Vietnam or Thailand ? Vote for the TOP Country of the Week !
Updated: April 30, 2025
The balloon had now lost so much gas that a landing was easy, and, tired with four days' profitless search and its strain, the young aeronauts were soon beyond even dreams. It was with no small alarm that the boys saw, when they awoke with the first rays of the sun, that the car of the Cibola, which had been anchored fore and aft to heaped up rocks during the night, was now resting on the ground.
There was, too, very special danger in making an ascent in a hot-air balloon. Underneath the huge envelope was suspended a brazier, so that the fabric of the balloon was in great danger of catching fire. It was at first suggested that two French criminals under sentence of death should be sent up, and, if they made a safe descent, then the way would be open for other aeronauts to venture aloft.
We could hear distinctly all they said, though we could not make them understand a word; our voices had to fill a sphere of air; theirs, with the earth beneath them, only a hemisphere. Thus the modern megaphone is especially useful to aeronauts. Hereabouts our fun began.
A balloon is a hollow globe, made of silk, rendered air-tight by a coating of gum and resin, and enclosed within a strong network. When filled with gas it is so much lighter than the air which surrounds us, that it will rise with heavier bodies suspended to it. In a sort of car or boat attached, men, who are called "aeronauts," have performed journeys through the air.
Berlin and Paris had virtually become the chief centres of the development of ballooning as a science. In the former city a chief among aeronauts had arisen in Dr. A. Berson, who, in December, 1894, not only reached 30,000 feet, ascending alone, but at that height sustained himself sufficiently, by inhaling oxygen, to take systematic observations throughout the entire voyage of five hours.
Fatal accidents of this kind were to be expected; nevertheless it is a fact that the disasters which have befallen aeronauts have been comparatively few, considering the extreme danger to which they are necessarily exposed, not only from the delicacy of the materials, with which they operate, and the uncertainty of the medium through which they move, but, particularly, because of the impossibility of giving direction to their air-ships, or to arrest their progress through space.
A little later there occurred a repetition on a minor scale of the aeronauts' previous mishap, for a rent appeared in the silk, though, luckily, so low down in the balloon as to be of small consequence, and eventually an altitude of some 19,000 feet was attained. At one time needles of ice were encountered settling abundantly with a crackling sound upon their notebooks.
Once again, an unaccountable expedition this! But he contemplates Durdles quite as curiously, and Durdles is by times conscious of his watchful eyes. Only by times, because Durdles is growing drowsy. As aeronauts lighten the load they carry, when they wish to rise, similarly Durdles has lightened the wicker bottle in coming up. Snatches of sleep surprise him on his legs, and stop him in his talk.
Sadler and another gentleman in a balloon. It was a very grand sight, and the next day the aeronauts returned to Hackney, having gone nearly fifty miles in about an hour and a half. The number of people who attended on this occasion might be fairly estimated at 300,000, such a concourse as I never before witnessed.
Having treated of the balloon in all its different aspects, it is both just and appropriate to conclude with an account of the theory and construction of that curious machine which is, according to some enthusiastic aeronauts, to supplant the balloon altogether, and enable us to accomplish that which has been one of the great aims and desires of mankind from the earliest ages, namely, the directing of our flight, or steering a course, not only through, but, if need were, in opposition to the winds.
Word Of The Day
Others Looking