.
Ballooning developed as a leisure activity. It was given a significant boost when Charles Green discovered that readily-availablecoal gas, then coming into urban use, gave half the lifting power of hydrogen, which had to be specially manufactured. In 1836 Green made an almost 500 mile long-distance flight from London, England toWeilberg in Germany.[28]
The first military use of a balloon was at theBattle of Fleurus in 1794, whenL'Entreprenant was used by theFrench Aerostatic Corps to watch the movements of the enemy. On 2 April 1794, an aeronauts corps was created in the French army; however, given the logistical problems linked with the production of hydrogen on the battlefield (it required constructing ovens and pouring water on white-hot iron), the corps was disbanded in 1799.
Balloons were used by theBritishRoyal Engineers in 1885 for reconnaissance and observation purposes during theBechuanaland Expedition and theSudan Expedition. Although experiments in Britain had been conducted as early as 1863, aSchool of Ballooning was not established atChatham, Medway, Kent until 1888. During theAnglo-Boer War (1899–1902), use was made of observation balloons. A 11,500 cubic feet (330 m3) balloon was kept inflated for 22 days and marched 165 miles into the Transvaal with the British forces.[29]
Hydrogen-filled balloons were widely used duringWorld War I (1914–1918) to detect enemy troop movements and to direct artillery fire. Observers phoned their reports to officers on the ground who then relayed the information to those who needed it. Balloons were frequently targets of opposing aircraft. Planes assigned to attack enemy balloons were often equipped withincendiary bullets, for the purpose of igniting the hydrogen.
TheAeronaut Badge was established by theUnited States Army in World War I to denote service members who were qualified balloon pilots. Observation balloons were retained well after the Great War, being used in the Russo-Finnish Wars, theWinter War of 1939–40, and theContinuation War of 1941–45.
Large helium balloonsare used by the South Korean government and private activists advocating freedom inNorth Korea. They float hundreds of kilometers across the border carrying news from the outside world, illegal radios, foreign currency and gifts of personal hygiene supplies. A North Korean military official has described it as "psychological warfare" and threatened to attack South Korea if their release continued.[31][32]
Ed Yost redesigned the hot air balloon in the late 1950s using rip-stop nylon fabrics and high-poweredpropane burners to create the modern hot air balloon. His first flight of such a balloon, lasting 25 minutes and covering3 miles (5 km), occurred on 22 October 1960 inBruning, Nebraska. Yost's improved design for hot air balloons triggered the modern sport balloon movement. Today, hot air balloons are much more common than gas balloons.
In the late 1970s the British hot air balloonistJulian Nott constructed a hot air balloon using technologies he believed would have been available to theNazca culture ofPeru some 1500 to 2000 years earlier, and demonstrated that it could fly.[33] and again in 2003,[34] Nott has speculated that the Nazca might have used it as a tool for designing theNazca Lines.[33] Nott also pioneered the use ofhybrid energy, wheresolar power is a significant heat source, and in 1981 hecrossed the English Channel.[35]
Tethered gas balloons have been installed asamusement rides in Paris since 1999, in Berlin since 2000, inDisneyland Paris since 2005, in the San Diego Wild Animal Park since 2005, inWalt Disney World in Orlando since 2009, and theDHL Balloon in Singapore in 2006. Modern tethered gas balloons are made byAerophile SAS.
Hot air balloons used in sport flying are sometimes made in special designs to advertise a company or product, such as the Chubbfire extinguisher illustrated.
A balloon in space uses internal gas pressure only to maintain its shape.
TheEcho satellite was aballoon satellite launched into Earth orbit in 1960 and used for passive relay of radio communication.PAGEOS was launched in 1966 for worldwide satellite triangulation, allowing for greater precision in the calculation of different locations on the planet's surface.
In 1984, theSoviet space probesVega 1 and Vega 2 released two balloons with scientific experiments in the atmosphere ofVenus. They transmitted signals for two days to Earth.
On 19 October 1910,Alan Hawley andAugustus Post landed in the wilderness of Quebec, Canada after traveling for 48 hours and 1887.6 kilometers (1,173 mi) from St. Louis during theGordon Bennett International Balloon Race, setting a distance record that held for more than 20 years. It took the men a week to hike out of the woods, during which time search parties had been mobilized and many had taken the pair for dead.[36]
On 13 December 1913 through 17 December 1913Hugo Kaulen stayed aloft for 87 hours. His record lasted until 1976.[37][failed verification]
On 31 August 1933,Alexander Dahl took the first picture of the Earth's curvature in an open hydrogen gas balloon.
The helium-filledExplorer II balloon, piloted byUS Army Air Corps officers Capt. Orvil A. Anderson, Maj. William E. Kepner and Capt. Albert W. Stevens, reached a new record height of 22,066 m (72,395 ft) on 11 November 1935. This followed the same crew's previous near-fatal plunge in July 1934 in a predecessor craft,Explorer, after its canopy ruptured just 190 m (624 ft) short (it transpired) of the then-current altitude record of 22,000 m (72,178 ft) set by the Soviet balloonOsoaviakhim-1.
In 1976,Ed Yost set 13 aviation world's records for distance traveled and amount of time aloft in his attempt to cross theAtlantic Ocean —solo— by balloon (3.938 km, 107:37 h).
In 1978,Ben Abruzzo and his team became the first to cross the Pacific Ocean in a hot air balloon.
The current record altitude for a manned balloon was set at 41,419.0 m (135,889.108 ft) byAlan Eustace on 24 October 2014 as part of theStratEx Space Dive project.[a]
The altitude record for an unmanned balloon is 53.0 kilometres (173,882 ft) in themesosphere, reached with a volume of 60,000 cubic metres. The balloon was launched byJAXA on 25 May 2002 fromIwate Prefecture, Japan.[40] This is the greatest height ever obtained by an atmospheric vehicle. Onlyrockets,rocket planes, andballistic projectiles have flown higher.
In 2015, the two pilots Leonid Tiukhtyaev and Troy Bradley arrived safely inBaja California, Mexico after a journey of 10,711 km. The two men, originally from Russia and the United States of America respectively, started in Japan and flew with a helium balloon over the Pacific. In 160 hours, the balloon named "Two Eagles" arrived in Mexico, which is new distance and duration records for straight gas balloons.[41]
^abc4 May 1961 FAI Absolute Altitude (#2325) record for balloon flight set byMalcolm Ross andVictor Prather is still current, as it requires the balloonist to descend with the balloon. The succeeding altitude records were set by parachutists who either separated from or abandoned the balloon at the flight ceiling.[39]
^Joseph Needham (1965).Science and Civilisation in China: Volume 4, Physics and Physical Technology, Part 2, Mechanical Engineering; rpr. Taipei: Caves Books Ltd.
^Bondaryk P., Gruszczyński J., Kłosowski M., Kopański T. j., Matusiak W., Ruchała P., Rusiecki M., Witkowski R., Historia lotnictwa w Polsce, Carta Blanca, Warsaw 2011.
^AMEIDA, L. Ferrand de, "Gusmão, Bartolomeu Lourenço de", in SERRÃO, Joel, Dicionário de História de Portugal, Porto, Figueirinhas, 1981, vol. III, pp. 184–185
^CARVALHO, História dos Balões, Lisboa, Relógio d'Agua, 1991
^CRUZ FILHO, F. Murillo, Bartolomeu Lourenço de Gusmão: Sua Obra e o Significado Fáustico de Sua Vida, Rio de Janeiro, Biblioteca Reprográfica Xerox, 1985
^SILVA, Inocencio da, ARANHA, Brito, Diccionario Bibliographico Portuguez, Lisboa, Imprensa Nacional, T. I, pp. 332–334
^TAUNAY, Affonso d'Escragnolle, Bartolomeu de Gusmão: inventor do aerostato: a vida e a obra do primeiro inventor americano, S. Paulo, Leia, 1942
^TAUNAY, Affonso d'Escragnolle, Bartholomeu de Gusmão e a sua prioridade aerostatica, S. Paulo: Escolas Profissionaes Salesianas, 1935, Sep. do Annuario da Escola Polytechnica da Univ. de São Paulo, 1935
^ballon.eu/fileadmin/kundenbereich/Ressort_REKORDE/Rekordliste_Deutschland_Status_2011-12-01-1.doc ballon.eu Deutsche Rekordliste, Stand: 1 December 2011
Hot Air Balloon Simulator – learn the dynamics of a hot air balloon on the Internet-based simulator.
Stratocat Historical recompilation project on the use of stratospheric balloons in the scientific research, the military field and the aerospace activity.
Note 1:Atiltwing ortiltrotor aircraft functions as an aeroplane during normal (horizontal) flight and as a helicopter during low-speed flight.
Note 2:For full-size aircraft with powered rotors the rotor is normally tilted to achieve thrust (e.g. in a helicopter). Some toys (e.g.balloon helicopter) do have a powered rotor with no means to tilt the rotor to produce horizontal thrust.
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