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The hot air balloon is the oldest successful human-carrying Flight technology, dating back to its invention by the Montgolfier Brothers in Annonay , France in 1783. The first flight carrying humans was made on November 21 , 1783 , in Paris by Jean-François Pilâtre De Rozier and François Laurent D'Arlandes . Hot air balloons that can be propelled through the air rather than just being pushed along by the Wind are known as Airship s or, more commonly, Thermal Airship s. A hot air balloon consists of a bag called the ) which carries a source of heat capable of producing a sufficient Temperature Gradient between the air inside the envelope and the surrounding air mass to give enough lift to keep the balloon and its passengers aloft. Unlike Gas Balloon s, the envelope does not have to be sealed at the bottom since the rising hot air only exerts pressure on the upper hemisphere of the balloon to provide lift. In today's sport balloons the envelope is generally made from Nylon fabric and the mouth of the balloon (closest to the burner flame) is made from fire resistant material such as Nomex . Recently, balloon envelopes have been made in fantastic shapes, such as hot dogs, rocket ships, and the shapes of commercial products. HISTORY Premodern Balloon the oldest type of Hot Air Balloon ]] Unmanned hot air balloons are popular in Chinese history. Zhuge Liang in the Three Kingdoms era, Shu Han (Shu Kingdom), used airborne lanterns for military signaling. These lanterns are known as Kongming Lantern s (孔明灯). Ancient Chinese Inventions The Ten Thousand Infallible Arts of the Prince of Huai-Nan There is also some speculation that hot air balloons were used by the Nazca Indians of Peru some 1500 years ago as a tool for designing Vast Drawings On The Nazca Plain . The Extraordinary Nazca Prehistoric Balloon First recorded manned balloon flight The first clearly recorded instances of balloons capable of carrying passengers used hot air to obtain Buoyancy and were built by the brothers Joseph-Michel and Jacques-Etienne Montgolfier in Annonay, France. These brothers came from a family of paper manufacturers and had noticed the ash rising in fires. After experimenting with unmanned balloons and flights with animals, the first balloon flight with humans on board took place on October 19 1783 with the scientist Jean-François Pilâtre De Rozier , the manufacture manager, Jean-Baptiste Réveillon and Giroud De Villette , at the ''Folie Titon'' in 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 Jean-François Pilâtre de Rozier and the Marquis Francois D'Arlandes successfully petitioned for the honor. The first hot air balloons were basically cloth bags (sometimes lined with paper) with a smoky fire built on a grill attached to the bottom. They had a tendency to catch fire and be destroyed upon landing, although this was infrequent. Military use ]] The first military use of Aircraft in Europe took place during the French Revolutionary Wars , when the French used a tethered Hydrogen balloon to observe the movements of the Austrian army during the Battle Of Fleurus (1794) . Hot air balloons were employed during the American Civil War . Though the military balloons used by the Union Army Balloon Corps under the command of Prof. Thaddeus S. C. Lowe were limp silk envelopes inflated with Coke Gas (town gas) or hydrogen, the Confederate States Army did attempt to counter with a rigid Montgolfier style hot air, or "hot smoke balloon." Captain John R. Bryant inflated his rigid Cotton balloon with a fire of oil-soaked Pine Cones . The balloon was soon captured by the Union Army as the Confederate's techniques of balloon handling were not competent. Modern revival The first modern hot air balloon was designed and built in 1960 by Ed Yost . He made the first free flight of such an aircraft in Bruning , Nebraska on 22 October 1960 . Initially equipped with a Plastic envelope and Kerosene fuel, Yost's designs rapidly moved onto using a modified Propane powered "weed burner" to heat the air and lightweight nylon fabric for the envelope material. The first modern day hot air balloon to be built in the United Kingdom (UK) was the Bristol Belle . Today Today, hot air balloons are used primarily for recreation. There are some 7,500 hot air balloons operating in the United States . Gas balloons are able to fly to extremely high altitudes. On November 26 , 2005 , Vijaypat Singhania set the world altitude record for highest hot air balloon flight, reaching . He took off from downtown Bombay , India and landed south in Panchale . The previous record of had been set by Per Lindstrand on June 6 , 1988 in Plano, Texas . As with all registered aircraft, oxygen is needed for all crew and passengers for any flight that reaches and exceeds an altitude of . Pacific Flyer'' capsule on a frozen lake in the Canadian Tundra after the first and only crossing of the Pacific in a hot air balloon. Most of the giant Jettisonable Propane Fuel Tank s are no longer attached. One still hangs in front of the two-man sealed pressurized capsule. The flight holds the distance record for a hot air balloon.]] The furthest that a hot air balloon has ever been flown is . On January 15 , 1991 , the ''Virgin Pacific Flyer'' balloon completed the longest flight in a hot air balloon when Per Lindstrand (born in Sweden , but resident in the UK) and Richard Branson of the UK flew from Japan to Northern Canada . With a volume of 74,000 Cubic Metre s (2,600,000 Cubic Feet ), the balloon envelope was the largest ever built for a hot air craft. Designed to fly in the trans-oceanic Jet Stream s the ''Pacific Flyer'' recorded the highest ground speed for a manned balloon at . The longest duration hot air balloon flight ever made is 50 hours and 38 minutes made by Michio Kanda and Hirosuke Tekezawa of Japan on January 2 , 1997 . Balloon World Records CONSTRUCTION A hot air balloon for manned flight uses a single-layered, fabric gas bag (lifting "envelope"), with an opening at the bottom called the mouth or throat. Attached to the envelope is a basket, or gondola, for carrying the passengers. The basket is usually made of wicker and Rattan , but can be made of Aluminium . Mounted above the basket and centered in the mouth is the "burner" which injects a flame into the envelope, heating the air within. The heater or burner is fueled by Propane , a Liquefied Gas stored in pressure vessels, similar to high pressure Forklift Cylinders . Envelope |
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