Lighter Than Air Aircraft
The Curious Case of Edgar Mix
The celebrated aeronaut found Earth-bound life difficult to navigate.
September 2010 |
By Rebecca Maksel
Sky Snake
Flexible blimps are bending the rules on UAV design.
December 18, 2009 |
By Michael Klesius
The First Parachute Jump
On this day in 1797, André-Jacques Garnerin made the first high-altitude jump using a parachute, over Parc Monceau in Paris. Garnerin's contraption—a basket suspended from a silk parachute—was cut loose from a balloon at an altitude of 2,000 feet. An eyewitness recalled:
He made a dreadful lurch i...
October 22, 2009 |
By Tony Reichhardt
First Around the World
For balloonists Bertrand Piccard and Brian Jones, the end of one journey marked the beginning of another.
September 17, 2009 |
By Linda Shiner
Fear of Floating
Diagnosis: Collective Panic Attack. Cause: Count von Zeppelin.
July 2009 |
By Dan Vergano
The first solo flight
Wondering who wrote the first description of flying over a landscape, I came across this charming passage by Jacques Charles, French scientist and inventor of the hydrogen balloon. Charles wasn't the first to fly—that honor goes to Jean-François Pilâtre de Rozier and the Marquis d'Arlandes, who fle...
March 04, 2009 |
By Tony Reichhardt
Your flight to Titan is delayed
Jupiter’s moon Europa is a worthy target for exploration, so don’t get me wrong. It’s good news that NASA and the European Space Agency are going forward with plans for a dual-spacecraft mission to Europa, Ganymede and Jupiter's other moons in 2020. It just means we won’t see balloons flying over S...
February 27, 2009 |
By Tony Reichhardt
Floaters
Mars, Venus, Titan - wherever there's air, we can explore by balloon.
July 2006 |
By Joe Pappalardo
Midnight Raiders
How zeppelin bombers during World War I terrorized the British-and their own German crews.
January 2006 |
By Nicholas Nirgiotis
Science Floats
What a satellite can do, balloons can do cheaper.
January 2002 |
By T. A. Heppenheimer
Save the Blimp Base
From this Naval air station airships hunted U-boats in the Florida Keys.
September 2001 |
By John Sotham
One Balloon Bomber (Slightly Used)
First it carried a Japanese bomb 5,000 miles across the Pacific. Then it carried Don Piccard across Minneapolis.
May 2001 |
By Don Piccard
Too Ugly to Print in a Magazine
Four aircraft so ugly they could only be published on the web...
June 1997 |
By Air & Space staff
