Gas balloon

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A scientific balloon being launched near Lynn Lake in Manitoba, Canada. The small amount of gas in the envelope expands to fill its 1,130,000 m³ capacity as it climbs to reach the rarefied atmosphere at the balloon's cruise altitude of 37 kms. The 2,400 kg experiment is suspended from the launch crane whilst the balloon is being filled.

A gas balloon is any balloon that stays aloft due to being filled with a gas less dense than air or lighter than air (such as helium or hydrogen). A gas balloon may also be called a Charlière for its inventor, the Frenchman Jacques Charles.

Contents

1 History
2 Gas Balloons Today
3 Records
4 Use on other planets
5 External Links
6 See also

History

The first gas balloon made its flight in August 1789. It carried no passengers or cargo, and popped when it reached too high an altitude. Later that same year, a manned flight was made shortly after the first ascension in a hot air balloon (and indeed the first recorded ascension by man in any flying device).

Gas balloons remained popular throughout the age before powered flight. They could fly higher and farther than hot-air balloons, but were more dangerous as they were usually filled with hydrogen gas (which, unlike helium, could be easily mass-manufactured). Gas balloons were used in the American Civil War, the Napoleonic Wars (to very limited extent), and throughout the 19th century by hobbyists and show performers such as the Blanchards.

Gas Balloons Today

Today, gas balloons are often filled with helium, which is non-flammable. Gas balloons are regularly used for high-altitude research (such as with weather balloons) and for record-breaking manned balloon flights.

Helium-filled balloons for scientific research have flown to altitudes more than 50 km above sea level, above Earth's stratosphere and into the mesosphere. Such balloons fly above over 99.9% of Earth's atmosphere and operate in near-vacuum. They are used to image the Sun and stars in ultraviolet or other wavelengths of light that does not penetrate the atmosphere, to detect weak cosmic rays or the cosmic microwave background, or to study conditions at the top of the atmosphere.

Current gas ballooning is quite common in Europe, primarily in Germany, where Hydrogen is used as a lifting gas. The balloons are very special in construction and enjoy an exceptional safety record. The sport is now expanding in the United States, with both Helium and Hydrogen as lifting gases. But even as the sport is expanding, it is extremely small, with possibly only 20 or so active pilots in the entire United States.

Records

The altitude record for a manned balloon was set at 34.7 kilometers on April 5, 1961 by Malcom Ross and Victor Prather in a balloon launched from the deck of the USS Antietam in the Gulf of Mexico.

The altitude record for an unmanned balloons is 51.8 kilometres. It was reached by a Winzen balloon with a volume of 1.25 million cubic metres, launched in October 1972 from Chico, California, USA. This is the greatest height ever obtained by an atomospheric vehicle. Only rockets, rocket planes, and ballistic projectiles have flown higher.

Use on other planets

The Russian spaceprobes VeGa 1 and VeGa 2 abandonded two gas balloons with scientific experiments in the atmosphere of Venus, which could transmit signals for two days to earth.

External Links