the history of balloon flight. essential questions: how did hot balloons become the first reliable...
TRANSCRIPT
The History of Balloon Flight
Essential Questions:
How did hot balloons become the first reliable vehicles of human flight?
What are the scientific principles behind hot air balloon flight?
The Kongming
lantern
Lantern Launch Video Clip
The oldest type of hot
air balloon is the
Kongming lantern.
It was invented by the Chinese around 200 BC.
Kongming lanterns were made of oiled rice paper with
bamboo frames.
Each lantern was powered
by a small candle.
The Kongming lantern is named after Kong Ming Deng, who ruled
China around 200 AD.
It is said that when Kong Ming Deng was surrounded by an enemy army,
he checked the wind direction and sent the floating lanterns as a signal for
help.
It is also said the shape of the lantern is like the hat Kong Ming
wore.
Kongming Lanterns are still used in Chinese festivals today.
The kongming lantern works on the same
principal as all hot-air
balloons.
Click here for more
information on what makes a hot air balloon
rise.
What causes a hot air balloon to descend?
Since hot air is lighter and less dense than the cool air
around the balloon, the heated air from a burner
causes the whole balloon to rise. When the air inside the balloon structure, called the
envelope, cools down, or when the hot air is let out, the balloon goes down. By letting out the air or firing
the burner, a hot-air balloon pilot can decrease or increase the altitude.
Science Demonstration
Click on images to see the animation:
The birth of the modern
hot air balloon
The first European
demonstration of a hot air
balloon took place on June
4, 1783, in Annonay, France
Joseph and Jacques
Montgolfier, two brothers who
owned a paper mill, sent up an unmanned hot-
air balloon.
The brothers had observed that smoke tended to rise,
and that paper bags placed over a fire expanded and rose.
They thought that smoke contained an undiscovered type of gas,
and that if they could capture that gas in a lightweight bag, the bag
would rise into the air.
Their original test balloon was made of paper and linen and opened at the bottom.
When flaming paper was held near the opening, the bag, called a 'balon', slowly
expanded with the hot air and floated
upward.
The Montgolfiers believed they had discovered a new gas that was
lighter than air. They named this gas after themselves:“Montgolfier
gas”
In fact, the gas was merely air, which became buoyant as it was heated.
The balloon rose because the hot air inside it was lighter than the
surrounding atmosphere.
After testing several paper balloons, the brothers were finally ready to build a large cloth and
paper balloon.
They tested it on June 4, 1783, in the marketplace at Annonay. The balloon rose about 6,562 feet into the air.
After their success, the
brothers went to Paris and built an
even larger balloon.
On September 19, 1783, in Versailles,
the Montgolfiers flew the first
passengers in a basket suspended
below a hot-air balloon.
The passengers were a sheep, a rooster, and a duck.
The eight minute flight took place in front of Louis XVI, Marie Antoinette, and a crowd of
about 130,000 onlookers.
The balloon
flew nearly 2 miles before
returning the
occupants safely to earth.
Confident that a balloon could
be constructed to safely carry
people, the Montgolfier
brothers constructed their largest balloon yet.
The first manned balloon
flight took place on October
15, 1783.
The big balloon- at the end of a tether- rose 84 feet into the
air with its first human passenger:
Jean-François Piltre de Rozier, a twenty-six year old
doctor.
Piltre de Rozier
stayed aloft for almost
four minutes.
He wrote of his experience:
“I felt as if I were flying away from the earth and all its troubles and persecutions forever. It
was not mere delight, it was physical rapture….I am finished with the Earth. From
now on our place is in the sky!”
A few weeks later, on
November 21, 1783, de Rozier
and Marquis d'Arlandes (a
college buddy of Joseph
Montgolfier) became the first people to go up in an untethered
balloon.
It flew from the center of Paris to the
suburbs, about 5.5
miles in 25 minutes.
On January 19, 1784, a huge hot-air balloon
built by the Montgolfiers
carried a total of seven
passengers to a height of 3,000 feet over the
city of Lyons.
The age of human flight had begun
Hot air balloon time lapse