BALLOON

History of Balloons

According to popular lore, the Kongming Lantern (Chinese:孔明灯) was the first hot air balloon,
said to be invented by the sage and military strategist Zhuge Liang, was in the Three Kingdoms era, Shu Kingdom, used airborne lanterns for military signaling. These lanterns are known as Kongming lanterns. There is also some speculation that hot air balloons were used by the Nazca Indians of Peru some 1500 years ago as a tool for designing vast drawings on the Nazca plain

Montgolfiere Balloon

Joseph and Jacques Montgolfier, paper mill owners, were trying to float bags made of paper and fabric. When the brothers held a flame near the opening at the bottom, the bag (called a balon) expanded with hot air and floated upward. The Montgolfier brothers built a larger paper-lined silk balloon and demonstrated it on June 4, 1783, in the marketplace at Annonay. Their balloon (called a Montgolfiere) lifted 6,562 feet into the air.

First Passengers

On September 19, 1783, in Versailles, a Montgolfiere hot air balloon carrying a sheep, a rooster, and a duck flew for eight minutes in front of Louis XVI, Marie Antoinette, and the French court.

First Manned Flight

On October 15, 1783, Pilatre de Rozier and Marquis d'Arlandes were the first human passengers on a Montgolfiere balloon. The balloon was in free flight, meaning it was not tethered.
On January 19, 1784, a huge Montgolfiere hot air balloon carried seven passengers to a height of 3,000 feet over the city of Lyons.

Military use

The first military use of aircraft took place during the French Revolutionary Wars, when the French used a tethered hydrogen balloon to observe the movements of the Austrian army during the Battle of Fleurus (1794). Hot air balloons were employed during the American Civil War. Though the military balloons used by the Union Army Balloon Corps under the command of Prof. Thaddeus S. C. Lowe were limp silk envelopes inflated with coke gas or hydrogen, the Confederate Army did attempt to counter with a rigid Montgolfier style hot air, or "hot smoke balloon." Captain John R. Bryant inflated his rigid cotton balloon with a fire of oil-soaked pine cones. The balloon was soon captured by Union forces as the Confederate's techniques of balloon handling were not competent.

Modern revival

The first modern hot air balloon was designed and built in 1960 by Ed Yost. He made the first free flight of such an aircraft in Bruning, Nebraska on 22 October 1960. Initially equipped with a plastic envelope and kerosene fuel, Yost's designs rapidly moved onto using a modified propane powered "weed burner" to heat the air and lightweight nylon fabric for the envelope material.

Today

Today, hot air balloons are used primarily for recreation. There are some 7,500 hot air balloons operating in the United States.

Hot air balloons are able to fly to extremely high altitudes. On November 26, 2005, Vijaypat Singhania set the world altitude record for highest hot air balloon flight, reaching 21,290 meters (69,852 feet). He took off from downtown Bombay, India and landed 240 km (150 miles) south in Panchale. The previous record of 19,811 meters (64,980 ft) had been set by Per Lindstrand on June 6, 1988 in Plano, Texas. However, like all registered aircraft, oxygen is needed for all crew and passengers for any flight that reaches and exceeds an altitude of 12,500 feet.

On January 15, 1991, a balloon carrying Per Lindstrand (born in Sweden, but resident in the UK, and Richard Branson of the UK flew from Japan to Northern Canada, completing 7,671.91 km. This record was shattered on March 21 1999 when the Breitling Orbiter 3 touched down in Egypt, having circumnavigated the globe and set records for duration (19 days, 21 hours and 55 minutes) and distance (46,759 km).
With a volume of 74,000 m³ (2,600,000 ft³), the balloon envelope was the largest ever built for a hot air craft. Designed to fly in the trans-oceanic jetstreams the Pacific Flyer recorded the highest ground speed for a manned balloon at 245 mph (394 km/h).

Types of balloon aircraft

Rozière balloons use both heated and unheated lifting gases. The most common modern use of this type of balloon is for long-distance record flights

There are three main types of balloon aircraft:

• Hot air balloons obtain their buoyancy by heating the air inside the balloon. They are the most common type of balloon aircraft.
  
  
• Gas balloons are inflated with a gas of lower molecular weight than the ambient atmosphere. Most gas balloons operate with the internal pressure of the gas being the same as the pressure of the surrounding atmosphere. There is a special type of gas balloon, called a superpressure balloon, that can operate with the lifting gas at pressure that exceeds the pressure 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 - not widely used for aircraft since the Hindenburg disaster because of high flammability (except for some sport balloons as well as nearly all unmanned scientific and weather balloons).
    
    
  • helium - the gas used today for all airships and most manned balloons.
    
    
  • ammonia - used infrequently due to its caustic qualities and limited lift.
    
    
  • o coal gas - used in the early days of ballooning; it is highly flammable.
    

Today’s hot air balloon systems consist of three major components; envelope, basket and burner. The most popular envelope size is 55 feet in diameter with a volume of approximately 77,500 cubic feet. It is the AX-7 size category.

The wicker basket houses the propane fuel tanks and flight instruments. An altimeter, rate of climb meter, and pyrometer are standard instruments in balloon systems.

Sources:
http://inventors.about.com/od/astartinventions/ss/airship_2.htm
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hot_air_ballooning#Tethering