Balloons

A balloon is a type of aircraft that remains aloft due to its buoyancy. A balloon travels by moving with the wind. It is distinct from an airship, which is a buoyant aircraft that can be propelled through the air in a controlled manner.
The “basket” or capsule that is suspended by cables beneath a balloon and carries people, animals, or automatic equipment (including cameras and telescopes, and flight-control mechanisms) may also be called the gondola. Types of balloon aircraft 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. “Hot air balloon” is sometimes used incorrectly to denote any balloon that carries people.
* 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 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:
n 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).
n Helium - the gas used today for all airships and most manned balloons.
nAmmonia - used infrequently due to its caustic qualities and limited lift.
n Coal gas - used in the early days of ballooning; it is highly flammable.
* 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 such as the recent circumnavigations.

History

In 1710 in Lisbon, Bartolomeu de Gusmao made a balloon filled with heated air rise inside a room. He also made a balloon named Passarola (English: Big bird) and attempted to lift himself from Saint George Castle in Lisbon, but only managed to harmlessly fall about one kilometre away. According to the Portuguese speaking community, this was the first man ever to fly in human history. However, this claim is not generally recognized by aviation historians outside the Portuguese speaking community, in particular the FAI.
Following Henry Cavendish’s 1766 work on hydrogen, Joseph Black proposed that a balloon filled with hydrogen would be able to rise in the air. The first recorded manned flight was made in a hot air balloon built by the Montgolfier brothers on November 21, 1783. The flight started in Paris and reached a height of 500 feet or so. The pilots, Jean-Fran‡ois Pilƒtre de Rozier and Fran‡ois Laurent d’Arlandes, covered about 5 1/2 miles in 25 minutes. Only a few days later, on December 1, 1783, Professor Jacques Charles and Nicholas Louis Robert made the first gas balloon flight, also from Paris. Their hydrogen-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 of Nesles-la-Vall‚e. The first aircraft disaster occurred in May 1785 when the town of Tullamore, 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 first aviation disaster. To this day, the town shield depicts a phoenix rising from the ashes.