WEBVTT - Up And Away In My Beautiful Spy Balloon 0:00:04.360 --> 0:00:12.360 Welcome to Tech Stuff, a production from iHeartRadio. Hey there, 0:00:12.360 --> 0:00:16.200 and welcome to tech Stuff. I'm your host, Jonathan Strickland. 0:00:16.239 --> 0:00:19.599 I'm an executive producer with iHeartRadio and how the tech 0:00:19.680 --> 0:00:23.920 are you? So I've been teasing this topic for a while, 0:00:24.000 --> 0:00:26.680 but I figured today we would finally dive into the 0:00:26.760 --> 0:00:31.520 history of spy and surveillance balloons. We've heard a lot 0:00:31.560 --> 0:00:33.320 of talk about this in the news here in the 0:00:33.400 --> 0:00:36.280 United States this month, as the US military is shot 0:00:36.320 --> 0:00:40.000 down a couple of objects that were thought to be 0:00:40.120 --> 0:00:44.360 surveillance devices built by China, or perhaps, in at least 0:00:44.360 --> 0:00:48.040 one case, an unidentified object that could have been a 0:00:48.159 --> 0:00:51.639 surveillance or spy balloon. But so we shot it down 0:00:51.680 --> 0:00:53.400 just to be on the safe side. But we're going 0:00:53.440 --> 0:00:55.200 to get to all of that now. Before we talk 0:00:55.240 --> 0:00:59.120 about China, we need to talk about the history of 0:00:59.280 --> 0:01:02.920 using balloons and stuff like espionage and warfare, and that 0:01:02.960 --> 0:01:08.080 brings us to beans. It brings us back to China. 0:01:08.280 --> 0:01:12.600 So the story goes that a Chinese military genius named 0:01:12.880 --> 0:01:17.920 Ju Liang, and I apologize for my terrible pronunciation. However, 0:01:18.160 --> 0:01:22.080 he was known as Kong Ming, used a paper lantern 0:01:22.400 --> 0:01:24.800 with a message written on it in order to call 0:01:24.880 --> 0:01:28.399 for help when enemy troops were surrounding his forces. This 0:01:28.840 --> 0:01:31.800 was one of the tactics he would use, and essentially 0:01:31.840 --> 0:01:37.440 this sky lantern was a small hot air balloon. In fact, 0:01:37.480 --> 0:01:40.720 I should probably talk about how a hot air balloon works. 0:01:41.680 --> 0:01:46.280 Now you've probably heard that hot air rises, but from 0:01:46.319 --> 0:01:48.640 another point of view, you really should say that, you know, 0:01:48.800 --> 0:01:53.600 colder air sinks. This is because warmer air is less 0:01:53.800 --> 0:01:58.400 dense than colder air. Cold air is more dense, so 0:01:58.600 --> 0:02:02.040 it settles and the warm air gets pushed up. The 0:02:02.200 --> 0:02:05.560 dense cold air sinks down, the warmer air is pushed 0:02:05.640 --> 0:02:08.840 upward to float on top, and it just kind of 0:02:09.120 --> 0:02:12.480 acts like that. It's a fluid, just as any fluids 0:02:12.760 --> 0:02:14.720 where you would deal with different densities would do the 0:02:14.760 --> 0:02:18.480 same sort of thing. Right. Well, if you have yourself 0:02:18.520 --> 0:02:21.600 a container that's light enough, and you fill it with 0:02:21.639 --> 0:02:24.919 air that is warm enough, the whole of that container 0:02:24.919 --> 0:02:27.600 will become lighter than the air surrounding it and it 0:02:27.639 --> 0:02:32.919 will rise. This is just a basic feature of fluid dynamics, y'all. So, 0:02:33.080 --> 0:02:37.239 with a paper lantern made of thin material and a 0:02:37.320 --> 0:02:41.639 heat source that can be suspended inside the lantern, preferably 0:02:41.760 --> 0:02:44.040 held away from the walls of the lantern, or else 0:02:44.080 --> 0:02:46.840 you're just going to set fire to the lantern. You 0:02:46.840 --> 0:02:49.920 would have yourself a sky lantern. It needs to be 0:02:49.960 --> 0:02:52.160 closed off obviously. If it's not, then the heat air 0:02:52.200 --> 0:02:54.080 is just going to rise straight through the lantern, so 0:02:54.280 --> 0:02:57.120 it needs to have a cap on the top. Lighting 0:02:57.160 --> 0:03:00.000 the lantern means a small fire heats the air inside 0:03:00.120 --> 0:03:01.799 the lantern to the point where the whole thing can 0:03:01.880 --> 0:03:05.200 rise up into the sky and voila. You got yourself 0:03:05.520 --> 0:03:07.959 a potential signaling device. You can see it, it's lit 0:03:08.040 --> 0:03:11.839 up in the sky, and you know generally where it's 0:03:11.919 --> 0:03:15.160 rising from. Assuming that is that the folks that you 0:03:15.720 --> 0:03:18.400 want to signal can actually see the lantern from their 0:03:18.440 --> 0:03:21.720 perspective or their downwind of the lanterns, so that they 0:03:21.760 --> 0:03:24.399 have a chance to spot and or retrieve it if 0:03:24.440 --> 0:03:28.160 it has drifted away from where you released it. If 0:03:28.160 --> 0:03:31.640 the lantern floats in the wrong direction, you might find 0:03:31.680 --> 0:03:36.120 yourself without the benefit of reinforcements. Kong Ming lived around 0:03:36.160 --> 0:03:41.120 two hundred Common Era, and to this day, sky lanterns 0:03:41.160 --> 0:03:44.800 are also known as Kongming lanterns. In China, they have 0:03:44.880 --> 0:03:48.360 been popular in various festivals and celebrations, as can be 0:03:48.440 --> 0:03:52.280 seen in the documentary Tangled when Rapunzel dreams of seeing 0:03:52.320 --> 0:03:54.880 them in person. Also, just a quick shout out to 0:03:55.360 --> 0:03:57.680 any tech stuff listeners who have been with this show 0:03:57.680 --> 0:03:59.960 long enough to remember when I would refer to work 0:04:00.080 --> 0:04:04.360 of fiction as documentaries. It has been quite some time, 0:04:04.920 --> 0:04:08.760 all right. But sky lanterns are a long way from 0:04:08.800 --> 0:04:12.320 spy balloons, right, I mean they would take centuries a 0:04:12.440 --> 0:04:15.000 bunch of them to get to a point where humans 0:04:15.320 --> 0:04:19.200 could turn to balloons for the purposes of observing others. 0:04:19.600 --> 0:04:22.080 That's because early uses of balloons for the purposes of 0:04:22.120 --> 0:04:24.480 seeing what the heck is going on over the hill 0:04:24.480 --> 0:04:27.760 over yonder would require a real human being to be 0:04:27.880 --> 0:04:30.719 lifted up into the sky, because it's not like we 0:04:30.839 --> 0:04:34.800 had wireless sensors that could collect data and then beam 0:04:34.839 --> 0:04:38.880 information down to us. We didn't even have wired sensors 0:04:38.920 --> 0:04:41.159 that could do that. The sensors that we relied upon 0:04:41.200 --> 0:04:45.119 were mostly connected to one of the five traditionally associated 0:04:45.400 --> 0:04:50.280 with human beings. Heck, even the earliest weather balloon observations 0:04:50.320 --> 0:04:53.560 involved humans going up with basic stuff like thermometers and 0:04:53.600 --> 0:04:55.880 barometers to see what it's like up there in the 0:04:55.920 --> 0:05:01.320 wild blue yonder. According to the US National Parks Service, 0:05:01.720 --> 0:05:05.880 the earliest recorded example of an observation balloon dates back 0:05:05.920 --> 0:05:11.640 to seventeen ninety four, during the French Revolution. That's just 0:05:11.720 --> 0:05:15.440 a touch more than a decade after the Montgolfier Brothers 0:05:15.480 --> 0:05:19.200 first wild France with their experiments with hot air balloons. 0:05:19.560 --> 0:05:24.640 So the Montgolfier's built larger and larger balloons while experimenting 0:05:24.640 --> 0:05:27.719 with hot air as a means to achieve flight. Their 0:05:27.760 --> 0:05:31.160 earliest experiments just involved inflating a balloon and there was 0:05:31.200 --> 0:05:33.760 no payload. That was probably a good thing, because one 0:05:33.800 --> 0:05:37.320 of those earlier experiments saw the anchor strings on the 0:05:37.320 --> 0:05:39.960 balloon break and the balloon rose to around six hundred 0:05:40.000 --> 0:05:42.719 feet in altitude and there was no way to get 0:05:42.720 --> 0:05:46.760 down apart from it cooling off enough to descend, because 0:05:46.800 --> 0:05:49.159 once the air cools down, it gets more dense, and 0:05:49.200 --> 0:05:52.280 if it gets dense enough, then it's no longer going 0:05:52.320 --> 0:05:54.960 to be bulliant in the surrounding atmosphere. It's going to 0:05:54.960 --> 0:05:59.040 come back down, right. So, in seventeen eighty three, three 0:05:59.160 --> 0:06:04.720 important actual living beings took the very first hot air 0:06:04.760 --> 0:06:09.880 balloon flight to carry a living payload. Now, earlier experiments 0:06:09.920 --> 0:06:13.200 did include moments where strapping men who were holding on 0:06:13.240 --> 0:06:16.640 to anchor lines were lifted off their feet, but those 0:06:16.680 --> 0:06:19.719 don't really count like they weren't intended to go on 0:06:19.760 --> 0:06:22.839 a flight. They were intended to hold the balloon down 0:06:23.279 --> 0:06:26.599 while experiments were conducted, and occasionally they would be lifted 0:06:26.680 --> 0:06:29.000 up like a foot or two before they would either 0:06:29.120 --> 0:06:31.280 let go or the balloon would be pulled back down. 0:06:31.760 --> 0:06:34.880 The three critters that actually went on this maiden voyage 0:06:35.200 --> 0:06:40.680 were a sheep, a duck, and a rooster, which sounds 0:06:40.720 --> 0:06:42.960 like the beginning of a joke, but no, these were 0:06:43.000 --> 0:06:47.359 suggested by King Louis the sixteenth himself. Now why he 0:06:47.480 --> 0:06:51.640 chose those particular three animals, I have no idea. I 0:06:51.680 --> 0:06:53.600 also don't know if lou thought he was giving these 0:06:53.640 --> 0:06:56.679 animals a real treat, or if he wanted to punish 0:06:56.680 --> 0:07:00.360 them for some reason. There's so many unanswered quest stents 0:07:00.360 --> 0:07:04.760 in history. This balloon ascended to around fifteen hundred feet 0:07:04.839 --> 0:07:08.080 or so. It traveled about ten thousand feet until the 0:07:08.160 --> 0:07:10.960 air inside the balloon had cooled enough for the balloon 0:07:11.000 --> 0:07:15.000 to descend. It landed. The animals were all safe inside 0:07:15.040 --> 0:07:18.120 the wicker basket that was attached to the balloon, so 0:07:18.320 --> 0:07:20.960 they got out none the worse for wear. I don't 0:07:21.000 --> 0:07:23.040 know how they felt during the flight, but they were 0:07:23.080 --> 0:07:26.760 fine afterward. And not long after that, some brave pioneers 0:07:26.760 --> 0:07:30.280 and ballooning decided they would become the first humans to 0:07:30.320 --> 0:07:34.000 take flight in such a contraption. Now, at this stage, 0:07:34.280 --> 0:07:38.600 the balloons featured a sort of container that had portholes 0:07:38.640 --> 0:07:43.200 through which one could insert fuel into a brazier that 0:07:43.360 --> 0:07:47.440 was suspended above the wicker basket that could hold people. 0:07:47.680 --> 0:07:48.960 You know, that would be at the very base of 0:07:48.960 --> 0:07:53.560 the balloon, and it would be right at the very 0:07:53.600 --> 0:07:56.559 bottom of the opening for the balloon itself. Right, So 0:07:57.160 --> 0:08:00.440 you filled this brazier up with fuel and you fire 0:08:00.520 --> 0:08:04.240 to it. Heats up the air, the balloon inflates and 0:08:04.520 --> 0:08:07.640 eventually becomes light enough to take flight. If you wanted 0:08:07.680 --> 0:08:09.840 to go higher, you put more fuel into the brazier, 0:08:10.360 --> 0:08:11.600 or if you just wanted to stay in the air, 0:08:11.640 --> 0:08:15.880 you would put more fuel in because otherwise the fire 0:08:15.880 --> 0:08:21.160 would burn down and the balloon would lose bullyancy and 0:08:21.240 --> 0:08:25.360 it would come down. Right, you could also cause the 0:08:25.360 --> 0:08:27.720 balloon to come down on purpose by introducing something that 0:08:27.720 --> 0:08:31.080 would slow down or stop the combustion, like pouring water 0:08:31.400 --> 0:08:35.120 through the porthole into the brazier to help extinguish the fire. 0:08:35.400 --> 0:08:38.360 This would allow the air to cool and again the 0:08:38.360 --> 0:08:43.319 balloon would come back down. These balloons were pretty risky. 0:08:43.440 --> 0:08:47.280 You know, a quick change in wind could potentially cause 0:08:47.480 --> 0:08:51.160 flames from this brazier to come into contact with the 0:08:51.200 --> 0:08:54.439 inner wall of the balloon itself, which could potentially mean 0:08:54.480 --> 0:08:57.319 that the balloon catches fire. Obviously that would be disastrous. 0:08:57.679 --> 0:09:01.600 You would have an uncontrolled descent, ak a crash. And 0:09:01.679 --> 0:09:04.160 there was also no way to steer these balloons, so 0:09:04.240 --> 0:09:07.000 you were just subjected to the whims of the wind itself. 0:09:07.480 --> 0:09:09.800 So you might think, oh, we're gonna go up, we'll 0:09:09.800 --> 0:09:12.200 travel a few thousand feet and we'll come down in 0:09:12.240 --> 0:09:15.000 that field over there, But because of the wind, you're like, nope, 0:09:15.240 --> 0:09:19.559 we're coming down the louver. Move over, Louis. It marked 0:09:19.559 --> 0:09:24.000 an incredible advance in science and technology. Even old Benjamin Franklin, 0:09:24.280 --> 0:09:28.080 fresh off his hardened glass Armonica tour, took note of 0:09:28.120 --> 0:09:31.319 the first hot air balloon flight while he was in France. 0:09:32.320 --> 0:09:36.319 Around this same time, other scientists and daredevils had come 0:09:36.400 --> 0:09:41.000 up with an alternative to hot air balloons because some 0:09:41.080 --> 0:09:44.320 gases are pretty light, right like, they're lighter than the 0:09:44.360 --> 0:09:48.880 surrounding atmosphere. Hydrogen, for example, is lighter than the air 0:09:49.160 --> 0:09:53.520 that we're walking around in, and so thought the physicists. 0:09:53.880 --> 0:09:56.960 If you were to fill a balloon with a very 0:09:57.080 --> 0:10:01.080 light gas like hydrogen that could also float on air, 0:10:01.200 --> 0:10:04.320 you wouldn't need a source of heat to heat up 0:10:04.360 --> 0:10:07.600 the gas. You would just need enough hydrogen to overcome 0:10:07.640 --> 0:10:11.240 the weight of the balloon itself. But hydrogen comes with 0:10:11.280 --> 0:10:14.480 a couple of drawbacks. The big one is that it's very, 0:10:15.160 --> 0:10:20.199 very flammable see also the tragedy of the Hindenburg disaster. 0:10:20.920 --> 0:10:23.800 But you wouldn't need or want an open flame anyway, 0:10:23.840 --> 0:10:26.160 because again, the gas you're using is lighter than air. 0:10:26.200 --> 0:10:29.920 There's no need to have a heat source to heat 0:10:29.960 --> 0:10:33.000 the air inside the balloon. Now, the same year that 0:10:33.040 --> 0:10:35.800 the Montgolfiers were launching hot air balloons, we got the 0:10:35.800 --> 0:10:38.520 first flight of a hydrogen balloon and it carried a 0:10:38.600 --> 0:10:42.480 payload of about twenty pounds or around nine kilograms. And 0:10:42.679 --> 0:10:46.280 you might wonder where the heck did they get hydrogen gas? 0:10:46.760 --> 0:10:50.760 Because hydrogen, while it is the most plentiful element in 0:10:50.800 --> 0:10:55.400 the galaxy, is also notorious for bonding with other elements 0:10:55.520 --> 0:10:59.120 like hydrogen and oxygen makes water, so you have to 0:10:59.120 --> 0:11:03.040 put forth real effort to break those molecular bonds to 0:11:03.160 --> 0:11:06.880 release hydrogen gas, and then you have to collect it. Well. 0:11:06.920 --> 0:11:10.079 The researchers were using scrap iron and then they were 0:11:10.120 --> 0:11:14.760 pouring sulfuric acid onto the iron. One of the byproducts 0:11:14.800 --> 0:11:18.080 of the chemical reaction that would follow is hydrogen gas. 0:11:18.160 --> 0:11:21.200 They captured this with a system of lead pipes that 0:11:21.240 --> 0:11:24.600 fed into the interior of the balloon, and this allowed 0:11:24.600 --> 0:11:28.679 them to inflate the gosh darn thing. At the end 0:11:28.800 --> 0:11:33.199 of seventeen eighty three, the Fringies successfully flew a hydrogen 0:11:33.240 --> 0:11:36.360 based balloon just a few days after the first successful 0:11:36.440 --> 0:11:42.040 hot air balloon flights. So these things are progressing in tandem. 0:11:42.480 --> 0:11:47.800 You know, it's really amazing how quickly this took off. 0:11:48.120 --> 0:11:51.760 That was a terrible, unintentional pun which I'm sure I'm 0:11:51.800 --> 0:11:55.440 going to repeat throughout this episode. Anyway, Unlike a hot 0:11:55.440 --> 0:11:59.800 air balloon, a lighter than air gas balloon doesn't need 0:11:59.840 --> 0:12:04.480 to constantly be refueled, so it just will stay up 0:12:04.520 --> 0:12:07.560 there for as long as the balloon is able to 0:12:07.600 --> 0:12:11.560 contain this lighter than air gas, so to be able 0:12:11.600 --> 0:12:14.880 to control things like altitude, the balloon would have ballast. 0:12:15.200 --> 0:12:18.120 That's bags of stuff that's used to weigh it down. 0:12:18.600 --> 0:12:20.840 So if you wanted to go higher, you had to 0:12:20.920 --> 0:12:23.360 ditch some ballast. You have to throw some weight overboard, 0:12:23.440 --> 0:12:26.560 like a sand bag or something. This would decrease the 0:12:26.559 --> 0:12:29.600 weight of the balloon and allow it to fly higher 0:12:29.679 --> 0:12:33.640 in altitude. But in order to come down, you would 0:12:33.679 --> 0:12:36.120 have to have a release valve that would let you 0:12:36.240 --> 0:12:40.880 have a controlled release. Controlled is the important part of hydrogen. 0:12:41.520 --> 0:12:44.360 You let out a little hydrogen, you lose some buoyancy, 0:12:44.400 --> 0:12:46.640 you start to come down. The more hydrogen you release, 0:12:47.280 --> 0:12:49.960 the more you come down. And if you're very careful, 0:12:50.000 --> 0:12:53.960 you're able to have a controlled descent and land without crashing. 0:12:55.080 --> 0:13:00.280 But you know, when you have that flammable true goal 0:13:00.679 --> 0:13:06.640 where you've got fuel and oxidizer and heat, things get dangerous. 0:13:06.720 --> 0:13:12.720 So hydrogen is fuel with a big, big f And 0:13:12.840 --> 0:13:15.080 if the hydrogen were to catch fire, believe me, you 0:13:15.160 --> 0:13:18.600 would be well and truly ft. It wouldn't be so 0:13:18.720 --> 0:13:22.400 much a fire as it would be an explosion. We 0:13:22.480 --> 0:13:25.240 get back to the Hendenburg disaster there, but there were 0:13:25.240 --> 0:13:29.640 also other factors that contributed to that particular tragedy. Interestingly, 0:13:30.120 --> 0:13:35.000 the Hindenburg was not designed to use hydrogen gas in 0:13:35.040 --> 0:13:39.479 the first place. It was meant to use helium. Helium 0:13:39.559 --> 0:13:41.920 is also lighter than air. You know, we're all familiar 0:13:41.960 --> 0:13:46.640 with helium balloons, but unlike hydrogen, helium is not flammable, 0:13:46.960 --> 0:13:50.000 so it's safe to have in areas where you've got 0:13:50.000 --> 0:13:54.240 things like internal combustion engines and such. However, in the 0:13:54.280 --> 0:13:58.680 nineteen thirties, the Hendenburg, which originated in Germany, wasn't able 0:13:58.720 --> 0:14:04.480 to import heli because well, it's nineteen thirties, it's Germany. 0:14:05.160 --> 0:14:08.240 Nazis were in power, and even though World War Two 0:14:08.280 --> 0:14:10.840 had not really started yet and the United States certainly 0:14:10.880 --> 0:14:14.720 wasn't pulled into it, the US was already let's say, 0:14:14.800 --> 0:14:20.720 concerned about Germany and refused to export helium to the Germans, 0:14:20.800 --> 0:14:25.960 so instead they used hydrogen, and thus the die was 0:14:26.120 --> 0:14:30.880 cast for the Hendenburg. The use of the hydrogen balloon 0:14:31.000 --> 0:14:33.120 also taught us that if you go to a high 0:14:33.200 --> 0:14:37.640 enough altitude, your ears go pop and that can hurt. Also, 0:14:37.720 --> 0:14:42.160 researchers started to carry meteorological instruments like thermometers and barometers 0:14:42.200 --> 0:14:46.040 aboard the hydrogen balloons. So these became the first weather 0:14:46.160 --> 0:14:49.960 balloons of a sort, but they were manned. Unmanned weather 0:14:49.960 --> 0:14:53.880 balloons would have to wait nearly a century. So by 0:14:53.960 --> 0:14:59.160 seventeen ninety four, balloons were a known thing. And during 0:14:59.200 --> 0:15:01.920 the French Revolution wars in which countries like Britain and 0:15:02.000 --> 0:15:05.400 Austria would to war against France, largely because it's pretty 0:15:05.440 --> 0:15:08.440 scary to see these common French peasants overthrow the previously 0:15:08.560 --> 0:15:12.960 unassailable monarchy and the noble classes, the French military would 0:15:13.000 --> 0:15:15.640 use balloons to get a bird's eye view of the battlefield. 0:15:16.280 --> 0:15:29.400 I'll explain more when we come back from this quick break. Okay, 0:15:29.920 --> 0:15:36.000 So we had French military officials using balloons in order 0:15:36.080 --> 0:15:41.680 to get a high altitude view of areas like potential 0:15:41.720 --> 0:15:48.440 battlefields or even actual battlefield conditions like active conditions during combat. 0:15:49.040 --> 0:15:55.600 It turned out that these uses were at best distractions. 0:15:55.640 --> 0:16:00.720 They were not providing really useful info. Apparently, the reports 0:16:00.720 --> 0:16:03.440 of the time said that they had no impact whatsoever 0:16:03.520 --> 0:16:08.120 on the course of battles. So early on they had 0:16:08.720 --> 0:16:12.160 hardly any impact. But flash forward a little more than 0:16:12.240 --> 0:16:14.480 half a century and head on over to the United 0:16:14.520 --> 0:16:17.760 States and we would see another use of observation balloons, 0:16:17.800 --> 0:16:21.440 this time during the US Civil War. So you had 0:16:21.520 --> 0:16:25.040 the Union and you had the Confederates, and both sides 0:16:25.080 --> 0:16:27.920 of the conflict used balloons to gather observations of the 0:16:28.000 --> 0:16:31.040 enemy and to map out battlefields. So in this case 0:16:31.720 --> 0:16:34.960 it wasn't necessarily during an actual battle, but sometimes it 0:16:35.040 --> 0:16:37.920 was just to get a really good bird's eye view 0:16:38.000 --> 0:16:41.640 of a battlefield, map out where units could take position, 0:16:42.120 --> 0:16:45.000 places that they should avoid, just conditions they need to 0:16:45.000 --> 0:16:47.240 be aware of before they go into battles so that 0:16:47.280 --> 0:16:51.120 they're not finding out while you know, warfare is breaking 0:16:51.120 --> 0:16:53.520 out all around them, and it starts to make a 0:16:53.520 --> 0:16:56.120 little sense. And this was all in an effort to 0:16:56.160 --> 0:16:59.160 just provide intelligence to military units on the ground. Now, 0:16:59.160 --> 0:17:01.880 the Confederates had their share of military balloons, but the 0:17:02.000 --> 0:17:07.120 Union side historically made better use of this technology. Meanwhile, 0:17:07.119 --> 0:17:11.760 the Confederates were experimenting with submarines. It was a really 0:17:12.920 --> 0:17:18.879 scary time for military innovation because these were all in 0:17:18.920 --> 0:17:22.919 many cases unproven technologies where people were being put at 0:17:23.000 --> 0:17:26.760 risk in order to test them. Now, both sides used 0:17:26.960 --> 0:17:30.560 gas balloons for this purpose. They weren't using hot air balloons, 0:17:30.800 --> 0:17:35.160 They're using gas balloons. They tried using balloons to extend 0:17:35.160 --> 0:17:38.320 communication lines, but they found that the actual use of 0:17:38.359 --> 0:17:41.720 this was tricky. It was hard to read signals that 0:17:41.720 --> 0:17:45.240 were sent by balloonists. They were relying on things like 0:17:45.359 --> 0:17:48.359 signal flags, which could be difficult to see. Some of 0:17:48.359 --> 0:17:51.800 them were even outfitted with telegraph wires that extended down 0:17:51.840 --> 0:17:54.560 to the ground, but those ended up being a little 0:17:54.600 --> 0:17:58.080 fiddly as well. However, the idea was sound, even though 0:17:58.080 --> 0:18:01.639 the implementation was a bit lack Again, like, this was 0:18:01.680 --> 0:18:05.040 all unfolding in the middle of a war, so it 0:18:05.080 --> 0:18:08.200 was tricky to get things to work just right while 0:18:08.200 --> 0:18:11.439 you're out in the field while it's all happening. The 0:18:11.520 --> 0:18:15.399 first weather balloons to carry instruments but not people, would 0:18:15.440 --> 0:18:18.480 arrive in the eighteen nineties back in France, where this 0:18:18.520 --> 0:18:24.040 whole business got started, essentially a century after balloons were 0:18:24.040 --> 0:18:27.639 first being used for surveillance in wartime conditions. These weather 0:18:27.680 --> 0:18:31.360 balloons had an open bottom and they were gas balloons, 0:18:31.960 --> 0:18:34.000 and so when they would be released during the day, 0:18:34.080 --> 0:18:36.480 the lighter than air balloon would rise up into the sky. 0:18:36.800 --> 0:18:40.639 They would carry all these instruments that would record measurements. 0:18:41.640 --> 0:18:44.800 At night, the gases would cool down enough for the 0:18:44.840 --> 0:18:48.359 balloon to start deflating. You had air pressure that was 0:18:48.400 --> 0:18:52.040 forcing gases out, and the balloon would start to come down, 0:18:52.160 --> 0:18:55.919 and the idea was to retrieve the instruments and record 0:18:55.960 --> 0:18:58.480 the readings as quickly as possible in order to track 0:18:58.920 --> 0:19:02.320 weather conditions. This was not always easy because the balloons 0:19:02.320 --> 0:19:06.000 had a tendency to drift, sometimes by hundreds of miles, 0:19:06.600 --> 0:19:11.239 so sometimes the data you got back wasn't necessarily the 0:19:11.280 --> 0:19:15.080 most useful. But not long after this, early meteorologists came 0:19:15.200 --> 0:19:17.760 up with a better plan. So instead of using an 0:19:17.760 --> 0:19:21.400 open ended balloon, where you know, you're essentially releasing a 0:19:21.480 --> 0:19:26.159 bag filled with light gas up into the sky, they 0:19:26.160 --> 0:19:29.639 would use a sealed balloon that was filled with lighter 0:19:29.640 --> 0:19:32.800 than air gas. They would release this balloon into the air. 0:19:33.200 --> 0:19:39.480 It would ascend up into the sky, and as the 0:19:39.640 --> 0:19:42.680 air around the balloon would get thinner at higher altitudes, 0:19:43.080 --> 0:19:46.240 the balloon would swell because there was less air pressure 0:19:46.640 --> 0:19:48.359 on the outside of the balloon than there was on 0:19:48.400 --> 0:19:51.680 the inside of the balloon at that altitude. You've probably 0:19:51.720 --> 0:19:57.280 seen pictures of balloons that looked incredibly spherical way up 0:19:57.280 --> 0:20:00.080 in altitude, but when they were first launched they and 0:20:00.160 --> 0:20:02.880 look like that at all. Now, the material on these 0:20:02.880 --> 0:20:06.480 balloons was also really thin. These days we make them 0:20:06.560 --> 0:20:10.399 out of latex, and because they're thin, this material is 0:20:10.440 --> 0:20:14.040 so thin at higher altitudes. As the balloon stretches and 0:20:14.080 --> 0:20:18.159 stretches and stretches, as it swells up, it begins to tear. 0:20:18.359 --> 0:20:21.000 And when it tears, then the gas escapes the balloon 0:20:21.760 --> 0:20:25.880 and it starts to come tumbling down. Now, the meteorologists, 0:20:26.480 --> 0:20:28.639 they knew this was going to happen, so what they 0:20:28.680 --> 0:20:32.080 did was they attached a small parachute to the payload 0:20:32.240 --> 0:20:36.359 to the instrument bundle, so that the parachute would deploy 0:20:36.640 --> 0:20:39.880 as the bundle was falling, and then the payload could 0:20:39.920 --> 0:20:43.359 float down rather than crash down. And we still use 0:20:43.400 --> 0:20:47.000 weather balloons that use this method today, though obviously now 0:20:47.040 --> 0:20:49.480 we can include devices that send out a radio signal 0:20:49.520 --> 0:20:51.840 that make it way easier to track down where those 0:20:51.880 --> 0:20:55.800 instruments have landed once they do. So, by the time 0:20:55.800 --> 0:20:59.119 you get to the early twentieth century, balloons have become 0:20:59.160 --> 0:21:01.960 a common tool the militaries. They were in fact in 0:21:02.040 --> 0:21:04.840 heavy use in World War One among pretty much all 0:21:04.880 --> 0:21:08.000 the countries involved in the conflict. The potential for spies 0:21:08.040 --> 0:21:11.240 to use balloons to uncover enemy positions and battlefield conditions 0:21:11.640 --> 0:21:15.480 were enough to prompt the various militaries to target balloons 0:21:15.520 --> 0:21:20.919 with high priority. They became important targets for the military. 0:21:21.280 --> 0:21:23.439 This is also in balloons, often in the form of 0:21:23.520 --> 0:21:28.439 dirigibles like the Hindenburg, were used as weaponized vehicles. Some 0:21:28.560 --> 0:21:32.320 dirigibles had machine guns mounted within the cabin, or they 0:21:32.320 --> 0:21:35.560 carried a payload of bombs. But that starts to get 0:21:35.560 --> 0:21:38.679 outside the surveillance and spy stuff, so I'm not going 0:21:38.760 --> 0:21:41.080 to spend any real time talking about that. That's a 0:21:41.119 --> 0:21:45.040 separate episode. Also in World War One and into World 0:21:45.040 --> 0:21:47.920 War Two, some countries started to use what we're called 0:21:48.280 --> 0:21:53.560 barrage balloons. Now, these were a defensive measure, So essentially 0:21:53.560 --> 0:21:57.040 the idea was to attach steel cables to unmanned balloons, 0:21:57.520 --> 0:22:00.719 and if there was an incoming attack by a you 0:22:00.760 --> 0:22:04.040 could release the balloons and they would go up into 0:22:04.040 --> 0:22:06.720 the air, lifting these cables up in the air, and 0:22:06.760 --> 0:22:10.359 the cables would serve as obstacles for enemy aircraft. Like 0:22:10.400 --> 0:22:14.359 you would just have these balloons holding taut cables still 0:22:14.359 --> 0:22:17.480 attached to the ground, and aircraft if they were to 0:22:17.520 --> 0:22:21.879 try and fly through the area could get tangled up. 0:22:21.960 --> 0:22:25.000 They could foul the aircraft and cause them to crash, 0:22:25.760 --> 0:22:29.639 or it would force pilots to climb at a higher 0:22:29.640 --> 0:22:33.680 altitude to fly over these barrage balloons, but that would 0:22:33.720 --> 0:22:37.280 bring them within range of anti aircraft weaponry. So it 0:22:37.320 --> 0:22:41.639 was all meant to dissuade aerial attacks, all right. But 0:22:41.720 --> 0:22:46.760 back to observation balloons. In the nineteen forties, General Mills yep, 0:22:47.400 --> 0:22:52.200 the food company, the one famous for cereal, created balloons 0:22:52.280 --> 0:22:56.280 designed to ascend all the way up into the stratosphere. 0:22:57.160 --> 0:23:01.280 The aeronautical arm of General Mills, which is wild to 0:23:01.359 --> 0:23:05.120 think about, would use these balloons to lift instrumentation way 0:23:05.640 --> 0:23:09.480 way up in the sky, typically to do stuff like 0:23:09.760 --> 0:23:13.800 study weather conditions and also detect radiation in the upper atmosphere. 0:23:14.400 --> 0:23:19.639 They used essentially what was the similar to a photographic plate, 0:23:20.359 --> 0:23:23.439 where instead of using light to create an image, it 0:23:23.520 --> 0:23:27.560 was there to detect nuclear radiation that could hit the 0:23:27.640 --> 0:23:30.120 plate and create an image that we could then see 0:23:30.160 --> 0:23:33.600 once we retrieved this when it came back to the ground. 0:23:34.119 --> 0:23:36.560 So these balloons were not meant to spy on people. 0:23:37.280 --> 0:23:40.720 They were meant to make observations about weather and science, 0:23:41.160 --> 0:23:47.240 potentially detecting nuclear radiation which could be related to espionage 0:23:47.400 --> 0:23:50.640 or at least intelligence gathering. This whole thing was called 0:23:50.720 --> 0:23:53.919 Project Skyhook, and it fell under the administration of the 0:23:53.960 --> 0:23:56.720 Office of Naval Research in the United States, with the 0:23:56.800 --> 0:24:00.840 Atomic Energy Commission joining in a little bit later. These 0:24:00.880 --> 0:24:04.080 balloons would typically jettison their payload, which would then descend 0:24:04.240 --> 0:24:06.840 via parachute for retrieval by a ground team or a 0:24:06.840 --> 0:24:10.040 water team, as the case may be, and the work 0:24:10.160 --> 0:24:15.040 done there would then inform later espionage efforts. See if 0:24:15.040 --> 0:24:18.760 you could send balloons way, way, way up into the sky, 0:24:19.800 --> 0:24:22.440 maybe you could do that so that they could potentially 0:24:22.480 --> 0:24:27.000 take photographs or film of the land that was beneath, 0:24:27.320 --> 0:24:29.520 so that, you know, you could get an idea where 0:24:29.560 --> 0:24:32.360 someone might be, I don't know, trying to hide nuclear 0:24:32.480 --> 0:24:37.120 silos in their country, or military bases or whatnot. And 0:24:37.160 --> 0:24:40.280 so in the late nineteen forties and into the nineteen fifties, 0:24:40.320 --> 0:24:43.880 the US began to rely on balloons to lift surveillance 0:24:43.920 --> 0:24:49.480 payloads into high altitudes, expressly for the purpose of photographing 0:24:49.560 --> 0:24:53.840 the then Soviet Union as well as China. The two 0:24:54.000 --> 0:24:58.080 massive communist powers that the US was convinced served as 0:24:58.160 --> 0:25:03.399 existential threats to truth, justice, and the American way, so 0:25:03.480 --> 0:25:06.400 the only way to really defend yourself is to snoop 0:25:06.480 --> 0:25:09.640