One question that occurs to me is what the… engine, I guess… looked like.
Like, I’m imagining that the engine and passengers are in a wicker basket. You probably don’t want to just light a fire in the middle of one of those. In a modern balloon I’d probably expect a gas burner, but if you don’t have one of those?
I wonder if you have something like a cast-iron stove, possibly with bricks to insulate the bottom of it and stop the basket from burning. That sounds pretty heavy. Maybe there was a limiting factor here?
Wikipedia doesn’t say what the original used, but two other things caught my eye. In the section above, premodern and unmanned balloons:
The notable balloonist Julian Nott, in the 1970s; hypothesized that two millennia ago, the Nazca Lines geoglyphs’ creation could have been guided by Nazca leaders in a balloon, possibly the earliest hot air balloon flights in human history.[7] In 1975 to support this theory, he designed and piloted the Nazca Prehistoric Balloon, claiming to have used only methods and materials available to the Pre-Inca Peruvians 1,000 years ago.[8][9]
I’m skeptical on general principles here, but there could be something interesting to learn. And in the section below, modern balloons:
Modern hot air balloons, with an onboard heat source, were developed by Ed Yost, beginning during the 1950s
Where did early balloons have their heat source, if not onboard? Unless that word means something different than “the fuel and the thing burning the fuel both being carried in the basket”? My guess would be there was a transition at this point that had something to do with the heat source, but was not what I would describe as “not-onboard to onboard”.
One question that occurs to me is what the… engine, I guess… looked like.
Like, I’m imagining that the engine and passengers are in a wicker basket. You probably don’t want to just light a fire in the middle of one of those. In a modern balloon I’d probably expect a gas burner, but if you don’t have one of those?
I wonder if you have something like a cast-iron stove, possibly with bricks to insulate the bottom of it and stop the basket from burning. That sounds pretty heavy. Maybe there was a limiting factor here?
Wikipedia doesn’t say what the original used, but two other things caught my eye. In the section above, premodern and unmanned balloons:
I’m skeptical on general principles here, but there could be something interesting to learn. And in the section below, modern balloons:
Where did early balloons have their heat source, if not onboard? Unless that word means something different than “the fuel and the thing burning the fuel both being carried in the basket”? My guess would be there was a transition at this point that had something to do with the heat source, but was not what I would describe as “not-onboard to onboard”.