Rivka Galchen writes about the history of scientific balloons. “A large orb floating above the landscape is as much a potential weapon as it is a vector of inquiry, or a vision of lighter-than-air beauty.”
over Billings, Montana. The Chinese Foreign Ministry claimed that it was a weather balloon blown off course, which was not entirely implausible. But even balloons deployed for scientific aims have often carried political ballast. In 1783, one of the earliest manned balloons was built with finances from the King of France, launched with great pomp and bearing the fleur-de-lis.
The Montgolfier brothers, the twelfth and fifteenth sons of a paper manufacturer, had started the balloon craze, in 1783. They used buttons to combine pieces of paper-lined burlap, forming a ten-metre-wide balloon, which rose more than six thousand feet, stayed aloft for ten minutes, and drifted about a mile. The brothers explained that they used “Montgolfier gas,” which was lighter than air—it was understood only later that Montgolfier air was simply warmer air.
Other people discovered the stratosphere. Léon Teisserenc de Bort sent up some two hundred balloons. He designed them himself, using kerosene paper, which is water-resistant. He also designed the instruments that his balloons carried. He dispensed with the human element, sending them up unmanned, then searching for the instruments once they fell back to Earth. He came across a mystery. Generally, as you ascend, the temperature drops.
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