47 Fun Facts About Hot Air Balloons

What fuel do most modern hot air balloon burners burn?

Propane. It rides in the basket as a compressed liquid, and the burner runs it through a coil heated by its own flame so that it reaches the jets as gas and burns far more fiercely.

The Montgolfier brothers, who launched the first hot air balloons in 1783, ran which family business?

Paper-making. The family mills near Annonay paid for the experiments and supplied the material: the first big balloon was cloth lined with layers of paper.

Which American envoy watched the first manned balloon flight over Paris in 1783 and described it in his journal?

Benjamin Franklin. Watching from the terrace of his house, he noted how the two aeronauts lowered their hats to salute the crowd as the balloon climbed.

King Louis XVI originally decreed that which group would be the first people to fly in a balloon?

Condemned criminals. A young science teacher and an army officer argued that the honour belonged to men of standing, won the king over and made the flight themselves.

A duck and a rooster shared the first passenger balloon flight in 1783 with which larger animal?

A sheep. All three landed unharmed after eight minutes over Versailles, and Louis XVI rewarded the 'heroes of the air' with a home in his royal menagerie.

What did Joseph Montgolfier first think was the buoyant part of fire lifting his test boxes?

The smoke. He believed fire gave off a special light gas, soon called Montgolfier gas, so the brothers burned wool and damp straw to make as much of it as they could.

What do crews use to part-fill a balloon on the ground before adding heat?

A powerful fan. Cold air gives the envelope its shape first; only then does the crew aim the burner flame into the mouth to heat the air and stand the balloon upright.

What became of the first hydrogen balloon when it came down in the French countryside in 1783?

Villagers attacked it. Terrified farmers at Gonesse, a few miles from Paris, set about the unmanned silk bag with pitchforks and knives until nothing useful was left.

What was Pilâtre de Rozier, the first balloon pilot, attempting when his craft crashed in June 1785?

Crossing the English Channel. His balloon caught fire about half an hour after leaving Boulogne, and he and his companion became the first people killed in an air crash.

At Fleurus in 1794 the French army first flew a balloon over a major battle, to do what?

Watch enemy movements. Two officers hung over the field all day in the tethered l'Entreprenant, sending notes on the Austrian positions down to the generals below.

Which Three Kingdoms strategist is said to have used sky lanterns for military signalling?

Zhuge Liang. Tradition says he sent up a lantern carrying a call for help when enemy troops had him surrounded, and China still calls sky lanterns Kongming lanterns after his courtesy name.

Which country's king saw the priest Bartolomeu de Gusmão demonstrate a small hot-air craft in 1709?

Portugal. The Brazilian-born priest sent his unmanned model up before John V and the court in Lisbon, 74 years before the Montgolfiers' first public flight.

Julian Nott flew a 1975 balloon to test whether which ancient people might have flown over their desert drawings?

The Nazca. The idea was his fellow flier Jim Woodman's, and Nott, a sceptic at first, said the flight proved only that the ancients could have flown, not that they did.

Which American made the first free flight of a modern hot-air balloon in 1960?

Ed Yost. He lifted off from Bruning, Nebraska, with a burner of his own design, and three years later proved the idea by flying a hot air balloon from England to France.

In which 1939 film does a self-confessed humbug float away alone in a hot air balloon?

The Wizard of Oz. In the original novel the wizard is a circus balloonist from Omaha whose craft first blew him to Oz, and it rises without Dorothy when she runs after Toto.

The envelopes of most modern hot air balloons are sewn from which fabric?

Nylon. The exception is the mouth of the envelope, nearest the flame, which is made of or coated with a fire-resistant material so that the burner cannot set it alight.

Balloon pilots switch to a quieter 'whisper burner' when flying low over what?

Livestock. The main burner's roar can panic animals, so pilots open a second valve that burns the fuel as a liquid: a weaker, yellower flame, but a far quieter one.

Which Indian tycoon set the hot air balloon altitude record of 21,027 metres in 2005?

Vijaypat Singhania. The air is so thin at that height that the 67-year-old textile magnate rode in a sealed, pressurised cabin, slung beneath a balloon as tall as a 22-storey building.

Which airline founder co-piloted the first hot air balloons to cross both the Atlantic and the Pacific?

Richard Branson. His Pacific flight with the Swedish balloon builder Per Lindstrand came down in Canada's far north, and the pair's 1998 attempt to circle the globe ended in the sea off Hawaii.

A 1991 balloon flight across the Pacific reached a record 245 mph by riding what?

The jet stream. These rivers of fast air several miles up are the only way a balloon can cross an ocean quickly, and this one carried its crew from Japan to Canada in about two days.

Which balloon made the first nonstop round-the-world flight in March 1999 with Piccard and Jones?

Breitling Orbiter 3. After several rival teams had tried and failed, its two pilots flew a pressurised cabin from the Swiss Alps all the way round to the Egyptian desert in just under 20 days.

What is a Rozière balloon, the type used for round-the-world flights?

A helium cell inside a hot-air envelope. The helium does the lifting and a little burner heat keeps it warm through the night, so the crew need not keep throwing out ballast or venting gas.

At Albuquerque's balloon fiesta, what is 'the Box' that pilots prize?

A looping wind pattern. On a good October morning it carries balloons away from the launch field and then back again, so a pilot can land almost where the flight began.

Which adventurer made the first solo nonstop balloon flight around the world, in 2002?

Steve Fossett. After several failed attempts he took off alone from Western Australia in the Spirit of Freedom, circled the globe and came down in the Australian outback two weeks later.

Before launch, balloon crews often release a small helium 'pibal' to find out what?

The wind's direction. Watching the little balloon climb shows where a big one would drift, and once the first balloons are up, the pilots still on the ground simply watch those instead.

Double Eagle II, the first balloon to cross the Atlantic in 1978, took off from which US state?

Maine. The three-man crew lifted off from the small town of Presque Isle in a helium balloon eleven storeys tall and came down six days later in a barley field near Paris.

In which US state is the world's largest balloon festival, held each October with over 500 balloons?

New Mexico. Albuquerque's fiesta has grown from a handful of balloons in a shopping-mall car park, and in 2005 the state made the hot air balloon its official state aircraft.

Albuquerque's first balloon fiesta, in 1972, celebrated whose 50th birthday?

A radio station. KOB invited 21 balloons to its party; storms and cancellations left 13, which lifted off from a shopping-mall car park before a crowd of thousands.

What are the striped launch directors at the Albuquerque Balloon Fiesta nicknamed?

Zebras. Dressed in black-and-white stripes, they work the crowded field like traffic police, clearing each balloon for take-off so that hundreds can rise without colliding.

What is the Albuquerque Balloon Fiesta's pre-sunrise launch with position lights called?

Dawn Patrol. It began in 1978, when two California balloonists rigged lights that let them fly in the dark, and pilots still on the ground watch them to judge the morning's winds.

Sunrise balloon flights over 'fairy chimneys' are the signature draw of which Turkish region?

Cappadocia. Its 'fairy chimneys' are pinnacles of soft volcanic rock carved by erosion, and the balloons rise around Göreme, where the landscape is a UNESCO World Heritage Site.

Why doesn't the hot air spill out of the open mouth at the bottom of a balloon?

Hot air rises. The warm air presses up into the crown, while at the mouth it is at the same pressure as the air outside, so nothing pushes it out and the bottom can stay open for the burner.

What ignited the gas in Sophie Blanchard's balloon during her fatal 1819 exhibition over Paris?

Fireworks. She was setting them off from her hydrogen balloon above the Tivoli Gardens when the gas caught, and though she brought the burning craft down onto a rooftop, she fell to the street.

The first balloon crew to fly from England to France, in 1785, stayed aloft by dumping what?

Their clothes. With the ballast gone, Jean-Pierre Blanchard and the American doctor John Jeffries threw out almost everything they had, yet kept one packet of letters: the first international airmail.

Which US president watched Jean-Pierre Blanchard make America's first free balloon flight, from a Philadelphia prison yard?

George Washington. He saw the Frenchman off in person in January 1793, and the hydrogen balloon drifted across the Delaware to a safe landing in New Jersey.

What is the disk-shaped flap atop a modern balloon, pulled open to release hot air, called?

A parachute vent. The hot air itself presses the fabric disc shut like a plug, so the pilot pulls a cord to tip it open and simply lets go to seal it again.

What are the vertical fabric sections of a balloon envelope, running from throat to crown, called?

Gores. Each is stitched from smaller panels and joined to its neighbours along strong tapes, which carry the weight of the basket so that the thin fabric does not have to.

Balloon baskets are traditionally woven from which material?

Wicker or rattan. The weave is light and strong, and it flexes on a hard landing, soaking up a jolt that a rigid basket would pass straight to its passengers.

Why do passengers in a drifting hot air balloon feel almost no wind?

They move with the wind. A free balloon travels at exactly the speed of the air around it, so the basket stays calm and quiet however fast the ground slides by underneath.

What is the instrument showing a balloon's rate of climb or descent called?

A variometer. A balloon takes half a minute or more to answer its burner, so the pilot needs to see a climb or a sink beginning long before the ground makes it obvious.

Which law of physics explains why a hot air balloon floats?

Archimedes' principle. A balloon floats in air as a boat floats in water: the heated air inside weighs less than the cooler air it pushes aside, and the difference is the lift.

Why do most balloon flights launch just after dawn or shortly before sunset?

The winds are calmest then. Once the sun heats the ground, rising columns of warm air called thermals make the air bumpy and unpredictable, and a balloon has no way to fight them.

In balloon competitions, what do pilots drop to prove how close they came to a target?

A weighted marker. Balloon 'races' are really tests of accuracy, not speed: each marker carries its pilot's number, and the one that lands nearest the target wins.

With no rudder or engine, how does a hot air balloon pilot steer?

By changing height. Winds blow in different directions at different levels, so the pilot climbs or sinks into a layer heading the right way and rides it.

What is a 'Cloudhopper' or 'Hopper'?

A tiny one-person balloon with no basket. The pilot simply hangs beneath the envelope in a seat or a parachute-style harness, with the burner just overhead.

Which writer fooled New York in 1844 with a fake newspaper report of a balloon crossing the Atlantic?

Edgar Allan Poe. His story in the New York Sun had a balloon cross in three days and was retracted within two; the real first crossing took six days and did not come until 1978.

What is a hot air balloon that can be steered and propelled, rather than drifting with the wind, called?

A thermal airship. It adds an engine and a rudder to a hull filled with burner-heated air, which costs far less to fly than a helium blimp but gives much less lift for its size.