Up, Up and...Uh, Oh!

By Alain L. Sanders

Rutan and Melton (1) as well as Fossett were foiled last week. But two more tries to circle the globe, including another by Branson, are coming up. What's going on here? A ballooning history:

On Sept. 19, 1783, at Versailles, the first aeronauts--a sheep, a rooster and a duck--take to the sky in the Montgolfier brothers' hot-air balloon. On Nov. 21, Jean Francois Pilatre de Rozier and the Marquis d'Arlandes drift over Paris in a Montgolfier, achieving the first manned free flight (2). Asked what good are balloons, U.S. envoy Ben Franklin replies, "What good is a newborn baby?" The English Channel is crossed in 1785, and ballooning soon becomes the stuff of daredevils (3). But in 1794 the world's first air force is born: warring France uses tethered balloons to observe and direct troops, a tactic later employed in the American Civil War. During WW II, barrage balloons (4) and their slicing cables help protect various sites, including London, against low-flying enemy planes. From the outset, balloons are used to study the atmosphere, eventually lifting men to the brink of space (5). Sports ballooning takes off in the 20th century. The Atlantic is crossed in 1978, the Pacific in 1981, both by U.S. teams. But the last conquest, circumnavigating the globe, remains, well, up in the air.

--By Alain L. Sanders