Speaker 1: Welcome to Stuff you Should Know Fromhouse Stuff Works dot com. Hey,
Speaker 1: and welcome to the podcast. I'm Josh Clark, There's Charles W.
Speaker 1: Chuck Bryant, and there's Jerry. We are up, Up and away.
Speaker 1: They're Beautiful Are Beautiful podcast. Uh. You know what I
Speaker 1: was disappointed to learn today. I've never read it, but
Speaker 1: around the World in eighty days. Apparently it wasn't like
Speaker 1: a balloon race story. I thought it was like this
Speaker 1: balloon on the cover of the VHS cassette tape. Well,
Speaker 1: the movie changed it, and I looked up today the
Speaker 1: original Jules Verne book. Uh, they said that he entertained
Speaker 1: the balloon thing, but then kind of disregarded it, saying
Speaker 1: like it's not feasible. So it was like trains and
Speaker 1: other modes and chips and other modes of transportation in
Speaker 1: the book. Yeah, and apparently the movie version took it
Speaker 1: and ran with it with a balloon and even such
Speaker 1: that a balloon is on the cover of a lot
Speaker 1: of the books now, so in the movie it's balloon centric,
Speaker 1: they do, I think, But I haven't seen the movie,
Speaker 1: so I don't. I haven't either, But whenever I think
Speaker 1: of that, But jeles Burn is like, this is preposterous.
Speaker 1: We couldn't just do it in a balloon. I think
Speaker 1: that's the case. I mean, I just skirted through this research,
Speaker 1: so I'm sure fans will hold me to the fire
Speaker 1: for this. Well. I think we should both go see
Speaker 1: that movie because I want to see it too. Go
Speaker 1: see it. Go go to a television and see it.
Speaker 1: It's where it's streaming. Yea. I was like, I didn't
Speaker 1: know was playing. Yeah, it's at all the cineplexes. I
Speaker 1: didn't know when Wilson remake it too, somebody did. I
Speaker 1: accidentally ran across that one and before I could like click, no, no,
Speaker 1: close the tablet, I saw like Jackie Chan was in
Speaker 1: it and Steve Coogan, Oh, I love. Yeah. It doesn't
Speaker 1: mean that it was a good remake, you know what
Speaker 1: I mean? Uh so hot air balloons you have a
Speaker 1: been in one? You don't know, and I never will
Speaker 1: ever in my whole life, I won't. It seems like
Speaker 1: something that would not be Joshy No, no, I I
Speaker 1: think it's one of one of the things. One of
Speaker 1: my great joys in life is looking at pictures of
Speaker 1: hot air balloons on the ground. Yeah, I just realized
Speaker 1: with your feet sitting on the ground in your chair
Speaker 1: button a chair. Yeah, but it's true. I do love
Speaker 1: looking at pictures of hot air balloon Have you ever
Speaker 1: seen a race going on or a gathering like my dad?
Speaker 1: My dad went on a hot air balloon ride. I've
Speaker 1: seen them out like around Callaway Gardens. I've never been to,
Speaker 1: but there's like a really big hot air balloon expo there. Yeah. Um,
Speaker 1: it's coming up actually in September, like the beginning. I
Speaker 1: think like September, maybe Labor Day weekend, I believe. Why
Speaker 1: did you sound disappointed? Just that? Well, I have plans
Speaker 1: labor the weekend. Well, so no ballooning for me. No,
Speaker 1: but you can look at pictures of it afterward. Your yah?
Speaker 1: So um? But no, I I have never been in one,
Speaker 1: will you? I mean I would, but I'm not like
Speaker 1: it's not on my bucket list or anything like. If
Speaker 1: someone like if a fan brow in and said I'm
Speaker 1: a balloon pilot, I'd like to invite you on a
Speaker 1: free trip, then I would totally do it. I'll be
Speaker 1: by your house to pick you up and stand on
Speaker 1: your roof at six pm or I maybe somewhere close
Speaker 1: by because you never know where we'll land. There's probably
Speaker 1: fans at Callaway Gardens. You should go down there with
Speaker 1: the stuff you should know t shirt on out. So yeah, uh,
Speaker 1: and that was a teaser slash spoiler. By the way,
Speaker 1: that was not just a joke. I don't get it
Speaker 1: that you never know where we're gonna land. I don't
Speaker 1: get that at all. They don't know where they're gonna
Speaker 1: land necessarily. Didn't you read the article? Oh yeah, I
Speaker 1: thought you were talking about us. No, no, no, I
Speaker 1: thought you're making like a reference to tour or something
Speaker 1: like that. Oh no, no, I mean the hot air
Speaker 1: pilot will air balloon pilot would say, I may land
Speaker 1: at your house to pick you up. And I maybe
Speaker 1: a got it. I would put to you, Chuck that
Speaker 1: no podcast has ever gone this far off the rails
Speaker 1: this early in. I think we're right on the rails,
Speaker 1: do you. We're talking about hot air balloons. See, we
Speaker 1: can't even agree on whether we're off the rails. All right,
Speaker 1: let's let's talk about this. Hot air balloons they actually have,
Speaker 1: uh not the longest history you would think usually when
Speaker 1: we do something like this, for like, you know, hot
Speaker 1: air balloons are actually thousands of years old ancient China.
Speaker 1: Not the case. No, No, the ideas that, um that
Speaker 1: the understanding of the principles of how hot air balloons
Speaker 1: work have been around for a couple of thousand years,
Speaker 1: but hot air balloons themselves and actually the first human
Speaker 1: to ever fly didn't happen until the eighteenth century. Util
Speaker 1: I think seventeen the seventeen eighties, right, h for the
Speaker 1: hot air balloon three with Joseph and Etienne mont gulf Yer.
Speaker 1: Not bad names if you're gonna be born in France,
Speaker 1: those are good names to half, that's right. And uh
Speaker 1: they worked for their uh for a paper company, their
Speaker 1: families paper company. And then on the side, like you
Speaker 1: know the little floating Japanese lanterns. I think they made
Speaker 1: those for fun out of paper. They had leftover paper
Speaker 1: and um, and that we should have I didn't look
Speaker 1: into that too much, by the way, for this, did
Speaker 1: you the monk Golfier brothers No, the lanterns no? And
Speaker 1: I meant to be I always think of what was
Speaker 1: that movie about them, the tsunami? Oh yeah, there's like
Speaker 1: a scene in there, isn't there where they released like
Speaker 1: a bunch of those was the one with Naomi Watts
Speaker 1: and yeah, oh boy, that was a tough movie. I
Speaker 1: never thought you should check that out. Yeah, it was
Speaker 1: very realistic and tough to get through. Which one should
Speaker 1: I watch first? That? Or Around the World in eighty Days?
Speaker 1: The one I can't think in the name of what
Speaker 1: was it called. It's like the Great beneath there they're
Speaker 1: the Great the I don't know, I can't remember. It's
Speaker 1: something like that. Are you gonna look it up? Because
Speaker 1: if so, I'll start talking about balloon history while history.
Speaker 1: So anyway, the brothers mont golf Yer, they started fashioning little,
Speaker 1: basically model um hot air balloons out of paper from
Speaker 1: their their family's mill, like you said, and they said,
Speaker 1: this works, this works conceivably, if we make a big
Speaker 1: enough balloon, we could float livestock in the air if
Speaker 1: we wanted to. And they did. They ran a test,
Speaker 1: and they were so sure of this test that they
Speaker 1: actually invited the King Um Louis the Six to come
Speaker 1: check it out. And they ran a test that involved
Speaker 1: the sheep, a duck in a chicken which they put
Speaker 1: into a basket attached to a hot air balloon and
Speaker 1: said what and they I'll bet they did and the
Speaker 1: king went. They did, and they actually those weren't random
Speaker 1: selections of animals. Um. They chose the sheep because it
Speaker 1: was similar to humans as far as being a land
Speaker 1: mammal having hair. Sheep is represented with hair. Well. One
Speaker 1: of the worries was, wouldn't be able to duck have feet. Yeah,
Speaker 1: they wouldn't be able to breathe up there. So uh,
Speaker 1: that's why they said, we'll listen to mammal up there
Speaker 1: to see if it survives. Yeah. That was one of
Speaker 1: the first things hot air balloons proved was that humans
Speaker 1: or living things can breathe in the atmosphere. No I
Speaker 1: knew that before because no one had been into the
Speaker 1: atmosphere before. That's right. And the duck and the chicken
Speaker 1: the rooster were chosen because they can both fly, um,
Speaker 1: so they were the control but they can both fly
Speaker 1: at different altitudes. So they didn't just randomly throw three
Speaker 1: farm animals in there. There was a purpose behind each one.
Speaker 1: I'm sure the sheep is like, what are you two
Speaker 1: worried about? You're the ones who can fly. Is that
Speaker 1: a friend? Sheep? Okay, it sounded like droopy a little bit,
Speaker 1: but it was a little bit. It was from the
Speaker 1: Burgundy region. That's what they saw in like down there. Okay,
Speaker 1: And by the way, the Impossible was the name of
Speaker 1: that movie, The Great Underneath the Impossible, virtually the same thing, agreed,
Speaker 1: so they floated it up there. In the beginning, they
Speaker 1: thought that the smoke was what provided left because they
Speaker 1: were just silly eighteenth century goons, and um, the smoke
Speaker 1: was the only thing they could see, so they figured
Speaker 1: it had to be that. Yeah, and this they were
Speaker 1: definitely producing a lot of smoke because they were using
Speaker 1: like straw, manure, whatever they could get their hands on
Speaker 1: to fuel these hot air balloons. Yeah, and their balloon
Speaker 1: was it was a rigid frame. It was a framemate
Speaker 1: of lightwood, and the balloon was cotton or silk. And
Speaker 1: so it wasn't like the non rigid balloons that we
Speaker 1: have today, the non rigid canopies. Maybe more specific so
Speaker 1: the mont calf Yer's Um, we're feted by King Louis.
Speaker 1: They all ate some lamb's legs together, I would assume.
Speaker 1: And yes, And then two months later, uh, they're like
Speaker 1: it's time for human trials, and they put two people
Speaker 1: not themselves in a balloon and sent them up Yeah.
Speaker 1: The King wanted convicted criminals at first to pilot it
Speaker 1: because they figured that's just what you do back in
Speaker 1: those days. Let's just use these criminals for something. Hey,
Speaker 1: that's what connects this episode. The next one convicted criminals spoiler,
Speaker 1: but they were He was talked out of that and said,
Speaker 1: now we should probably get some people that kind of
Speaker 1: know what they're doing. So they got a major in
Speaker 1: the infantry name Marquis Francois de Lard. That's not bad, Darland, Darland, Yeah, yeah,
Speaker 1: and uh, you do the second one, uh, a physics
Speaker 1: professor pill a Tree de Rosier, Yeah, very nice. De Rosier. Yeah,
Speaker 1: and uh de Rosier became not only the first human
Speaker 1: to pilot a balloon, but he became the first human
Speaker 1: to die piloting a balloon. Yeah. Um, not in that flight.
Speaker 1: A couple of decades later he did, right, Yeah, he
Speaker 1: tried to fly with the English Channel and he had
Speaker 1: a great, bad idea that was to put a hydrogen
Speaker 1: balloon inside of the hot air balloon. Yeah, why do
Speaker 1: this use air? Use something lighter than air. And that
Speaker 1: didn't work out so well because about thirty minutes into
Speaker 1: the flight, Uh, you apply fire to a hydrogen balloon.
Speaker 1: It blew up, Yeah, and he died. Had he been
Speaker 1: a chemistry professor, this might have never happened. But he
Speaker 1: was a physics professor, so he did right. Um, But
Speaker 1: those two actually were the first human beings on the
Speaker 1: planet to fly as far as we know. That's right,
Speaker 1: the whole world round in the history of humanity, those
Speaker 1: two did the first Oh what do you mean, fly?
Speaker 1: Like you consider that flying? Yeah? Pretty right? Brothers, Yeah,
Speaker 1: and right brothers are usually turned are given them the
Speaker 1: title of the of the first manned powered flight. Yeah,
Speaker 1: because it's a little bit different than floating. Apparently they're
Speaker 1: not even that somebody else beat the Right Brothers to it.
Speaker 1: Of course that's a whole other podcast if you ask me.
Speaker 1: But this is the first flight of any sort as
Speaker 1: far as anybody knows. Although it didn't like the ancient
Speaker 1: Chinese hang glide, I don't know. I feel like they did,
Speaker 1: and we talked about it. Maybe we'll find out. I
Speaker 1: feel like the ancient Chinese did almost everything way before
Speaker 1: everyone else. Yeah, they just didn't tell anybody about it
Speaker 1: because they were isolationists. Uh, and look where it got him. Yeah,
Speaker 1: they're on the rise in the twenty one century, So
Speaker 1: balloons fell out of fashion for a number of years
Speaker 1: because the dirigible, which we did a podcast on blips
Speaker 1: came into fashion because you can steer those and you
Speaker 1: can take more people. Yeah, that's a big plus. You
Speaker 1: can steer them. Yeah, you're you're not at the uh
Speaker 1: the mercy of the vagaries of the winds. And then
Speaker 1: there was something called the smoke balloon. Um, did you
Speaker 1: this sounds like fun? The thing about the flying Allan's No.
Speaker 1: Are we talking about them in the circus family of No,
Speaker 1: but we should have because they were a circus family.
Speaker 1: And that's where a lot of the smoke balloon activity
Speaker 1: took place was in circuses and fairs in the late
Speaker 1: eighteen hundreds and early nineteen hundreds. And that was it
Speaker 1: was an act this I would possibly do. No, you wouldn't.
Speaker 1: I might go look at the footage because it would
Speaker 1: be it would be over fairly quickly your death. To
Speaker 1: tell him about what we'll tell him. What to smoke
Speaker 1: balloon is, well, that's basically a balloon that's lifted from
Speaker 1: the ground with the fire, but it's not attached to fire.
Speaker 1: They basically just hold you to the ground until this
Speaker 1: thing is full. And then they let you go and
Speaker 1: you shoot up in the air and you're attached the balloon, yes,
Speaker 1: and you are hopefully wearing a parachute and everybody's holding
Speaker 1: them balloon down. And then when everybody let's go, like
Speaker 1: you said, you shoot up into the air and then
Speaker 1: once you hit your apex in the balloon like loses
Speaker 1: heat and starts to come back down to earth. Um,
Speaker 1: you get away from it and parachute down. It sounds great. Well,
Speaker 1: the Flying Alan's did all kinds of stuff. Like they
Speaker 1: it was a family of you know, like teenagers kids
Speaker 1: who like they were all teenagers. Well no, they were parents,
Speaker 1: but they were sending their teenage kids up like three
Speaker 1: at a time, hanging and doing like trapeeze work under
Speaker 1: these balloons. Uh. Like one of them brought a cannon
Speaker 1: up and was shot out of a cannon because that's
Speaker 1: what you do. And uh, I mean it's just crazy.
Speaker 1: There's actual footage of them trapeezing under a balloon and
Speaker 1: then dropping and parachuting and it's like a static line deal.
Speaker 1: There's no free fall. Really, you don't see that these days.
Speaker 1: What smoke balloon acts, all right, it's because they're probably
Speaker 1: I would say they're dangerous. It sounds a little dangerous,
Speaker 1: but thrilling. Yes, I'm sure it was so. Um. This
Speaker 1: was in the late nineteenth century, right is the smoke
Speaker 1: balloon the early nine hundreds. So by the time this
Speaker 1: had happened, By the time smoke balloons were like a
Speaker 1: popular carnival attraction, hot air balloons had been basically totally
Speaker 1: abandoned in favor of dirigibles, right, um. And it wasn't
Speaker 1: until the nineteen fifties that they started to experience a revival.
Speaker 1: Apparently the US military, I think the Navy, the Office
Speaker 1: of Navy Research to be exact, from what I understand, Um,
Speaker 1: they said, Hey, we need to figure out a way
Speaker 1: to ferry sheep and ducks and chickens from point A
Speaker 1: to point B, but we don't want to spend a
Speaker 1: lot of money or put a lot of effort behind it.
Speaker 1: So you, Mr ed Yost, come up with an idea
Speaker 1: for us. How are we going to move our sheep
Speaker 1: and chickens and ducks. That's what he said. Yeah, he
Speaker 1: found in ray Then Industries, and they in the mid
Speaker 1: nineteen fifties started designing these hot air balloons for the Navy,
Speaker 1: and uh that I think he's the one that kind
Speaker 1: of I don't know if he patented it literally, but
Speaker 1: he he got on board with that lightbulb shape. Well,
Speaker 1: I think he. I think he came up with it
Speaker 1: because this is his original designs were spheres were round,
Speaker 1: perfectly round balloons. No, we figured out that like the
Speaker 1: way that the hot air heated up inside the balloon,
Speaker 1: the top of the balloon would be fully inflated, but
Speaker 1: the bottom wouldn't be. And that's not good. You want
Speaker 1: it pretty much uniformly inflated. So he just got rid
Speaker 1: of the bottom of the sphere and tapered it in
Speaker 1: to make what you like, you say, the light bulb design.
Speaker 1: I'm pretty sure it was him, or at least his company. Yeah,
Speaker 1: he's I mean basically said you don't need this extra material, right,
Speaker 1: So this is that what you think of when you
Speaker 1: think of a hot air balloon is from as recent
Speaker 1: as the nineteen sixties, that's right. And uh, he started
Speaker 1: in the sixties selling them. After the Navy he said,
Speaker 1: I'm not so interested anymore. And he says, well, I
Speaker 1: think their civilian applications like fun. They're like, um, we
Speaker 1: have no problem with that, Just please stop corresponding with us.
Speaker 1: That's right. So that's uh, it's a bit on history,
Speaker 1: and when we come back, we will get into how
Speaker 1: these crazy looking things work. Right for this, all right, Josh.
Speaker 1: Hot air balloons are based on one principle. And even
Speaker 1: though this article has four pages of incomprehensible science, it's like, seriously,
Speaker 1: we're saying earlier, it's like it's describing alchemy. Yeah, it's magic.
Speaker 1: It doesn't make sense, and will we will get into
Speaker 1: the science more, but very simply, how air is lighter
Speaker 1: than cool air because it has less mass, and so
Speaker 1: hot air rises. You've all heard that it's gonna be hotter.
Speaker 1: Your ceiling in your bedroom is at the floor. If
Speaker 1: you're trying to cool off, do not stand on a
Speaker 1: chair and put your face towards the ceiling. Is why
Speaker 1: you reverse your ceiling fans in the winter to bring
Speaker 1: that hot air back down. That's exactly right, Chuck. But
Speaker 1: a cubic foot of airways about twenty eight grams, which
Speaker 1: is about an ounce, and if you heat that by
Speaker 1: a hundred degrees fahrenheit, it's gonna weigh seven grams less.
Speaker 1: So essentially each foot of that cubic air, and a
Speaker 1: hot air balloon lifts about seven grams, which is not much. No,
Speaker 1: it's not. And that's why they're so huge to carry
Speaker 1: just that little basket with two or three people in it. Yeah,
Speaker 1: because if you can capture enough air and heat at
Speaker 1: all by a hundred degrees, each cubic centimeter will lift
Speaker 1: its own seven grams, and all those cubic centimeters put
Speaker 1: together will lift a lot of weight. So, for example,
Speaker 1: if you have sixty five cubic feet of hot air,
Speaker 1: you can lift a thousand pounds. That's pretty great. Like
Speaker 1: you said, that's why those balloon envelopes, is what they're called,
Speaker 1: are so big. Right, So, like you said, we're gonna
Speaker 1: we'll we'll talk a little more about the science in
Speaker 1: a minute. But um, let's talk about the parts of
Speaker 1: the balloon, right, parts as parts. I just gave away
Speaker 1: the name of the balloon itself, the envelope. The envelope
Speaker 1: the most beautiful part of the balloon because wickers ugly, frankly,
Speaker 1: but the balloon itself is not really I would figure
Speaker 1: with your macromay obsession, you would be a way into wicker.
Speaker 1: I'm obsessive Macromay because it's horrid, you know what I mean.
Speaker 1: But Wicker doesn't. It's too pedestrian to be horrid, you
Speaker 1: know what I mean. Boy, the Wicker Association is gonna
Speaker 1: I'm sorry. I know they've got a very strong lobby,
Speaker 1: but I'm not afraid of them. They're gonna put a
Speaker 1: Wicker foot up your butt exactly. How Yes, the envelope
Speaker 1: is made up of nylon triangles called Gore's a bunch
Speaker 1: of them, and those gores are even made up of
Speaker 1: smaller parts sewn together panels panels if you will. Yeah,
Speaker 1: like the this strip, you know how like a balloon
Speaker 1: has lines usually going down it. Those in between the lines,
Speaker 1: the whole thing from top to bottom. That's the gore, right,
Speaker 1: But the gore itself is made up of smaller panels
Speaker 1: that you can't see unless you're close to it. That's right. Also,
Speaker 1: together nylon is what they use because it's light and uh.
Speaker 1: It also has the nice feature that it's um it's
Speaker 1: not as flammable. No, it has a high melting point. Yeah,
Speaker 1: so you can get it kind of hot before it
Speaker 1: starts to melt, like tooth from Writers of the Lost Dark.
Speaker 1: That's right, What they use as their fuel, and they're propellant,
Speaker 1: is heat brought on by propane, but not not the
Speaker 1: kind of propane gas that you use in your backyard.
Speaker 1: This is liquid compressed liquid propane, which means that it
Speaker 1: takes up a lot less space, so you can use
Speaker 1: smaller canistores called canisters, which is important because you are
Speaker 1: carrying them aboard the hot air balloon with you in
Speaker 1: the basket, So you want more space for paying customers
Speaker 1: than you know propane canisters, so you probably want the
Speaker 1: right mix of both. That's true, but if you can
Speaker 1: get a smaller and more propane and a smaller canister,
Speaker 1: that's ideal. Hence why they use liquid propane. The problem
Speaker 1: is is that if you just burn liquid propane, it's
Speaker 1: not going to burn as efficiently as say, gas propane.
Speaker 1: You'll just burn through it. Well, they have figured out
Speaker 1: a way around this chuck with these burners. The things
Speaker 1: that are at the bottom of the envelope in the
Speaker 1: little room that's called the skirt um. Those are the burners, right,
Speaker 1: and they're connected by host to the propane canisters in
Speaker 1: the basket that's right, and on the burner itself is
Speaker 1: a coil that the propane comes into and there's a
Speaker 1: pilot light that heats that that propane. It burns some
Speaker 1: of it as it's coming in, and then the heat
Speaker 1: from that that burn off heats the coil, so it
Speaker 1: turns that liquid propane into gas propane at the burner.
Speaker 1: Then it ignites it and that's what burns into the
Speaker 1: hot air within the envelope. So it's pretty clever, correct.
Speaker 1: So it it converts the liquid propane to gas propane
Speaker 1: at the burner so that you have a much more
Speaker 1: efficient burn right. And sometimes let's say, if they're flying
Speaker 1: over a field of cattle, that things pretty loud when
Speaker 1: they're burning the gas. Yeah, and they they're they're like,
Speaker 1: we don't want to disturb the cattle, so they can
Speaker 1: actually there's another valve where they can burn just a
Speaker 1: straight liquid like we were talking about, much quieter. It'll
Speaker 1: keep you aloft, keep you a offt for a little while. Um.
Speaker 1: I think it's a very nice thing to do because
Speaker 1: they don't want to scare the livestock. Well, and I
Speaker 1: imagine as a passenger it's much more uh you know,
Speaker 1: user friendly, right or friendly if you just hear that
Speaker 1: little sound and not that big do it again? Oh yeah,
Speaker 1: that would annoy me at a certain point. I don't
Speaker 1: think it would annoy me. You're having a nice conversation,
Speaker 1: oh man, right, and the pilots like, sorry, I'm just
Speaker 1: trying to keep us alive. Do you want to float
Speaker 1: or not? Or fly? Excuse me? I think floats than
Speaker 1: curate too. So the skirt that we mentioned is um.
Speaker 1: It is a nylon as well, but it is coated
Speaker 1: in a fire resistant material, which is very key because
Speaker 1: that's where the hot stuff is. And so the basket
Speaker 1: is traditionally wicker, not for any kind of throwback purpose.
Speaker 1: I don't always figured it was thrown back. I always
Speaker 1: thought they were just trying to annoy me, like a
Speaker 1: beautiful hot air balloon then like the world's ugliest little box. Right.
Speaker 1: It turns out that wicker plays a role in um
Speaker 1: absorbing the impact of landing. Yeah, it makes sense. I
Speaker 1: still have a hard time believing they can't build something better, right,
Speaker 1: something out of like like this same stuff they make
Speaker 1: super balls out of. Yeah, or something with with shocks
Speaker 1: or springs or you know, that's like kevlar. I don't know. Well,
Speaker 1: the other the great aspect of it is when you
Speaker 1: add shocks or something, you're adding weight wicker. You need
Speaker 1: the wicker to stand in, but because it's woven, it
Speaker 1: will absorb that impact and distributed across the wicker rather
Speaker 1: than up into your knees. As as much I think
Speaker 1: it makes sense. It kills several birds with one stone.
Speaker 1: I think it's one of those if it's not broke,
Speaker 1: don't fix it deals. Probably like they probably looked into
Speaker 1: it and then like wickers, fine, but can't they like
Speaker 1: wrap it in construction paper or something. One guy made
Speaker 1: a glass bottom basket. Sounds terrible. I think it's a
Speaker 1: great idea. They should all be glass bottom because then
Speaker 1: you can just look. I know, you know that I
Speaker 1: would totally lose my mind. Uh, there is an upper
Speaker 1: The more you know fuel you pump in there, it's
Speaker 1: gonna rise, rise, rise, But there is an upper altitude
Speaker 1: limit because the air becomes thin, and uh, you know,
Speaker 1: you can't lift the balloon any further. Basically at a
Speaker 1: certain point. Let's talk about what you're talking about real quick.
Speaker 1: Let's talk about the science, all right, So why why
Speaker 1: it doesn't make any sense that you um would not
Speaker 1: that there would be an upper limit that the balloon
Speaker 1: will only float up to a certain height in the atmosphere.
Speaker 1: It doesn't make sense until you understand the forces at
Speaker 1: play of what makes a hot air balloon float. Right, Right,
Speaker 1: It's actually pretty simple. I would advise you strongly that
Speaker 1: if you want to understand this, don't read this article.
Speaker 1: Go find it elsewhere on the internet. Just listen to us. Yeah, okay,
Speaker 1: well we're trying, I guess, is what I'm saying. Um,
Speaker 1: But the the hot air balloon floats because of the
Speaker 1: principle of buoyancy or the buoyancy effect, right, And buoyancy
Speaker 1: is an upward force that counteracts gravity. Right, So, at
Speaker 1: sea level, gravity is at its strongest and sea is
Speaker 1: apparently at its weakest. Right, I believe maybe it said
Speaker 1: it's strongest. I just threw that in and I could
Speaker 1: be wrong. I'm going to back off of that part,
Speaker 1: but I do know that gravity is at its strongest
Speaker 1: at sea level, at least as far and until you
Speaker 1: get into the water, and then it gets more stronger
Speaker 1: and stronger, at least until someone emails us intels this
Speaker 1: other one. Right. So, Um, the air at sea level
Speaker 1: has a lot of gravity acting on it, and one
Speaker 1: of the reasons why it has a lot of gravity
Speaker 1: acting on it because that's where the most molecules, air
Speaker 1: molecules are found in the entire atmosphere of the Earth. Yeah,
Speaker 1: these air molecules are all around us at all times.
Speaker 1: You can't see them, but they're smashing into each other.
Speaker 1: They're creating energy, which is air pressure. Right. So the
Speaker 1: movement of these air particles combined with their mass. I mean,
Speaker 1: they're very very tiny, but they still have mass. Because
Speaker 1: there's so such a mind boggling number of air molecules
Speaker 1: in the atmosphere, there's enough of them they have enough
Speaker 1: of a combined mass that they have a substantial mass
Speaker 1: that gravity can act on. And again, it has its
Speaker 1: strongest force at at sea level. Right. So air pressure
Speaker 1: is strongest at sea level because the air is denser there. Okay. Now,
Speaker 1: if you have air that's lighter than the air at
Speaker 1: sea level, that air will float, that's right. And when
Speaker 1: you apply heat to it, it's going to be lighter. Right.
Speaker 1: And the reason it's lighter because it expands. Okay, So
Speaker 1: it's less dense. Few well as a fewer molecules are
Speaker 1: just less dense. I think they they it's not necessarily fewer.
Speaker 1: They just occupy a larger space, right, So it's less dense,
Speaker 1: which means just like with water, if you take a cork,
Speaker 1: a cork is less dense than water, which is why
Speaker 1: when you put a cork and water, it's going to float.
Speaker 1: It's buoyant. Air is the same thing as water. They're
Speaker 1: both fluids. So the same principles are at work that
Speaker 1: Archimedes figured out years and years ago um in the
Speaker 1: air as well. So if you could take this hot
Speaker 1: air and capture it in some sort of way in
Speaker 1: a very envelope of nylon, like a very light vessel
Speaker 1: like that, it will float and it will displace. It
Speaker 1: will be as buoyant as in an equal amount to
Speaker 1: the weight of the air it displaces, so it has
Speaker 1: that lift. So that's all that's at work. Is warmer
Speaker 1: air floats above colder air because it's less dense, And
Speaker 1: all the hot air balloon does is capture warm air
Speaker 1: so that it will float and you attach your basket
Speaker 1: onto it and you get to float with it. Nice job,
Speaker 1: thank you. I'm sure I got a few things wrong
Speaker 1: in there, but okay, I think that was pretty pretty
Speaker 1: damn close. It sounds like somebody's being killed in the
Speaker 1: other room. I know we should go investigate. You want
Speaker 1: to take a break, Let's take a break and we'll
Speaker 1: we'll get to how to pilot these beasts, all right, Josh,
Speaker 1: nice job on science. I feel like you're jinxing me
Speaker 1: every time you compliment me on that. I think somebody's
Speaker 1: going to write in and be like, I'm embarrassed for you.
Speaker 1: How badly you got that wrong. So if you go
Speaker 1: to pilot one of these things, it's pretty simple. Um.
Speaker 1: And when I say pretty simple, that is not to
Speaker 1: remove the amount of admiration I have for these pilots,
Speaker 1: because it takes skill. Like you and I can't just
Speaker 1: jump in one. We would kill ourselves. Oh yeah, and
Speaker 1: if we piloted one, Yeah, it takes hundreds of hours
Speaker 1: to become a good pilot of a hot air balloom. Yeah.
Speaker 1: It's kind of like, Um, when I took went to Vancouver.
Speaker 1: I took that float plane trip with Reggie, the Vancouver pilot,
Speaker 1: and I was I didn't mean to insult him, but
Speaker 1: while we were flying, I looked at him and I
Speaker 1: was like, Reggie, I'm just looking at what you're doing.
Speaker 1: And I said, I feel like, I could do this.
Speaker 1: I said, it looks you know, it doesn't look too hard,
Speaker 1: and he said it's not. He said, it's flying in
Speaker 1: great conditions is super easy. He said, it's flying and
Speaker 1: not great conditions is where you earn your stripes. And
Speaker 1: I was like, oh, because he was just doing some
Speaker 1: levers and steering a thing and doing stuff. Yeah, peddling
Speaker 1: really quick, but I get the same feeling. It's like
Speaker 1: with a hot air balloon pilot. It's it's pretty simple
Speaker 1: at its basis because all you're doing, literally the only
Speaker 1: controls you have are to make that thing go up
Speaker 1: and down up by releasing more hot air down because
Speaker 1: you have a cord attached to the valve at the
Speaker 1: top that releases Yeah, it releases some of that hot
Speaker 1: air so you can sink and land and that's it. Yeah. Basically,
Speaker 1: there's a strip of circular strip at the very top
Speaker 1: of the balloon and when you pull on that cord,
Speaker 1: it opens it up, it pulls it away a little bit,
Speaker 1: and by releasing some of that hot air, you're cooling
Speaker 1: effectively the air inside the envelope. So you start to
Speaker 1: come down. So you got up and you got down,
Speaker 1: but Josh yes, how did they go left and right?
Speaker 1: How do they fly horizontally in different directions? It seems
Speaker 1: like you would just go where the wind takes you,
Speaker 1: you do, So how do they go in different directions? Well?
Speaker 1: Apparently so there's um, there is wind, and then there's
Speaker 1: also something called wind aloft, and wind aloft is in
Speaker 1: the in the atmosphere UM, and it goes in different
Speaker 1: directions at different altitudes. There you have it. So if
Speaker 1: you want to go, say west, you rise up to
Speaker 1: fet where the winds blow west. If you want to
Speaker 1: go around in circles a few times, you go north,
Speaker 1: Oh yeah, by going up to that's right. So basically
Speaker 1: all they're doing is controlling altitude to control horizontal direction
Speaker 1: based on wind patterns. Yeah, which again doesn't sound that hard.
Speaker 1: It's still consists of up and down. It's just going
Speaker 1: up and down to the right places depending on where
Speaker 1: you want to go. The thing is this is this
Speaker 1: takes a tremendous amount of skill and I would say too, yes,
Speaker 1: experience almost like what you would call probably muscle memory,
Speaker 1: because it takes about thirty seconds for the um the
Speaker 1: balloon to respond either way to either the valve or
Speaker 1: the burner, So you can't say, oh, man, that power
Speaker 1: lines right in front of me, let me get out
Speaker 1: of the way. And I got to see that coming
Speaker 1: from a long distance and say, let me get out
Speaker 1: of the way, right, like you're hearing a cruise ship
Speaker 1: or something. Did you see that video of the people
Speaker 1: that they had that same that very thing happened to them.
Speaker 1: There were there. It was, um, I believe in Virginia
Speaker 1: in two thousand or fourteen. Like they just either didn't
Speaker 1: see a power line or I don't know what happened,
Speaker 1: but like the guy tried to pull out like right
Speaker 1: before and go aloft higher up and they hit the
Speaker 1: power line. The whole thing just caught fire. Yeah, which
Speaker 1: is apparently a very as far as hot air balloon
Speaker 1: accidents go, that is a fairly common um accident. Yeah,
Speaker 1: I would imagine that's the probably one of the most
Speaker 1: awful ways to go. I would imagine. Yeah, I guess
Speaker 1: because it's slow, you can see it coming, you know,
Speaker 1: it's not like a car crash. You're like, all right,
Speaker 1: we're getting closer to your death. Closer to your death. Yeah,
Speaker 1: that would be pretty bad. And then, of course I'm
Speaker 1: not making light of it. That's truly terrible. UM. So
Speaker 1: I kind of joked earlier that they don't know quite
Speaker 1: where they're going to land, and that is true. Um,
Speaker 1: they have an idea of where they want to land,
Speaker 1: and they've plotted this out. They're not just willy nilly
Speaker 1: up there. But UM, if you if you'll notice, when
Speaker 1: you're in a hot air balloon basket, one of the
Speaker 1: most vital people on your side or the ground team, Yeah,
Speaker 1: which you have to have if you're a hot air balloonist.
Speaker 1: The sum total of the people who are involved in
Speaker 1: your hot air balloon trip are not in the balloon.
Speaker 1: There are plenty of people following you in a car.
Speaker 1: That's right, because they're they're basically following you to where
Speaker 1: you will eventually be able to land. Yeah. And again
Speaker 1: you UM have an idea possibly of where you want
Speaker 1: to land, maybe the county or the state that you
Speaker 1: want to land in, but it's probably doesn't go too
Speaker 1: much further than that. UM, And I guess a safe
Speaker 1: pilot well number one. There there's some conditions that you
Speaker 1: want to look for, um when you're piloting. UM. For example,
Speaker 1: like you when you're starting, before you go up, you
Speaker 1: want to have contacted a weather service to find out
Speaker 1: which way the wind's blowing. At least look at your
Speaker 1: your smartphone weather app. I'm sure that there's probably hot
Speaker 1: air balloon apps for that kind of thing. YEA, give
Speaker 1: a little more advanced wind detail, right. You also don't
Speaker 1: want a thunderstorm within a hundred miles. That's lightning is
Speaker 1: terrible for hot air balloons, and in hot air balloon
Speaker 1: in the rain is dangerous and no fun anyway, Yes,
Speaker 1: it is. So if you're a normal pilot, you're probably
Speaker 1: only gonna want to fly in ideal conditions, right, like
Speaker 1: nice day with just a little bit of wind. Yeah.
Speaker 1: You don't want too strong a wind either. Yeah, and
Speaker 1: you don't want the winds aloft to be high because
Speaker 1: even on the ground the wind can be fined, but
Speaker 1: up in the atmosphere they might be going like crazy.
Speaker 1: So you want to know all this stuff before you
Speaker 1: take off, and then when you do take off, you're
Speaker 1: constantly looking around for potential emergency landing sites. Part it
Speaker 1: was a little scary, Yeah, you, I mean you may
Speaker 1: whatever happens, you may need to land immediately. And it's
Speaker 1: not it's not like pulling a car over on the
Speaker 1: shoulder of a highway, which can be dangerous enough at
Speaker 1: high speeds. This is like landing a hot air balloon
Speaker 1: again in in a civilized world with lots power lines
Speaker 1: everywhere and roads and lakes and all sorts of stuff
Speaker 1: that you don't want to fly into, so you constantly
Speaker 1: have to be looking out for a place to land. Yeah,
Speaker 1: you probably don't think about all the stuff around you
Speaker 1: until you're up in a balloon like that and you
Speaker 1: know that each one of those things is a hazard. Um.
Speaker 1: The other thing a pilot will probably do is send
Speaker 1: up a just a regular old helium balloon. They call
Speaker 1: them pieballs pilot balloons, but it's just a balloon. And
Speaker 1: they'll send that baby up there just to see like, okay,
Speaker 1: where's that guy going, because that's where we're going to
Speaker 1: be going, And they watch it and just kind of
Speaker 1: chart its course for a little while and um, then
Speaker 1: off they go. Oh, there's also some other things on board.
Speaker 1: Of course, it's not just a basket. They're gonna have
Speaker 1: an altimeter and variometer just to know where they are,
Speaker 1: of course, and um. But other than that, it's pretty rudimentary, Yeah,
Speaker 1: it really is. And the ground crew also is not
Speaker 1: just there to follow you in the car. And one
Speaker 1: of the reasons they're they're following you in the cars
Speaker 1: to give you a ride back home because you it's
Speaker 1: almost impossible to go land back at the same place
Speaker 1: you left from. Yeah, because you started in Georgia and
Speaker 1: you landed in Alabama, right exactly. So, Um. The ground
Speaker 1: crew is also there to help you um set up,
Speaker 1: which apparently is not as involved as you would think.
Speaker 1: It takes ten to fifteen minutes to unpack fully a
Speaker 1: hot air balloon and have it um floating. Yeah. It's
Speaker 1: basically in a big stuff sack like a sleeping bag. Uh.
Speaker 1: They lay it out onto a like a covering, like
Speaker 1: a pad on the ground to protect it. They start
Speaker 1: blowing it up with a fan, just a regular old fan,
Speaker 1: just to kind of get some some air in that thing.
Speaker 1: And then they will start shooting it with the hot
Speaker 1: air and it starts to, you know, increase in size
Speaker 1: and then rise up and they've got it tied to
Speaker 1: the truck or whatever the basket uh, and everybody's holding
Speaker 1: you take to the ground, I imagine, yeah, Uh, and
Speaker 1: then you know until it as it gets bigger and bigger,
Speaker 1: you just sort of sit around and wait, put the
Speaker 1: champagne on ice, because that's the tradition when you land. Yeah,
Speaker 1: as is the traditional leg of lamp per passenger. No,
Speaker 1: it really is. The champagne toast. Is that started back
Speaker 1: in the olden days as a sort of to play
Speaker 1: kate farmers when they would land on their land. Yeah.
Speaker 1: Farmers are like, I don't want you landing on my land.
Speaker 1: First of all, that things scares me. Be here landing
Speaker 1: on my property. You're scaring my cattle. And the guy
Speaker 1: would be like, well, what about some champagne. Yeah, they
Speaker 1: would offer him champagne. That would be like my one
Speaker 1: weakness to the well the same he was already drunk
Speaker 1: because it was in the Champagne region. Oh yeah, he's like,
Speaker 1: I already have a bunch of this. I don't need
Speaker 1: your champagne. But that tradition still holds true today. You
Speaker 1: take a champagne toast when you land. Uh. You might
Speaker 1: say soft winds and gentle landings, or you might recite
Speaker 1: the balloonist blessing were balloonist prey, which is the winds
Speaker 1: have welcomed you with softness, the sun has blessed you
Speaker 1: with its warm hands, you have flown so high and
Speaker 1: so well that God has joined you in your laughter
Speaker 1: and set you gently back into the loving arms of
Speaker 1: Mother earthlink guzzle, guzzle burp. Did you You didn't make
Speaker 1: that up just now, wasn't that's the balloonist blessing. It's
Speaker 1: good chuck. Yeah, that was just scatting a poem. Uh.
Speaker 1: You land, you drink the champagne, and then you're done.
Speaker 1: You go about your day. Everybody packs up and yeah, yeah,
Speaker 1: packing up customers, so you're just like, see you later, Yeah,
Speaker 1: can everybody else? Like I said, packing up takes it
Speaker 1: a little longer, but um, it's it's not too different
Speaker 1: than packing a parachute or sleeping back or something. No,
Speaker 1: it's like you said, it's like a stuff stack. Just
Speaker 1: packing and back in there. That's right. And um, an
Speaker 1: experienced pilot, it's uh, it's not the easiest thing to
Speaker 1: land these smoothly. You know you're gonna bump and you
Speaker 1: might land a little too hard, But if you're an
Speaker 1: experienced pilot, you're gonna bring it in nice and smooth,
Speaker 1: bump a little bit, give everyone a good uh oh,
Speaker 1: And then the champagne comes out and apparently the big
Speaker 1: draw of hot air ballooning is that it's a very
Speaker 1: serene experience that I just kept running into that word
Speaker 1: over and over again. Everybody was like floating, serene and
Speaker 1: peaceful experience. Ever, I think it'd be amazing. I mean
Speaker 1: it sounds nice. Aside from just the hight part. I
Speaker 1: get why you don't want to do it. Yeah, I
Speaker 1: would never expect that. So is it safe, uh to do? Yes.
Speaker 1: I don't have any stats on deaths. I've got some
Speaker 1: stats from what I saw. It is, uh, relatively speaking,
Speaker 1: safe thing to do. UM, there have been um what
Speaker 1: seemed like in upticks and balloon accidents. It's it's possible
Speaker 1: that reporting has increased or media coverage is increased. But
Speaker 1: over the last few years, UM, there have been some
Speaker 1: very high profile accidents apparently as of two thousand fourteen.
Speaker 1: Between nineteen sixty four and two thousand fourteen, there were
Speaker 1: seven seventy five balloon accidents in the US UM with
Speaker 1: seventy fatalities, and sixteen people died ballooning from two thousand
Speaker 1: two to two thousand and twelve. So it does seem
Speaker 1: like there's an uptick in it somehow, sixteen people over
Speaker 1: ten years, though, right, but seventy over Um, Yeah, I
Speaker 1: guess it's about right. I guess it is overging I say,
Speaker 1: but um, there was some high profile ones. The worst
Speaker 1: ever was in um Egypt, actually in I think over
Speaker 1: lux Or nineteen of twenty one people on board a
Speaker 1: hot air balloon died when it caught fire. Yeah, they can.
Speaker 1: We didn't point that out. They can make these baskets
Speaker 1: really large now if the balloon is large enough. Obviously
Speaker 1: some I've seen double deckers do I don't know about that.
Speaker 1: I haven't seen a double decker. That sounds kind of neat.
Speaker 1: It's pretty neat. Um, But supposedly overall it's a relatively
Speaker 1: safe thing to do. Let's call it safe fish safe
Speaker 1: fish and um, if you have some money, it's something
Speaker 1: you could get into. If you want a little too
Speaker 1: person hot air balloon, it'll set you back about twenty
Speaker 1: two k and at three to four person thousand dollars
Speaker 1: for you're you're very own hot air balloon with everything. Yeah,
Speaker 1: they can be shape like all kinds of crazy shapes.
Speaker 1: Now if you've seen balloon shows, yeah, like I've seen
Speaker 1: them shape like a castle or like a car like
Speaker 1: Charlie Brown. I saw one with the spike through it. It
Speaker 1: It was hilarious. I like it was punctured. That's the
Speaker 1: one I get in. Yeah. Uh. And then if you
Speaker 1: are into this kind of stuff where you want to
Speaker 1: find out whether you're into this kind of stuff, if
Speaker 1: you're in Georgia or the Southeast, you can go to
Speaker 1: Callaway Gardens sky High Hot Air Balloon Festival. And then
Speaker 1: the big one is in Alburquerque, the Alburquerque International Balloon Fiesta.
Speaker 1: It happens every year. I think it's in a couple
Speaker 1: of months. Nice. Yeah, I'd love to go to that.
Speaker 1: So they go hot air balloons, you get anything else? Yeah,
Speaker 1: I got some more stuff from our buddies at Mental
Speaker 1: floss Um. They had a great ten facts about hot
Speaker 1: air balloons. Here's one fact. There was a balloon duel
Speaker 1: in eight eight oh yeah, two frenchmen. Um, we're in
Speaker 1: a love triangle and they figured the best way to
Speaker 1: settle it was to get up and shoot at each
Speaker 1: other's balloon. I feel like I've heard about that before.
Speaker 1: Pretty silly French, Frenchy thing to do. And one of
Speaker 1: the guys shot the other guy's balloon. The other guy missed,
Speaker 1: and the balloon crashed and killed the guy. Hooray. And
Speaker 1: then uh, in the US there was the Union Army
Speaker 1: had a balloon Corps. Abraham Lincoln started the Balloon Corps.
Speaker 1: They had seven balloons and uh with names like the Intrepid,
Speaker 1: and they would track enemy movement. They've been using the
Speaker 1: reconnaissance in the and since the seventeen hundreds with the
Speaker 1: French Army. So uh, the the Union Army did that,
Speaker 1: and then the Confederates made their own I guess out
Speaker 1: of whatever, you know, clothing they had laying around right,
Speaker 1: and they just had the one balloon. It was captured
Speaker 1: by the Union Army. Oh really yeah in eighteen sixty three,
Speaker 1: like give us back off balloons. So uh wow. Well,
Speaker 1: thanks Chuck, Thank you friends at Mental Flossy, thank you
Speaker 1: for listening to this episode of stuff you should know. Uh.
Speaker 1: If you want to know more about hot air balloons
Speaker 1: and alchemy, you can type that word into the search
Speaker 1: bar at how stuff works dot com. And since I
Speaker 1: said alchemy, it's time for listening mail. I'm gonna call
Speaker 1: this surefire way to get on closer mail. You guys
Speaker 1: are writing you from the County of Essex in England.
Speaker 1: I only started listening about a month ago, and I
Speaker 1: can't get enough. Um. I've been trying to think of
Speaker 1: the best way to guarantee it's right on the air,
Speaker 1: so I found out some common traits. One, it should
Speaker 1: compliment you on messager egos and something, and number two
Speaker 1: for balance, the letters should point out a mistake or oversight,
Speaker 1: but also make an interesting contribution. Yeah, this guy's got it.
Speaker 1: It's that So. First of all, I love the podcast.
Speaker 1: You're both awesome and really funny and smart. Second, I
Speaker 1: really uh, I'm intrigued by the podcast on left handies.
Speaker 1: Left handis left handers let's just call him left with
Speaker 1: left and particularly the bit about how being left handed
Speaker 1: can be an advantage in sports. Um. As you were saying,
Speaker 1: I felt sure that you had mentioned the case of
Speaker 1: Rafael Nadal, the tennis player was mentally imporing you to
Speaker 1: do so, but you're not familiar with the story. I
Speaker 1: guess he was born right handed, but from the first
Speaker 1: time he picked up a racket, he was trained by
Speaker 1: his uncle to play with his left hand, to make him, uh,
Speaker 1: to give him an advantage and make it more difficult
Speaker 1: to beat. Most people believe him to be left handed,
Speaker 1: but don't you think that's amazing that a player can
Speaker 1: become the best in the world, or at least the
Speaker 1: best on clay court ever, perhaps playing with their weaker hand.
Speaker 1: Pretty neat. It is very neat. It also post is
Speaker 1: an interesting question over how much the dominant hand that
Speaker 1: we're born with is actually just a state of mind
Speaker 1: that it can be retrained. Keep up the good work, chaps,
Speaker 1: And that is from Joe Broomfield. Yeah, that works pretty well.
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