Another amusing event from the life of the balloonist Jean-Pierre Blanchard mentioned in the article: in 1793, Blanchard arranged the first American balloon flight, starting in Philadelphia. George Washington was interested enough to attend and write Blanchard a passport saying, roughly, "look, this guy is French and traveling in this unpredictable way, if you find him then know that I, George Washington, think he's cool, and you should help him get back to Philadelphia", which apparently worked [1].
> “I see an inclination in the more respectable part of the Royal Society to guard against the Ballomania until some experiment like to prove beneficial either to society or to science is proposed.”
In the end a few non-amusement uses have come around: weather balloons, the vega balloons on venus.
This feels a little bit like where ML is at the moment. A lot of very excited people, not too much evidence for concrete value right now, and airplanes over the horizon. (less than 100 years though, I would have guessed. Wrights flew 1903, this was 1783).
I find hot air balloons so peaceful and fun on paper(pun intended). I'd be curious to have them make a come back .. I know some company in England made new ones.
There are still a couple manufacturers out there, and a vibrant niche community.
Hot air balloon rides are absolutely peaceful and so refreshing! Growing up, I helped out on a hot air balloon crew in Iowa and have gone on ~8-10 rides in that time, and helped setup/teardown probably a couple hundred times. From when the pickup arrived at the launch site, over the years I did every setup/teardown task.
Some thoughts and highlights included:
* You don't feel any wind in a balloon, because you're going exactly as fast as the wind is. Since there's a big flame and volume of hot air immediately above you, you need marginally less warm clothing than being on the ground.
Riding is always peaceful, but landing isn't. Sometimes it's the romanticized perfect soft landing in some longer grasses, other times it is less than graceful.
One time while running across a soybean field, I dropped ~8 feet into a manure release area. My dad reached all the way down, I reached all the way up, and we were just able to link hands. Smelled awful the rest of the night.
* One time I was selected for a ride (the pilot only took crew). We flew for an hour or so and were coming to a property with a vineyard followed by a nice, big mowed lawn. We were aiming for the lawn, but were losing altitude faster than we should have. The basket landed on a post in the last row, then tipped to the side abruptly and fell to the ground. The pilot and I got thrown around, but stayed in the basket. Turns out the pilot picked me because I was the lightest person on the crew. She thought the balloon wasn't acting right and was losing heat way faster than it should have, but wasn't positive since the last passenger was pretty heavy. The fact that we couldn't stop the descent while trying to land confirmed it - that was the last time that balloon flew.
At the end of my first balloon flight, the basket tipped on its side on landing. The pilot totally expected this to happen and had already got everyone in a brace position with someone else (typically their partner). The basket also had internal partitions so every couple had something to lean on. The tip over was quick bit smooth, and because we were bracing no-one was thrown around. Immediately after landing there was silence followed by laughter and amused comments as we all tried to disentangle from the unintentional spooning.
In my case, it was just me, the pilot, and 3 tanks of fuel. The pilot ended up breaking a couple ribs on the fuel tank, but outside of that and some bruises on us each, we were okay.
I used to think they looked peaceful and fun too, but then I read Ian McEwan's Enduring Love, which begins with a hot-air balloon accident. Although irrational, I now have an abiding fear of hot air balloons and am unlikely to ever go in one.
(although, for context, I also have irrational fears about helicopters)
What difference does it make with planes ? I understand your fears and fears in general but a slow, low noise, low energy (actually I should check that) thing like a balloon is charming to me.
It has been some time since reading it, but hot air balloons are much more prone to accidents than airplanes. So much can go wrong where modern aircraft are designed to lessen these sorts of things. We just sensationalize plane crashes - because they are horror-inducing spectacles - and don't really hear about the balloon incidences that hurt 3 people instead of 200.
Funny enough, I was just looking up transatlantic balloon flights the other day, and the first successful one was long after the first powered flight, which was kind of neat!
There are around 22M views for David Blaine's [Ascension](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QwzvNAAqH3g) - Travelling upto 25k feet in a hydrogen balloon. So who is to say that we are not in a Balloonomania now?
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Montgolfier_brothers