How Hot Air Balloons Work

balloon on the cover of the VHS cassette tape. Well, the movie changed it, and I looked up today the original Jules Verne book. Uh, they said that he entertained the balloon thing, but then kind of disregarded it, saying like it's not feasible. So it was like trains and other modes and chips and other modes of transportation in

the book. Yeah, and apparently the movie version took it and ran with it with a balloon and even such that a balloon is on the cover of a lot of the books now, so in the movie it's balloon centric, they do, I think, But I haven't seen the movie, so I don't. I haven't either, But whenever I think of that, But jeles Burn is like, this is preposterous. We couldn't just do it in a balloon. I think

that's the case. I mean, I just skirted through this research, so I'm sure fans will hold me to the fire for this. Well. I think we should both go see that movie because I want to see it too. Go see it. Go go to a television and see it. It's where it's streaming. Yea. I was like, I didn't know was playing. Yeah, it's at all the cineplexes. I

didn't know when Wilson remake it too, somebody did. I accidentally ran across that one and before I could like click, no, no, close the tablet, I saw like Jackie Chan was in it and Steve Coogan, Oh, I love. Yeah. It doesn't mean that it was a good remake, you know what I mean? Uh so hot air balloons you have a been in one? You don't know, and I never will ever in my whole life, I won't. It seems like something that would not be Joshy No, no, I I

think it's one of one of the things. One of my great joys in life is looking at pictures of hot air balloons on the ground. Yeah, I just realized with your feet sitting on the ground in your chair button a chair. Yeah, but it's true. I do love looking at pictures of hot air balloon Have you ever seen a race going on or a gathering like my dad? My dad went on a hot air balloon ride. I've seen them out like around Callaway Gardens. I've never been to,

but there's like a really big hot air balloon expo there. Yeah. Um, it's coming up actually in September, like the beginning. I think like September, maybe Labor Day weekend, I believe. Why did you sound disappointed? Just that? Well, I have plans labor the weekend. Well, so no ballooning for me. No, but you can look at pictures of it afterward. Your yah? So um? But no, I I have never been in one, will you? I mean I would, but I'm not like

it's not on my bucket list or anything like. If someone like if a fan brow in and said I'm a balloon pilot, I'd like to invite you on a free trip, then I would totally do it. I'll be by your house to pick you up and stand on your roof at six pm or I maybe somewhere close by because you never know where we'll land. There's probably fans at Callaway Gardens. You should go down there with the stuff you should know t shirt on out. So yeah, uh, and that was a teaser slash spoiler. By the way,

that was not just a joke. I don't get it that you never know where we're gonna land. I don't get that at all. They don't know where they're gonna land necessarily. Didn't you read the article? Oh yeah, I thought you were talking about us. No, no, no, I thought you're making like a reference to tour or something like that. Oh no, no, I mean the hot air pilot will air balloon pilot would say, I may land at your house to pick you up. And I maybe

a got it. I would put to you, Chuck that no podcast has ever gone this far off the rails this early in. I think we're right on the rails, do you. We're talking about hot air balloons. See, we can't even agree on whether we're off the rails. All right, let's let's talk about this. Hot air balloons they actually have, uh not the longest history you would think usually when we do something like this, for like, you know, hot air balloons are actually thousands of years old ancient China.

Not the case. No, No, the ideas that, um that the understanding of the principles of how hot air balloons work have been around for a couple of thousand years, but hot air balloons themselves and actually the first human to ever fly didn't happen until the eighteenth century. Util I think seventeen the seventeen eighties, right, h for the hot air balloon three with Joseph and Etienne mont gulf Yer. Not bad names if you're gonna be born in France,

those are good names to half, that's right. And uh they worked for their uh for a paper company, their families paper company. And then on the side, like you know the little floating Japanese lanterns. I think they made those for fun out of paper. They had leftover paper and um, and that we should have I didn't look into that too much, by the way, for this, did you the monk Golfier brothers No, the lanterns no? And I meant to be I always think of what was

that movie about them, the tsunami? Oh yeah, there's like a scene in there, isn't there where they released like a bunch of those was the one with Naomi Watts and yeah, oh boy, that was a tough movie. I never thought you should check that out. Yeah, it was very realistic and tough to get through. Which one should I watch first? That? Or Around the World in eighty Days? The one I can't think in the name of what was it called. It's like the Great beneath there they're

the Great the I don't know, I can't remember. It's something like that. Are you gonna look it up? Because if so, I'll start talking about balloon history while history. So anyway, the brothers mont golf Yer, they started fashioning little, basically model um hot air balloons out of paper from their their family's mill, like you said, and they said, this works, this works conceivably, if we make a big enough balloon, we could float livestock in the air if

we wanted to. And they did. They ran a test, and they were so sure of this test that they actually invited the King Um Louis the Six to come check it out. And they ran a test that involved the sheep, a duck in a chicken which they put into a basket attached to a hot air balloon and said what and they I'll bet they did and the king went. They did, and they actually those weren't random selections of animals. Um. They chose the sheep because it was similar to humans as far as being a land

mammal having hair. Sheep is represented with hair. Well. One of the worries was, wouldn't be able to duck have feet. Yeah, they wouldn't be able to breathe up there. So uh, that's why they said, we'll listen to mammal up there to see if it survives. Yeah. That was one of the first things hot air balloons proved was that humans or living things can breathe in the atmosphere. No I knew that before because no one had been into the

atmosphere before. That's right. And the duck and the chicken the rooster were chosen because they can both fly, um, so they were the control but they can both fly at different altitudes. So they didn't just randomly throw three farm animals in there. There was a purpose behind each one. I'm sure the sheep is like, what are you two worried about? You're the ones who can fly. Is that a friend? Sheep? Okay, it sounded like droopy a little bit, but it was a little bit. It was from the

Burgundy region. That's what they saw in like down there. Okay, And by the way, the Impossible was the name of that movie, The Great Underneath the Impossible, virtually the same thing, agreed, so they floated it up there. In the beginning, they thought that the smoke was what provided left because they were just silly eighteenth century goons, and um, the smoke was the only thing they could see, so they figured

it had to be that. Yeah, and this they were definitely producing a lot of smoke because they were using like straw, manure, whatever they could get their hands on to fuel these hot air balloons. Yeah, and their balloon was it was a rigid frame. It was a framemate of lightwood, and the balloon was cotton or silk. And so it wasn't like the non rigid balloons that we have today, the non rigid canopies. Maybe more specific so the mont calf Yer's Um, we're feted by King Louis.

They all ate some lamb's legs together, I would assume. And yes, And then two months later, uh, they're like it's time for human trials, and they put two people not themselves in a balloon and sent them up Yeah. The King wanted convicted criminals at first to pilot it because they figured that's just what you do back in those days. Let's just use these criminals for something. Hey,

that's what connects this episode. The next one convicted criminals spoiler, but they were He was talked out of that and said, now we should probably get some people that kind of know what they're doing. So they got a major in the infantry name Marquis Francois de Lard. That's not bad, Darland, Darland, Yeah, yeah, and uh, you do the second one, uh, a physics

professor pill a Tree de Rosier, Yeah, very nice. De Rosier. Yeah, and uh de Rosier became not only the first human to pilot a balloon, but he became the first human to die piloting a balloon. Yeah. Um, not in that flight. A couple of decades later he did, right, Yeah, he tried to fly with the English Channel and he had a great, bad idea that was to put a hydrogen balloon inside of the hot air balloon. Yeah, why do

this use air? Use something lighter than air. And that didn't work out so well because about thirty minutes into the flight, Uh, you apply fire to a hydrogen balloon. It blew up, Yeah, and he died. Had he been a chemistry professor, this might have never happened. But he was a physics professor, so he did right. Um, But those two actually were the first human beings on the

planet to fly as far as we know. That's right, the whole world round in the history of humanity, those two did the first Oh what do you mean, fly? Like you consider that flying? Yeah? Pretty right? Brothers, Yeah, and right brothers are usually turned are given them the title of the of the first manned powered flight. Yeah, because it's a little bit different than floating. Apparently they're not even that somebody else beat the Right Brothers to it.

Of course that's a whole other podcast if you ask me. But this is the first flight of any sort as far as anybody knows. Although it didn't like the ancient Chinese hang glide, I don't know. I feel like they did, and we talked about it. Maybe we'll find out. I feel like the ancient Chinese did almost everything way before everyone else. Yeah, they just didn't tell anybody about it

because they were isolationists. Uh, and look where it got him. Yeah, they're on the rise in the twenty one century, So balloons fell out of fashion for a number of years because the dirigible, which we did a podcast on blips came into fashion because you can steer those and you can take more people. Yeah, that's a big plus. You can steer them. Yeah, you're you're not at the uh the mercy of the vagaries of the winds. And then there was something called the smoke balloon. Um, did you

this sounds like fun? The thing about the flying Allan's No. Are we talking about them in the circus family of No, but we should have because they were a circus family. And that's where a lot of the smoke balloon activity took place was in circuses and fairs in the late eighteen hundreds and early nineteen hundreds. And that was it was an act this I would possibly do. No, you wouldn't. I might go look at the footage because it would be it would be over fairly quickly your death. To

tell him about what we'll tell him. What to smoke balloon is, well, that's basically a balloon that's lifted from the ground with the fire, but it's not attached to fire. They basically just hold you to the ground until this thing is full. And then they let you go and you shoot up in the air and you're attached the balloon, yes, and you are hopefully wearing a parachute and everybody's holding

them balloon down. And then when everybody let's go, like you said, you shoot up into the air and then once you hit your apex in the balloon like loses heat and starts to come back down to earth. Um, you get away from it and parachute down. It sounds great. Well, the Flying Alan's did all kinds of stuff. Like they it was a family of you know, like teenagers kids

who like they were all teenagers. Well no, they were parents, but they were sending their teenage kids up like three at a time, hanging and doing like trapeeze work under these balloons. Uh. Like one of them brought a cannon up and was shot out of a cannon because that's what you do. And uh, I mean it's just crazy. There's actual footage of them trapeezing under a balloon and then dropping and parachuting and it's like a static line deal.

There's no free fall. Really, you don't see that these days. What smoke balloon acts, all right, it's because they're probably I would say they're dangerous. It sounds a little dangerous, but thrilling. Yes, I'm sure it was so. Um. This was in the late nineteenth century, right is the smoke balloon the early nine hundreds. So by the time this had happened, By the time smoke balloons were like a popular carnival attraction, hot air balloons had been basically totally

abandoned in favor of dirigibles, right, um. And it wasn't until the nineteen fifties that they started to experience a revival. Apparently the US military, I think the Navy, the Office of Navy Research to be exact, from what I understand, Um, they said, Hey, we need to figure out a way to ferry sheep and ducks and chickens from point A to point B, but we don't want to spend a lot of money or put a lot of effort behind it. So you, Mr ed Yost, come up with an idea

for us. How are we going to move our sheep and chickens and ducks. That's what he said. Yeah, he found in ray Then Industries, and they in the mid nineteen fifties started designing these hot air balloons for the Navy, and uh that I think he's the one that kind of I don't know if he patented it literally, but he he got on board with that lightbulb shape. Well, I think he. I think he came up with it because this is his original designs were spheres were round,

perfectly round balloons. No, we figured out that like the way that the hot air heated up inside the balloon, the top of the balloon would be fully inflated, but the bottom wouldn't be. And that's not good. You want it pretty much uniformly inflated. So he just got rid of the bottom of the sphere and tapered it in to make what you like, you say, the light bulb design.

I'm pretty sure it was him, or at least his company. Yeah, he's I mean basically said you don't need this extra material, right, So this is that what you think of when you think of a hot air balloon is from as recent as the nineteen sixties, that's right. And uh, he started in the sixties selling them. After the Navy he said, I'm not so interested anymore. And he says, well, I

think their civilian applications like fun. They're like, um, we have no problem with that, Just please stop corresponding with us. That's right. So that's uh, it's a bit on history, and when we come back, we will get into how these crazy looking things work. Right for this, all right, Josh. Hot air balloons are based on one principle. And even though this article has four pages of incomprehensible science, it's like, seriously,

we're saying earlier, it's like it's describing alchemy. Yeah, it's magic. It doesn't make sense, and will we will get into the science more, but very simply, how air is lighter than cool air because it has less mass, and so hot air rises. You've all heard that it's gonna be hotter. Your ceiling in your bedroom is at the floor. If you're trying to cool off, do not stand on a chair and put your face towards the ceiling. Is why you reverse your ceiling fans in the winter to bring

that hot air back down. That's exactly right, Chuck. But a cubic foot of airways about twenty eight grams, which is about an ounce, and if you heat that by a hundred degrees fahrenheit, it's gonna weigh seven grams less. So essentially each foot of that cubic air, and a hot air balloon lifts about seven grams, which is not much. No, it's not. And that's why they're so huge to carry

just that little basket with two or three people in it. Yeah, because if you can capture enough air and heat at all by a hundred degrees, each cubic centimeter will lift its own seven grams, and all those cubic centimeters put together will lift a lot of weight. So, for example, if you have sixty five cubic feet of hot air, you can lift a thousand pounds. That's pretty great. Like you said, that's why those balloon envelopes, is what they're called,

are so big. Right, So, like you said, we're gonna we'll we'll talk a little more about the science in a minute. But um, let's talk about the parts of the balloon, right, parts as parts. I just gave away the name of the balloon itself, the envelope. The envelope the most beautiful part of the balloon because wickers ugly, frankly, but the balloon itself is not really I would figure with your macromay obsession, you would be a way into wicker.

I'm obsessive Macromay because it's horrid, you know what I mean. But Wicker doesn't. It's too pedestrian to be horrid, you know what I mean. Boy, the Wicker Association is gonna I'm sorry. I know they've got a very strong lobby, but I'm not afraid of them. They're gonna put a Wicker foot up your butt exactly. How Yes, the envelope is made up of nylon triangles called Gore's a bunch of them, and those gores are even made up of

smaller parts sewn together panels panels if you will. Yeah, like the this strip, you know how like a balloon has lines usually going down it. Those in between the lines, the whole thing from top to bottom. That's the gore, right, But the gore itself is made up of smaller panels that you can't see unless you're close to it. That's right. Also, together nylon is what they use because it's light and uh. It also has the nice feature that it's um it's

not as flammable. No, it has a high melting point. Yeah, so you can get it kind of hot before it starts to melt, like tooth from Writers of the Lost Dark. That's right, What they use as their fuel, and they're propellant, is heat brought on by propane, but not not the kind of propane gas that you use in your backyard.

This is liquid compressed liquid propane, which means that it takes up a lot less space, so you can use smaller canistores called canisters, which is important because you are carrying them aboard the hot air balloon with you in the basket, So you want more space for paying customers than you know propane canisters, so you probably want the right mix of both. That's true, but if you can get a smaller and more propane and a smaller canister,

that's ideal. Hence why they use liquid propane. The problem is is that if you just burn liquid propane, it's not going to burn as efficiently as say, gas propane. You'll just burn through it. Well, they have figured out a way around this chuck with these burners. The things that are at the bottom of the envelope in the

little room that's called the skirt um. Those are the burners, right, and they're connected by host to the propane canisters in the basket that's right, and on the burner itself is a coil that the propane comes into and there's a pilot light that heats that that propane. It burns some of it as it's coming in, and then the heat from that that burn off heats the coil, so it turns that liquid propane into gas propane at the burner. Then it ignites it and that's what burns into the

hot air within the envelope. So it's pretty clever, correct. So it it converts the liquid propane to gas propane at the burner so that you have a much more efficient burn right. And sometimes let's say, if they're flying over a field of cattle, that things pretty loud when they're burning the gas. Yeah, and they they're they're like, we don't want to disturb the cattle, so they can actually there's another valve where they can burn just a

straight liquid like we were talking about, much quieter. It'll keep you aloft, keep you a offt for a little while. Um. I think it's a very nice thing to do because they don't want to scare the livestock. Well, and I imagine as a passenger it's much more uh you know, user friendly, right or friendly if you just hear that little sound and not that big do it again? Oh yeah, that would annoy me at a certain point. I don't

think it would annoy me. You're having a nice conversation, oh man, right, and the pilots like, sorry, I'm just trying to keep us alive. Do you want to float or not? Or fly? Excuse me? I think floats than curate too. So the skirt that we mentioned is um. It is a nylon as well, but it is coated in a fire resistant material, which is very key because that's where the hot stuff is. And so the basket is traditionally wicker, not for any kind of throwback purpose.

I don't always figured it was thrown back. I always thought they were just trying to annoy me, like a beautiful hot air balloon then like the world's ugliest little box. Right. It turns out that wicker plays a role in um absorbing the impact of landing. Yeah, it makes sense. I still have a hard time believing they can't build something better, right, something out of like like this same stuff they make super balls out of. Yeah, or something with with shocks

or springs or you know, that's like kevlar. I don't know. Well, the other the great aspect of it is when you add shocks or something, you're adding weight wicker. You need the wicker to stand in, but because it's woven, it will absorb that impact and distributed across the wicker rather than up into your knees. As as much I think it makes sense. It kills several birds with one stone. I think it's one of those if it's not broke,

don't fix it deals. Probably like they probably looked into it and then like wickers, fine, but can't they like wrap it in construction paper or something. One guy made a glass bottom basket. Sounds terrible. I think it's a great idea. They should all be glass bottom because then you can just look. I know, you know that I

would totally lose my mind. Uh, there is an upper The more you know fuel you pump in there, it's gonna rise, rise, rise, But there is an upper altitude limit because the air becomes thin, and uh, you know, you can't lift the balloon any further. Basically at a certain point. Let's talk about what you're talking about real quick.

Let's talk about the science, all right, So why why it doesn't make any sense that you um would not that there would be an upper limit that the balloon will only float up to a certain height in the atmosphere. It doesn't make sense until you understand the forces at play of what makes a hot air balloon float. Right, Right, It's actually pretty simple. I would advise you strongly that if you want to understand this, don't read this article.

Go find it elsewhere on the internet. Just listen to us. Yeah, okay, well we're trying, I guess, is what I'm saying. Um, But the the hot air balloon floats because of the principle of buoyancy or the buoyancy effect, right, And buoyancy is an upward force that counteracts gravity. Right, So, at sea level, gravity is at its strongest and sea is apparently at its weakest. Right, I believe maybe it said it's strongest. I just threw that in and I could

be wrong. I'm going to back off of that part, but I do know that gravity is at its strongest at sea level, at least as far and until you get into the water, and then it gets more stronger and stronger, at least until someone emails us intels this other one. Right. So, Um, the air at sea level has a lot of gravity acting on it, and one of the reasons why it has a lot of gravity acting on it because that's where the most molecules, air

molecules are found in the entire atmosphere of the Earth. Yeah, these air molecules are all around us at all times. You can't see them, but they're smashing into each other. They're creating energy, which is air pressure. Right. So the movement of these air particles combined with their mass. I mean,

they're very very tiny, but they still have mass. Because there's so such a mind boggling number of air molecules in the atmosphere, there's enough of them they have enough of a combined mass that they have a substantial mass that gravity can act on. And again, it has its strongest force at at sea level. Right. So air pressure is strongest at sea level because the air is denser there. Okay. Now, if you have air that's lighter than the air at sea level, that air will float, that's right. And when

you apply heat to it, it's going to be lighter. Right. And the reason it's lighter because it expands. Okay, So it's less dense. Few well as a fewer molecules are just less dense. I think they they it's not necessarily fewer. They just occupy a larger space, right, So it's less dense, which means just like with water, if you take a cork, a cork is less dense than water, which is why when you put a cork and water, it's going to float. It's buoyant. Air is the same thing as water. They're

both fluids. So the same principles are at work that Archimedes figured out years and years ago um in the air as well. So if you could take this hot air and capture it in some sort of way in a very envelope of nylon, like a very light vessel like that, it will float and it will displace. It will be as buoyant as in an equal amount to the weight of the air it displaces, so it has

that lift. So that's all that's at work. Is warmer air floats above colder air because it's less dense, And all the hot air balloon does is capture warm air so that it will float and you attach your basket onto it and you get to float with it. Nice job, thank you. I'm sure I got a few things wrong in there, but okay, I think that was pretty pretty damn close. It sounds like somebody's being killed in the

other room. I know we should go investigate. You want to take a break, Let's take a break and we'll we'll get to how to pilot these beasts, all right, Josh, nice job on science. I feel like you're jinxing me every time you compliment me on that. I think somebody's going to write in and be like, I'm embarrassed for you. How badly you got that wrong. So if you go

to pilot one of these things, it's pretty simple. Um. And when I say pretty simple, that is not to remove the amount of admiration I have for these pilots, because it takes skill. Like you and I can't just jump in one. We would kill ourselves. Oh yeah, and if we piloted one, Yeah, it takes hundreds of hours to become a good pilot of a hot air balloom. Yeah. It's kind of like, Um, when I took went to Vancouver.

I took that float plane trip with Reggie, the Vancouver pilot, and I was I didn't mean to insult him, but while we were flying, I looked at him and I was like, Reggie, I'm just looking at what you're doing. And I said, I feel like, I could do this. I said, it looks you know, it doesn't look too hard, and he said it's not. He said, it's flying in great conditions is super easy. He said, it's flying and

not great conditions is where you earn your stripes. And I was like, oh, because he was just doing some levers and steering a thing and doing stuff. Yeah, peddling really quick, but I get the same feeling. It's like

with a hot air balloon pilot. It's it's pretty simple at its basis because all you're doing, literally the only controls you have are to make that thing go up and down up by releasing more hot air down because you have a cord attached to the valve at the top that releases Yeah, it releases some of that hot

air so you can sink and land and that's it. Yeah. Basically, there's a strip of circular strip at the very top of the balloon and when you pull on that cord, it opens it up, it pulls it away a little bit, and by releasing some of that hot air, you're cooling effectively the air inside the envelope. So you start to come down. So you got up and you got down, but Josh yes, how did they go left and right?

How do they fly horizontally in different directions? It seems like you would just go where the wind takes you, you do, So how do they go in different directions? Well? Apparently so there's um, there is wind, and then there's also something called wind aloft, and wind aloft is in the in the atmosphere UM, and it goes in different directions at different altitudes. There you have it. So if you want to go, say west, you rise up to

fet where the winds blow west. If you want to go around in circles a few times, you go north, Oh yeah, by going up to that's right. So basically all they're doing is controlling altitude to control horizontal direction based on wind patterns. Yeah, which again doesn't sound that hard. It's still consists of up and down. It's just going up and down to the right places depending on where

you want to go. The thing is this is this takes a tremendous amount of skill and I would say too, yes, experience almost like what you would call probably muscle memory, because it takes about thirty seconds for the um the balloon to respond either way to either the valve or the burner, So you can't say, oh, man, that power lines right in front of me, let me get out

of the way. And I got to see that coming from a long distance and say, let me get out of the way, right, like you're hearing a cruise ship or something. Did you see that video of the people that they had that same that very thing happened to them. There were there. It was, um, I believe in Virginia in two thousand or fourteen. Like they just either didn't see a power line or I don't know what happened, but like the guy tried to pull out like right before and go aloft higher up and they hit the

power line. The whole thing just caught fire. Yeah, which is apparently a very as far as hot air balloon accidents go, that is a fairly common um accident. Yeah, I would imagine that's the probably one of the most awful ways to go. I would imagine. Yeah, I guess because it's slow, you can see it coming, you know, it's not like a car crash. You're like, all right, we're getting closer to your death. Closer to your death. Yeah, that would be pretty bad. And then, of course I'm

not making light of it. That's truly terrible. UM. So I kind of joked earlier that they don't know quite where they're going to land, and that is true. Um, they have an idea of where they want to land, and they've plotted this out. They're not just willy nilly up there. But UM, if you if you'll notice, when you're in a hot air balloon basket, one of the most vital people on your side or the ground team, Yeah, which you have to have if you're a hot air balloonist.

The sum total of the people who are involved in your hot air balloon trip are not in the balloon. There are plenty of people following you in a car. That's right, because they're they're basically following you to where you will eventually be able to land. Yeah. And again you UM have an idea possibly of where you want to land, maybe the county or the state that you want to land in, but it's probably doesn't go too much further than that. UM, And I guess a safe

pilot well number one. There there's some conditions that you want to look for, um when you're piloting. UM. For example, like you when you're starting, before you go up, you want to have contacted a weather service to find out which way the wind's blowing. At least look at your your smartphone weather app. I'm sure that there's probably hot air balloon apps for that kind of thing. YEA, give a little more advanced wind detail, right. You also don't

want a thunderstorm within a hundred miles. That's lightning is terrible for hot air balloons, and in hot air balloon in the rain is dangerous and no fun anyway, Yes, it is. So if you're a normal pilot, you're probably only gonna want to fly in ideal conditions, right, like nice day with just a little bit of wind. Yeah.

You don't want too strong a wind either. Yeah, and you don't want the winds aloft to be high because even on the ground the wind can be fined, but up in the atmosphere they might be going like crazy. So you want to know all this stuff before you take off, and then when you do take off, you're constantly looking around for potential emergency landing sites. Part it was a little scary, Yeah, you, I mean you may

whatever happens, you may need to land immediately. And it's not it's not like pulling a car over on the shoulder of a highway, which can be dangerous enough at high speeds. This is like landing a hot air balloon again in in a civilized world with lots power lines everywhere and roads and lakes and all sorts of stuff that you don't want to fly into, so you constantly

have to be looking out for a place to land. Yeah, you probably don't think about all the stuff around you until you're up in a balloon like that and you know that each one of those things is a hazard. Um. The other thing a pilot will probably do is send up a just a regular old helium balloon. They call

them pieballs pilot balloons, but it's just a balloon. And they'll send that baby up there just to see like, okay, where's that guy going, because that's where we're going to be going, And they watch it and just kind of chart its course for a little while and um, then off they go. Oh, there's also some other things on board. Of course, it's not just a basket. They're gonna have an altimeter and variometer just to know where they are,

of course, and um. But other than that, it's pretty rudimentary, Yeah, it really is. And the ground crew also is not just there to follow you in the car. And one of the reasons they're they're following you in the cars to give you a ride back home because you it's almost impossible to go land back at the same place you left from. Yeah, because you started in Georgia and

you landed in Alabama, right exactly. So, Um. The ground crew is also there to help you um set up, which apparently is not as involved as you would think. It takes ten to fifteen minutes to unpack fully a hot air balloon and have it um floating. Yeah. It's basically in a big stuff sack like a sleeping bag. Uh. They lay it out onto a like a covering, like

a pad on the ground to protect it. They start blowing it up with a fan, just a regular old fan, just to kind of get some some air in that thing. And then they will start shooting it with the hot air and it starts to, you know, increase in size and then rise up and they've got it tied to the truck or whatever the basket uh, and everybody's holding you take to the ground, I imagine, yeah, Uh, and then you know until it as it gets bigger and bigger, you just sort of sit around and wait, put the

champagne on ice, because that's the tradition when you land. Yeah, as is the traditional leg of lamp per passenger. No, it really is. The champagne toast. Is that started back in the olden days as a sort of to play kate farmers when they would land on their land. Yeah. Farmers are like, I don't want you landing on my land. First of all, that things scares me. Be here landing on my property. You're scaring my cattle. And the guy would be like, well, what about some champagne. Yeah, they

would offer him champagne. That would be like my one weakness to the well the same he was already drunk because it was in the Champagne region. Oh yeah, he's like, I already have a bunch of this. I don't need your champagne. But that tradition still holds true today. You

take a champagne toast when you land. Uh. You might say soft winds and gentle landings, or you might recite the balloonist blessing were balloonist prey, which is the winds have welcomed you with softness, the sun has blessed you with its warm hands, you have flown so high and so well that God has joined you in your laughter and set you gently back into the loving arms of Mother earthlink guzzle, guzzle burp. Did you You didn't make that up just now, wasn't that's the balloonist blessing. It's

good chuck. Yeah, that was just scatting a poem. Uh. You land, you drink the champagne, and then you're done. You go about your day. Everybody packs up and yeah, yeah, packing up customers, so you're just like, see you later, Yeah, can everybody else? Like I said, packing up takes it a little longer, but um, it's it's not too different than packing a parachute or sleeping back or something. No, it's like you said, it's like a stuff stack. Just

packing and back in there. That's right. And um, an experienced pilot, it's uh, it's not the easiest thing to land these smoothly. You know you're gonna bump and you might land a little too hard, But if you're an experienced pilot, you're gonna bring it in nice and smooth, bump a little bit, give everyone a good uh oh, And then the champagne comes out and apparently the big draw of hot air ballooning is that it's a very serene experience that I just kept running into that word

over and over again. Everybody was like floating, serene and peaceful experience. Ever, I think it'd be amazing. I mean it sounds nice. Aside from just the hight part. I get why you don't want to do it. Yeah, I would never expect that. So is it safe, uh to do? Yes. I don't have any stats on deaths. I've got some stats from what I saw. It is, uh, relatively speaking, safe thing to do. UM, there have been um what seemed like in upticks and balloon accidents. It's it's possible

that reporting has increased or media coverage is increased. But over the last few years, UM, there have been some very high profile accidents apparently as of two thousand fourteen. Between nineteen sixty four and two thousand fourteen, there were seven seventy five balloon accidents in the US UM with seventy fatalities, and sixteen people died ballooning from two thousand

two to two thousand and twelve. So it does seem like there's an uptick in it somehow, sixteen people over ten years, though, right, but seventy over Um, Yeah, I guess it's about right. I guess it is overging I say, but um, there was some high profile ones. The worst ever was in um Egypt, actually in I think over lux Or nineteen of twenty one people on board a hot air balloon died when it caught fire. Yeah, they can. We didn't point that out. They can make these baskets

really large now if the balloon is large enough. Obviously some I've seen double deckers do I don't know about that. I haven't seen a double decker. That sounds kind of neat. It's pretty neat. Um, But supposedly overall it's a relatively safe thing to do. Let's call it safe fish safe fish and um, if you have some money, it's something you could get into. If you want a little too person hot air balloon, it'll set you back about twenty two k and at three to four person thousand dollars

for you're you're very own hot air balloon with everything. Yeah, they can be shape like all kinds of crazy shapes. Now if you've seen balloon shows, yeah, like I've seen them shape like a castle or like a car like Charlie Brown. I saw one with the spike through it. It It was hilarious. I like it was punctured. That's the

one I get in. Yeah. Uh. And then if you are into this kind of stuff where you want to find out whether you're into this kind of stuff, if you're in Georgia or the Southeast, you can go to Callaway Gardens sky High Hot Air Balloon Festival. And then the big one is in Alburquerque, the Alburquerque International Balloon Fiesta. It happens every year. I think it's in a couple of months. Nice. Yeah, I'd love to go to that.

So they go hot air balloons, you get anything else? Yeah, I got some more stuff from our buddies at Mental floss Um. They had a great ten facts about hot air balloons. Here's one fact. There was a balloon duel in eight eight oh yeah, two frenchmen. Um, we're in a love triangle and they figured the best way to settle it was to get up and shoot at each other's balloon. I feel like I've heard about that before. Pretty silly French, Frenchy thing to do. And one of

the guys shot the other guy's balloon. The other guy missed, and the balloon crashed and killed the guy. Hooray. And then uh, in the US there was the Union Army had a balloon Corps. Abraham Lincoln started the Balloon Corps. They had seven balloons and uh with names like the Intrepid, and they would track enemy movement. They've been using the reconnaissance in the and since the seventeen hundreds with the

French Army. So uh, the the Union Army did that, and then the Confederates made their own I guess out of whatever, you know, clothing they had laying around right, and they just had the one balloon. It was captured by the Union Army. Oh really yeah in eighteen sixty three, like give us back off balloons. So uh wow. Well, thanks Chuck, Thank you friends at Mental Flossy, thank you

for listening to this episode of stuff you should know. Uh. If you want to know more about hot air balloons and alchemy, you can type that word into the search bar at how stuff works dot com. And since I said alchemy, it's time for listening mail. I'm gonna call this surefire way to get on closer mail. You guys are writing you from the County of Essex in England. I only started listening about a month ago, and I

can't get enough. Um. I've been trying to think of the best way to guarantee it's right on the air, so I found out some common traits. One, it should compliment you on messager egos and something, and number two for balance, the letters should point out a mistake or oversight, but also make an interesting contribution. Yeah, this guy's got it. It's that So. First of all, I love the podcast.

You're both awesome and really funny and smart. Second, I really uh, I'm intrigued by the podcast on left handies. Left handis left handers let's just call him left with left and particularly the bit about how being left handed can be an advantage in sports. Um. As you were saying, I felt sure that you had mentioned the case of Rafael Nadal, the tennis player was mentally imporing you to

do so, but you're not familiar with the story. I guess he was born right handed, but from the first time he picked up a racket, he was trained by his uncle to play with his left hand, to make him, uh, to give him an advantage and make it more difficult to beat. Most people believe him to be left handed, but don't you think that's amazing that a player can become the best in the world, or at least the best on clay court ever, perhaps playing with their weaker hand.

Pretty neat. It is very neat. It also post is an interesting question over how much the dominant hand that we're born with is actually just a state of mind that it can be retrained. Keep up the good work, chaps, And that is from Joe Broomfield. Yeah, that works pretty well. That was a classic listener mail classic. If you want to try your hand at a classic listener mail, you can lay it on us. But we are also always willing to give points for creativity too. You can tweet

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