balloon flight

balloon flight, passage through the air of a balloon that contains a buoyant gas, such as helium or heated air, for which reason it is also known as lighter-than-air free flight. Unmanned balloons have been used to carry meteorological instruments and may be radio-controlled. Manned balloons have a basket, or gondola, attached below the balloon for the pilot and passengers. A simple harness or boatswain’s chair has become popular for solo flights. By adjusting the ascent and descent of a balloon through the air, a pilot can take advantage of available winds to guide the course of the balloon over the surface of Earth. This element of control, or the lack of it, is the hallmark of sport ballooning.

The first untethered manned balloon ascent took place on November 21, 1783, when two Frenchmen climbed into a wicker basket suspended from the base of a beautifully decorated, paper-lined cotton balloon. The balloon, filled with air heated by burning straw, carried the men aloft for a little more than 20 minutes over Paris. Witnessing this ascension were Louis XVI, members of the French Academy of Sciences, and multitudes of the public, including the American inventor and statesman Benjamin Franklin. This event left a profound impression on the world of the 18th century: men had actually flown! Since that time the field of flight has been taken over by airships, gliders, airplanes, helicopters, and even rockets and spacecraft, but balloons continue to be used for recreation, competitive sport, and scientific exploration.

Hot-air balloons may be used for short flights at low altitudes or taken on “long jumps,” using stronger winter winds to travel hundreds of kilometers at altitudes of up to about 3 km (2 miles). Gas balloons can stay aloft for several days and travel a thousand kilometers or more. Indeed, combination hot-air and gas balloons have crossed continents and oceans and even circled the globe. For scientific research, special gas balloons can float in stable conditions for days or even months at a time, carrying instrument payloads through the upper reaches of the stratosphere.

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The Fédération Aéronautique Internationale was founded in France in 1905. This nongovernmental organization maintains records for manned flights from balloons to spacecraft, as well as records for flights of model aircraft, unmanned aerial vehicles, and sporting events. In addition, various national aeronautics organizations, such as the Balloon Federation of America and the British Balloon and Airship Club, maintain ballooning records. Airworthiness and operating criteria are controlled in the United States by the Federal Aviation Administration (FAA). FAA regulations for ballooning are generally used by all countries, with only minor local variations.

Elements of balloon flight

The three basic principles of buoyancy were discovered by the ancient Greek mathematician and inventor Archimedes, the 17th-century British natural philosopher Robert Boyle, and the 18th-century French physicist Jacques-Alexandre-César Charles:

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Navigating the Sky

1. Archimedes’ principle (3rd century bce), which states that any body completely or partially submerged in a fluid (gas or liquid) at rest is acted upon by an upward, or buoyant, force the magnitude of which is equal to the weight of the fluid displaced by the body;
2. Boyle’s law (1662), which states that the pressure of a given quantity of gas varies inversely as its volume at constant temperature; and
3. Charles’s law (1787), which states that the volume occupied by a fixed amount of gas is directly proportional to its absolute temperature, if the pressure remains constant.

A balloon can carry the difference between its weight (including its enclosed gas) and the weight of the air that it displaces. Nine cubic meters (1,000 cubic feet) of hydrogen weighs about 2.2 kg (5 pounds), the same volume of helium weighs about 4.5 kg (10 pounds), methane 18 kg (40 pounds), and hot air, at normal hot-air balloon operating temperatures, 22.5 kg (50 pounds). Thus, the lifting force of a chosen gas at low altitudes can be obtained by subtracting its weight from the typical weight of the same volume of air (about 34 kg, or 75 pounds, in this example).

Because the atmosphere is compressed by its own weight, it is less dense at higher altitudes. At 3,600 meters (about 12,000 feet) the atmosphere is approximately two-thirds as dense and so will provide two-thirds the buoyancy. This effect continues progressively, so that at 15,000 meters (50,000 feet) it is only one-tenth as dense, at 30,000 meters (100,000 feet) one-hundredth, and at 45,000 meters (150,000 feet) one-thousandth. In order to carry the same load at an altitude of 50 km (30 miles) as at sea level, a balloon would have to be 1,000 times as big and yet weigh the same (that is, keeping everything constant except the balloon’s volume).

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The buoyancy of a hot-air balloon is controlled by heating the air in the balloon or by changing the amount of ballast (extra weight). The buoyancy of a gas balloon is controlled by changing the amount of gas in the balloon or the amount of ballast. Tiny changes in one of these components can force dramatic changes in a balloon’s flight. Just a one- or two-degree change in temperature in a hot-air balloon, a few grams of ballast dropped, or a tiny release of gas will make a balloon ascend or descend accordingly. On the other hand, in violent maneuvers (such as during a storm), whole bags of sand or great blasts of heat from a balloon’s burner may be required for a proper correction. To help in rapid atmospheric cooling, modern hot-air balloons also have very large hot-air release vents in the form of a parachute that can seal and unseal an opening in the top of the balloon.

Changing the altitude of a balloon will permit it to follow different air currents. A 20- or 30-degree difference in wind direction usually occurs in the first few thousand meters of altitude, but a full circle of wind directions (“box winds”) can also occur. Albuquerque, New Mexico, is famous for its box winds, which can be used to climb and descend back to the original launch site. If there is only a simple and stable wind pattern, no additional control is possible. With superior weather monitoring, use of the Global Positioning System (GPS), and radio or satellite communication, remarkable flight control is now possible.

Early hot-air balloons burned straw and alcohol spirits for fuel, though by 1900 these fuels had been replaced with petroleum. Compressed liquefied propane is used almost exclusively today. Hot-air balloon burners use vaporizing coils to preheat the fuel for efficient combustion. Most of these coils are made of stainless steel, but copper coils also work adequately. The burners are mounted, often on gimbals, on the suspension concentration ring between the basket and the mouth of the balloon. Most systems have redundant burners to compensate for problems with defective controls or contaminated fuel. A particularly notorious early problem was leaking seals on control valves.

A variety of materials has been used for the actual balloon, or envelope. Cotton, nylon, and polyester are common for the envelopes of hot-air balloons. Cotton, having a poor weight-to-strength ratio, is only favored for carnival “smoke” balloons. Although gas balloons have sometimes used rubberized cotton, modern sport gas balloons use urethane-coated nylon. Balloons for high-altitude research are generally made of polyethylene or polyester film. When a scientific payload is attached to the bottom point of a modern balloon, the envelope, if given overall excess material circumferentially, will form the shape of an acorn squash. This is a result of the natural stresses on the “skin” caused by the tension from the payload and the varying internal forces of the gas, which depend on the elevation inside the balloon. Additional excess material in the horizontal dimension will only result in loose wrinkles. Less horizontal fullness will cause tight spots or even indentations. A large lightly loaded balloon will be very “fat.” The top will have a large flat or even indented area, and the bottom point will have an obtuse included angle. If the balloon envelope is only a small percentage of the total weight, the balloon will have more of a teardrop shape, and the bottom point will have an acute included angle. This family of cross sections is known as the natural shape.

In addition to the choice of envelopes, an even greater variety of systems for carrying the load or passengers has been used, ranging from a simple trapeze to the sealed environmentally controlled cabin of the stratosphere balloon. For sport ballooning, the traditional wicker basket, albeit with a stainless steel frame, is popular. Criteria for evaluation of a basket design should include toughness, energy absorption, and electrical resistance, but style and marketability are more often the governing factors.