The first balloon passengers were a sheep, a duck and a rooster
On 19 September 1783 the Montgolfier brothers sent up a hot air balloon with three passengers aboard: a sheep, a duck and a rooster. Only after the animals came through did people follow, first on a tether that October and then in free flight above Paris on 21 November.
On that first free flight, the pilots Pilâtre de Rozier and the Marquis d'Arlandes drifted about 8.9 kilometres in 25 minutes. Less than two weeks later, on 1 December, Jacques Charles and the Robert brothers answered with a hydrogen balloon that climbed to almost 600 metres, stayed up over two hours and landed 43 kilometres away. The rivalry set the pattern for two centuries: gas balloons won, because they lift more for their size and stay aloft longer, while the Montgolfiers' smoky solid-fuel brazier made hot air impractical.
Pilâtre de Rozier tried to combine both, pairing a hydrogen bag with a hot air bag to cross the English Channel in 1785. The hydrogen caught fire soon after takeoff and he was killed, earning the grim title first to fly and first to die. His hybrid design only became safe in the 1980s, using non-flammable helium, and has since carried round-the-world record flights.
Hot air ballooning faded until the 1950s, when cheap bottled-gas burners revived it as a sport. A pilot climbs or sinks by adjusting the burner, whereas a gas balloonist must drop ballast or vent gas, and neither can be undone indefinitely. Balloons have no engine, but they can be roughly steered by changing height to catch winds blowing in different directions. In the nineteenth century many were filled with town gas made from coal, which gave about half the lift of hydrogen but cost far less.
Science balloons push the idea further. Ordinary zero-pressure balloons sink at night as their gas cools, so they last only days. Superpressure balloons, sealed in tough envelopes that barely change size, can float for months, and missions usually end when controllers command the envelope open. Weather balloons climb past 30 kilometres before bursting and parachuting their instruments home.
Source: Balloon (aeronautics)
