Blue View – Hot Air Balloon Fun Facts

Hot air balloons have been around for centuries. Men flew in them long before the Wright brothers were even born, making it the oldest form of manned flight. Here are some trivia and odd facts about hot air balloons…

Temperatures inside the balloons get to around 250 F

Temperatures

As most of us know, the reason hot air balloons fly is that hot air is lighter than cool air and will rise up through any surrounding cool air. So how hot is the air inside a balloon? Typically, the air is heated to around 250º F.

Balloons are most commonly made of nylon which has a melting point of 450º F, well above the usual air temperature inside the balloon.

How high do they go?

A typical balloon flight varies between 500 and 3000 feet above the ground. So, in Denver, your altitude would actually be 5700 to 8200 feet above sea level.

Oxygen is needed above 12,000 feet, so if your balloon flight was in Leadville, CO, where the altitude is 10,000 feet, the balloon would be limited to 2000 feet above the ground.

The highest recorded hot air balloon flight was 68,986 feet by Dr. Vijaypat Singhania in India in 2005. Obviously, oxygen was required for this flight, and since the temperature at 65,000 feet is around -69º F, I’ll bet they also took jackets.

How far do they go?

A typical flight is only a few miles, but it depends entirely on the winds. The world record longest, non-stop flight in a hot air balloon was 25,361 miles by balloonist Bertrand Piccard who, together with Briton Brian Jones, flew around the world in just 20 days in March 1999. (This, of course, obliterated the record of 80 days set by Jules Verne’s Philias Fogg and his French valet in 1872, but then, it probably wouldn’t have counted anyway since Philias did make some of the legs by steamship and others by train.)

Steve Fossett’s “Spirit of Freedom” balloon. Photo courtesy of Simple Flying

The longest solo balloon flight was made by Steve Fossett and was completed in July 2002. He flew 20,482 miles around the world, starting and ending in Australia. It took him just 14 days. Since his balloon held both hot air and helium, I don’t think this qualifies as a true hot air balloon flight, but is still an amazing accomplishment.

First flights

The first known hot air balloons were in China around 250 AD. They were unmanned – basically what we know as Chinese lanterns, and were used for signaling military troops.

The Montgolfier brothers’ balloon. Photo courtesy of Encyclopaedia Britannica

In September 1783, the Montgolfier brothers demonstrated their hot air balloon in France with an unmanned flight lasting ten minutes. The first passenger flight took place shortly after. Since it wasn’t known whether a human could survive such an ordeal, the passengers were a duck, a sheep, and a rooster. They landed unharmed after eight minutes aloft.

A few weeks later, Jean-François Pilâtre de Rozier and François Laurent, Marquis of d’Arlandes became the first men to fly the Montgolfier hot air balloon. They fed the fire through openings in the balloon’s skirt (no propane back then). The balloon rose to about 500 feet and traveled approximately five miles before landing safely 25 minutes later.

Two years later, Pilâtre de Rozier and another man named Romain attempted to cross the English Channel in a balloon of a new design that used both hydrogen and hot air compartments. Unfortunately, the highly flammable hydrogen was too close to the fire… the balloon exploded thirty minutes after liftoff and both men were killed.

The military use of hot air balloons didn’t always work out as planned

Military use of hot air balloons

During the late 1700s and throughout the 1800s, balloons were used frequently as observation posts to determine enemy troop positions and movements and to direct artillery. The first offensive use of balloons occurred in 1849 when Austrian forces attacking Venice floated 200 small hot air balloons over the city, launched from the warship Volcano. Each balloon carried a 25-pound bomb. The Austrians used trial balloons to determine how long it took for a balloon to drift over the besieged city, then used timed fuses that were set to release the bomb at the optimal time. That was the plan anyway. After launching the balloons, the wind shifted, and only one or two of the bombs landed in the city. Most missed the target, while some actually drifted back over the Austrian troops and a few came perilously close to the Volcano.

Champagne toasts

It was difficult to control the descent of the early hot air balloons and they often landed in unexpected places, like in the middle of a farmer’s crops or a livestock pen, scaring the bejesus out of the cattle and ticking off the local farmers. Legend has it that the balloonists of the time started carrying champagne to share with the farmers, hopefully appeasing them somewhat and at least keeping the pitchforks at bay. The tradition stuck, and today, most hot air balloonists celebrate the completion of a successful flight with a champagne toast.

Nazca lines

When we were living aboard Nine of Cups, we spent almost five years exploring South America. One of our favorite inland expeditions took us to the Nazca Lines in Peru. These are a number of ancient designs made in the ground by removing the reddish top layer of pebbles and sand, uncovering the whitish soil underneath. The lines are about six inches deep and up to six feet wide. While some of these geoglyphs are simple, some are huge and complex, stretching over 650 feet across. The scientific community dates these somewhere between 200 BCE and 600 CE. It’s difficult to explain how they were drawn without having an aerial view.

An American, Jim Woodman, theorized that it was possible that the ancient Nazca civilization could have used hot air balloons to observe and direct the construction of the geoglyphs from aloft. To test his theory, he approached British balloon expert, Julian Nott, and together they designed and constructed a hot air balloon using only materials that would have been available to the Nazca. The balloon, the Condor I, was successfully flown in the Nazca desert in 1975. While many in the scientific community remained skeptical, Jim Woodman proved that it was possible that the Nazca could very well have been the first to invent manned flight.

The Tree

The Spider

Nazca line images courtesy of Wikipedia

Collisions

The balloon under us has the right-of-way

When the envelopes of two balloons touch or collide, it's called kissing. This happens on occasion and usually isn't a problem. When the envelope of a rising balloon comes in contact with the basket of a balloon above, it is a problem. Since a pilot can see what's below the balloon, but not what's above, a balloon going upward generally has the right-of-way.

Legal age

A pilot-to-be can get a student license at 14 years of age and become fully licensed for private, non-commercial flights at 16. That means that a new pilot may have to be driven to his balloon by his parents, since he wouldn't be old enough for a driver's license.

Weather

Each day at most balloon gatherings, a local meteorologist hoists a weather flag. A red flag means the launch is canceled, yellow means the launch is postponed in the hopes that the weather might improve, and a green flag indicates that the launch is on. Weather stones are the rocks that are pitched at the meteorologist after too many weather cancellations.

Hope you had as much fun reading these as I did researching them. Stay tuned for Marcie’s blog next week.