Talk:Hot air balloon

Erroneous info here

This may be a good article, but it makes a great error, as do many other web site articles, on insisting that the balloons used in the Civil War were hot air balloons. All the balloons of the North used gas, light coke gas at first, then generated hydrogen gas later on. The Enterprise (balloon) was not a military balloon. Please see my edited article there. Please se my article on the Union Army Balloon Corps there. The Confederates tried a couple oh Montgolfier style "hot smoke" balloons, but they also employed coke gas when available---and at that, not to much success. Magi Media 19:17, 25 February 2006 (UTC)Magi Media

And as for this line — was heard of it. Ben Franklin was in France to witness the first Montgolfier flight! But where does this citation come from:

The first hot air balloon flight in the United States took place on January 9, 1793. The 45 minute flight started in Philadelphia and ended in Gloucester County, New Jersey. The flight was witnessed by George Washington.

I can confirm that the first balloon flight in the US was indeed made by Jean-Pierre Blanchard on 9-Jan-1793 from Philidelphia. I can't confirm the landing point or if Washington witnessed the flight. Also, I don't know if it was a hot air or gas balloon. Blanchard is known to have flown both types at different times. As for Franklin, he did indeed live in (or near) Paris from 1776 thru 1785. I recall that he did witness at least one balloon flight during this period, but I don't know if this includes the very first one. However, since the first flight was highly publicized in advance and Franklin was "at court" at that time and he was famous at the time primarily for his scientific work, my guess is that he would have moved Heaven and Earth to be there. But, I don't have a specific reference at hand. As for the Civil War gas balloons: good point. I suggest removing the discussion of Lowe's gas balloons, etc from this article completely. It belongs in the "gas balloon" and/or "balloon (aircraft)" articles, not here. A short mention of smoke balloons does seem appropriate. By the way, there is no "smoke balloon" article yet. Also, since we're messing with the history section, what's this stuff about the first balloons being "rigid"? I never heard of any mention of an internal structure in them before. Blimpguy 22:22, 18 March 2006 (UTC)

Circumnavigation

I saw an article arguing that Steve Fossett's trip wasn't technically a circumnavigation, because he was south of the 60th parallel; I don't know how common a view this is, and leave it to those more knowledgable to decide whether to add any discussion. Piha 21:20, 25 Aug 2003 (UTC)

The organization that sets the rules for these sorts of records is the Paris based FAI (www.fai.org). The way it works, each type of aircraft has its own rule making committee. As it happens, the rules for balloon circumnavigation are different from those for other types of aircraft. The route Fossett took qualifies for a balloon circumnavigation, but would not have qualified for an airplane, etc.

Blimpguy 00:11, 27 Aug 2003 (UTC)

That makes sense; thanks very much for explaining. Piha 02:20, 27 Aug 2003 (UTC)

Don't understand the change of "first" to "second" manifestation of air power. I have reverted. If reverting back again please add (at least as an aside) what the first one is. Blimpguy 23:14, 6 Oct 2004 (UTC)

Annual Balloon Festivals

As a thoroughly BBQ'ed newbie, I would first like a concensus to add more Annual Balloon Festivals.

I personally find Annual Balloon Festivals a wholesome community event which is great for the community.

Some reccommendation (cautiously without URLs):

• 32nd Annual, Adirondack Hot Air Balloon Festival - NY
• 31st Annual, Colorado Balloon Classic - CO
• 29th Annual, Helen to the Atlantic Balloon Race - GA
• 26th annual, Thunderbird balloon Classic - AZ
• 25th Annual, Plano Balloon Festival - TX
• 24th Annual, Lisle Eyes to the Skies Festival - IL
• 21th Annual, Hot Air Jubilee - MI
• 20th Annual, University Motors Mountaineer Balloon Festival - WV
• 19th Annual, High Hopes Balloon Festival - NH
• 17th Annual, World Hot Air Balloon Championship
• 15th Annual, Hot Air Balloons Championship of Poland - (Poland)
• 14th Annual, Kiwanis Balloonfest - IN
• 14th Annual, Gatineau Hot Air Balloon Festival (Quebec - Canada)
• 12th Annual, European HAB Championships - (Luxembourg)
• 10th Annual, Northwest Connecticut Balloon Festival - CT
• 6th Annual, Great Northern Balloon Festival & Air Show 2004 - NY
• 6th Annual, Balonmania (Czech Republic)
• 4th Annual, Mansfield Balloon Festival - (Australia)
• 2nd Annual, Big Bear Balloon Festival - OH
• First Annual, Warren County Farmers' Fair First Annual Balloon Festival - NJ

weide 02:49, 5 Dec 2004 (UTC)

I'm not sure that a list of balloon festivals would add anything to this page. It is also not very encyclopedic. If an individual event is notable for some reason (it is the biggest in a region for example) then the event should have a wiki article on it in its own rightand a link provided from this page. ChrisUK

Perhaps the right thing is start a new page "list of annual balloon festivals". I would organize it on a per country basis. Blimpguy 21:53, 5 Dec 2004 (UTC)

Sounds a good idea to me, then this page could link directly to the list. Over to you weide to create one - your list looks like a good start already ChrisUK 22:23, 5 Dec 2004 (UTC)

Exactly - a new page "list of annual balloon festivals".

Each Festival would at least show as a red link (no target page yet existent) with an implied request for expansion. A separate general page "Balloon Festivals" would be nice, with an article on the benefits to communities that have one. weide 22:30, 5 Dec 2004 (UTC)

DONE - please feel free to edit. weide 22:50, 5 Dec 2004 (UTC)

Can't find the new page. Please add a link to it at the bottom of the main article. Blimpguy 23:02, 5 Dec 2004 (UTC)

I changed the header to be a link. Should I add an Internal Link section?

I think that I will break out a section United States Baloon Festivals on that new page, with the other countries above it. weide 23:05, 5 Dec 2004 (UTC)

Good new page started - I'm just going to move the wiki link away from the sub heading and into the text, since the wiki style guides don't like links in subheadings see Wikipedia:Manual of Style (headings)

Erroneous addition of "1919" picture

RI -

I believe the picture you added is not of hot air balloons but rather of observation and/or barrage balloons from early in last century. These are filled with unheated gas (typically hydrogen) see barrage balloon. It's a nice picture, you might consider adding it to the barrage balloon article. Blimpguy 18:41, 28 May 2005 (UTC)

Well, I took my idea of what this is from the image source, which clearly says they are hot air balloons. I remember looking at the picture thinking "Wow, these hot air balloon designs sure look unusual", but obviously I didn't think enough. Thank you for catching this. Rl 20:07, 28 May 2005 (UTC)

I moved the image to Image:Balloons 1919.jpg. I'm not sure about adding it to barrage balloon, I'd rather not be wrong again. Rl 20:20, 28 May 2005 (UTC)

Delisted GA

There are no references. slambo 10:59, 24 October 2005 (UTC)

Added References section and put article back on good article list. Although I think the criticism was a tad excessive. Good articles can have one or two elements missing and still be good.

formula for lift

User 194.182.98.2 added the following

The formula for the lift of a hot-air balloon is:

L=[do To/po] Vpa [1/Ta – 1/Tb] 1b

Where: do = surface density, To = surface temperature, po = Surface pressure, V = balloon volume, pa = ambient pressure, Ta = ambient temperatur, Tb = balloon temperatur

This looks like nonsense to me. If not, please explain. Blimpguy 13:35, 21 December 2005 (UTC)

I have tried to add material on the physics of lift - relating the uplift due to displaced air at ambient temperature to the total weight given in the article. However, at the first attempt the total weight was slightly greater than the uplift! I think this is due to an error in the density of the hot air, so I have suggested a correction to this as well, but this now makes that section less clear. Should I just delete the original values? BenKeeping 08:31, 4 September 2007 (UTC)

Pictures

I just rearranged everything and took some out; the article was way too crowded before. Hopefully this won't offend anyone. I tried to make it more logical and neat, because some of the pictures were redundant. In any case, I think it looks better now, and the first two pictures go together pretty well because they're both at night.--Zambaretzu 15:11, 21 March 2006 (UTC)

In my opinion it's back to looking awful picture-wise. Compare to my last version; if other people agree I might rearrange the pictures again.--Zambaretzu 08:26, 4 April 2006 (UTC)

Be bold in editing.Blimpguy 12:03, 4 April 2006 (UTC)

Looks alot better

Misc.

Could someone take a look at the imperial/metric useage in the 3rd paragraph on The Revival of the Hot-Air Balloon and make it consistent? At the moment it is rather confusing. I would edit, but unfortunately numbers are most certainly not my forte. Sephui 01:43, 15 May 2006 (UTC)

Thin layers of metal?

"The first hot air balloons were basically cloth bags lined with a thin layer of metal ..."

Can this possibly be true? What kind of metal did they use? Even a thin layer must have weighed a lot. Any references? AndrewDressel 11:59, 31 May 2006 (UTC)

AndrewDressel -- You're right. I did add that bit about metal. And not all that long ago. I have to agree that it doesn't seem right to me either. Not impossible. A layer of "tin foil" would be a clever and useful lining for a flammable material and not all that heavy. But a quick review of my library on the subject finds no confirmation. The first Montgolfier balloons were certainly cloth -- sometimes lined with paper. I'll switch the wording from metal to paper . As I'm not prone to random visions, I don't think I made it up. So, when I get a chance, I'll take a more thorough look through my books on the subject to see where I might have gotten the metal bit. Regards. Blimpguy 00:00, 2 June 2006 (UTC)

"NASA" nonsense.

I removed this, as it looked like errant nonsense to me. If it was legit, it should probably have a source... 68.39.174.238 14:45, 15 June 2006 (UTC)

Nonsense indeed. At best it is a confused version of some serious proposals to use gas balloons for exploring Mars and Venus. But hot air, I think not. Blimpguy 14:58, 15 June 2006 (UTC)

Roziere Picture

I moved the technical picture labeled as the Virgin Pacific Flyer to the Roziere Balloon page as it is actually a drawing of the Virgin Global Challenger balloon which was a Roziere.

GA Re-Review and In-line citations

Members of the Wikipedia:WikiProject Good articles are in the process of doing a re-review of current Good Article listings to ensure compliance with the standards of the Good Article Criteria. (Discussion of the changes and re-review can be found here). A significant change to the GA criteria is the mandatory use of some sort of in-line citation (In accordance to WP:CITE) to be used in order for an article to pass the verification and reference criteria. Currently this article does not include in-line citations. It is recommended that the article's editors take a look at the inclusion of in-line citations as well as how the article stacks up against the rest of the Good Article criteria. GA reviewers will give you at least a week's time from the date of this notice to work on the in-line citations before doing a full re-review and deciding if the article still merits being considered a Good Article or would need to be de-listed. If you have any questions, please don't hesitate to contact us on the Good Article project talk page or you may contact me personally. On behalf of the Good Articles Project, I want to thank you for all the time and effort that you have put into working on this article and improving the overall quality of the Wikipedia project. LuciferMorgan 02:46, 13 December 2006 (UTC)

Tone

155.232.128.10 (talk) thinks "this article or section is not written in the formal tone expected of an encyclopedia article", but declined to provide any examples. I've just read through it, and it sounds good to me. Suggestions anyone? -AndrewDressel 14:30, 23 February 2007 (UTC)

I guess Shomari15 disagrees, so off the tag comes. That was easy. -AndrewDressel 14:37, 27 February 2007 (UTC)

External Links: the spam tag

I think that the solar balloons link is a spam link, but I want to know what other people think. Thank you Stwalkerster 21:17, 7 March 2007 (UTC)

Article getting long

WP now reports "This page is 39 kilobytes long." I suggest we re-activate (remove the redirect from) the Hot air ballooning article and move content about the activity, as opposed to the equipment, to that new article. This has worked well in with Bicycle and Cycling and Motorcycle and Motorcycling. Comments?

Well, it is done, for the better, I hope. At least the article is back under the suggested maximum of 32k, and the table of contents isn't quite as long. I'm not sure how to handle history, so I've included it in both for now. -AndrewDressel 15:41, 9 March 2007 (UTC)

Kites

"The kite is another old successful human flight technology dating from earlier than Hot air balloons." -User:Ksyrie

I see at least two issues with this addition. First, it is unreferenced. Second, even the kite article does not call kites "human flight technology" but uses "flying tethered man-made object" instead. The distinction I believe is whether humans are carried aloft. At some point, kites have been used to carry humans aloft, but it is not clear that this ever happened before 1783.

Finally, if this kite comment remains, the distinction should be made that the hot air balloon flights beginning in 1783 were free flights: untethered. -AndrewDressel 20:24, 2 April 2007 (UTC)

Also, it is not clear if the ballooning "dating back to the Zhuge Liang in 2 or 3rd centuary" carried any human passengers. That is what is meant by "successful human flight technology". If not, it should not be in this article. References, anyone? -AndrewDressel 14:31, 3 April 2007 (UTC)

Now I see "Unmanned hot air balloons are popular in Chinese history" in the history section, so it does not fit in what is described as "successful human flight technology". -AndrewDressel 17:42, 3 April 2007 (UTC)

When was the first manned flight with hot air balloons?

I see two contradictory paragraphs here. the first one is in the introduction, the second one in the History section:

1. "The first flight carrying humans was made on November 21, 1783, in Paris by Pilâtre de Rozier and the Marquis d'Arlandes."
2. "...the first balloon flight with humans on board took place on October 19, 1783 with the physician Pilâtre de Rozier, the manufacture manager, Jean-Baptiste Réveillon and Giroud de Villette, at the Folie Titon in actual Paris. Officially, the first flight was 1 month later, 21 November 1783. King Louis XVI had originally decreed that condemned criminals would be the first pilots, but a young physicist named Pilâtre de Rozier and the Marquis Francois d'Arlandes successfully petitioned for the honor. "
   

It is needed to clarifiy this. Mazarin07 19:52, 22 April 2007 (UTC)

This is still an issue 2 months later! Due to google exposure, this page will probably get a good bit more traffic. Fix these facts! -- Anon —Preceding unsigned comment added by 68.54.165.204 (talk) 17:55, 4 June 2008 (UTC)

Flying eggs

I believe the examples listed are of eggshells propelled by rapidly escaping jets of gas and not lifted by buoyancy. That is why the 2nd and 3rd examples mention closing up the hole, in order to build pressure. Without a hole for expanding gas to escape or the flexibility to expand in volume, a vessel can never become lighter than the air it displaces. Can anyone find a good source for egg volume and egg shell mass? I suspect it will be trivial to show that even if the interior of an eggshell were completely evacuated, its mass far out weighs the air it displaces. I'd just weigh an empty eggshell myself, but that would be OR. -AndrewDressel 12:12, 22 October 2007 (UTC)

Here is the text from the article:

Yet the first known evidence of model flight in China employing the use of hot air comes from the Huainanzi, a Taoist book written by the Chinese prince Liu An in the 2nd century BC. This ancient Chinese text stated:

“ Eggs can be made to fly in the air by the aid of burning tinder...Take an egg and remove the contents of the shell, then ignite a little mugwort tinder (inside the hole) so as to cause a strong air-current. The egg will of itself rise in the air and fly away. ”

A similar method of making egg shells float in the air on their own accord is discussed in Rashi's commentary on the bible "Even were you to fill an eggshell with dew and close up its opening and place it in the sun, it will, on its own, rise into the air"(Rashi's commentary on exodus chapter 16 verse 14), and was re-discovered in Europe by the 17th century, yet this was achieved by means of steam, not hot air like in the earlier Chinese experiment. Jacques de Fonteny's poem L'Oeuf de Pasques written in 1616 was one of the earliest accounts that explained the procedure. A small hole was made on the egg's outer shell, whereupon all its contents could be drained; after a period of drying, a small amount of water was poured in through the tiny hole and sealed with wax. When set in the hot sun, the steam produced by the water inside the egg would cause it to temporarily float in the air, then fall back down.

And here is the reference showing how it is simply impossible. The mass of an empty egg shell it too great (7 g (0.247 oz)) for the buoyancy caused by the air it displaces (0.035 grams (0.001 oz)) to ever lift it. I suspect these descriptions may be reporting jet action, but that has no place in a hot air balloon article.

Well, a normal large hen's egg has a volume of about 70 ml (4.272 cu in), and the shell weighs about 7 g (0.247 oz). An unboiled egg is sealed by a material in the shell, and by a membrane that excludes water but through which gases can diffuse for the respiration of the embryo. A boiled egg cannot be emptied through a small hole, and the dried membrane of an unboiled egg would probably be a good seal. That is neither here nor there, however, since the weight of the air displaced by the eggshell is about 0.09 grams, and this is the maximum buoyant force. Filled with water vapour, the buoyancy is closer to 0.035 g (0.001 oz), which is too small for liftoff by a factor of 200. If I have not made some gross error, I believe it would be a waste of time trying to fly eggs.

-Dr James B. Calvert, Associate Professor Emeritus of Engineering, University of Denver, Registered Professional Engineer, State of Colorado No.12317 http://mysite.du.edu/~jcalvert/humor/eggs.htm

-AndrewDressel (talk) 14:32, 28 December 2007 (UTC)

Try using a naked [egg shell] http://www.exploratorium.edu/cooking/eggs/activity-naked.html which is less than 1/250 of the total eggshell mass which would cover the amount needed to make it fly. Additionaly Rashi's commentary on the bible was translated wrong. Rashi uses the word "shfoferes" which properly translated would mean the egg membrane not the shell which is called klipa. Therefore this does belong in the article since this would be the first hot air balloon. —Preceding unsigned comment added by Beebee2100 (talk • contribs) 07:20, 18 January 2008 (UTC)

Cool. All we need now is a reference for that 1/250 number, and for the mistranslation. Without them, this is original research and cannot stay. -AndrewDressel (talk) 12:55, 18 January 2008 (UTC)

Simply changing the wording in the "translation" doesn't cut it. Without references, it is original research.

A method of making objects float in the air on their own accord by means of hot air is discussed by the 11th century C.E. Jewish scholar Rashi in his commentary on the bible "Even were you to fill an eggshell membrane with dew and close up its opening and place it in the sun, it will, on its own, rise into the air" -Rashi Exodus Chapter 16 Verse 14

Where is this quotation take from? Certainly not Rashi's original writing. Whose translation is it? Where is the reference for the membrane weighing 1/250 of the total eggshell? -AndrewDressel (talk) 14:11, 30 April 2008 (UTC)

Fair use rationale for Image:Virginpaccapsule.jpg

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BetacommandBot (talk) 02:39, 12 February 2008 (UTC)

Military use

The section of military use only seems to be mentioning other balloon types. —Preceding unsigned comment added by 198.54.202.102 (talk) 02:29, 8 April 2008 (UTC)

Fsbric Coatings

"Impermeability" is misspelled as "impermiability."