’inspiring dreams of flight’

Up, Up, & Away! - Balloons & Rockets Program

Pre-VisitIt’s important to get your students talking about balloons and rockets before they even get on the bus to come to the museum! Here are some suggestions to talk about before your visit:

What do they think of when they think of balloons? Of rockets? What do they think came first: the airplane or balloons/rockets?

Materials Provided By the Museum Laptop with Up, Up, and Away! PowerPoint Presentation loaded on it Projector White board and markers Activity supplies Writing utensils

Materials Teachers Should Consider Bringing If your students have journals they keep for class, they are an excellent tool to help record their creations and

ideas

Doing the Up, Up, and Away! Program at the Museum The projector and laptop will be set-up and ready for you in the Lancaster Room; this is most likely the room

you’ve already spent a bit of time in, and have kept your belongings in Present the Up, Up, and Away! PowerPoint to students (a copy of the slides and accompanying notes are listed

below); make sure to take time to have discussions when prompted by slides, after finishing the PowerPoint, or whenever a student has a great observation or question.

Complete the activity with students. Instructions are listed after the PowerPoint notes. Depending on time, students may have extra time to have another look at some of the other artifacts on the

mezzanine level while also gaining a good view of the aircraft below. If another group is being toured around on the main level, please make sure that students use indoor voices – sound travels fast in the hangar!

Up, Up, and Away! PowerPoint PresentationSLIDE SLIDE NOTES

’inspiring dreams of flight’When I say the word, “balloon,” what do you think of? You probably think of the balloons you may have at a party, or the modern hot air balloons that sometimes glide through the sky as a fun ride for people to get a fantastic view of the landscape far below them. But originally, balloons had a much different purpose than just being a pleasure ride.

There are 3 main types of flying balloons: hot air (click for animation), gas (click for animation), , and roziere (click for animation), . Each follow the same general construction: a balloon or envelope filled with hot air, gas or both, with a basket or gondola attached on the bottom to carry passengers

For hot air balloons, the name says it all! Heated air inside the balloon (officially called the “envelope”) helps lift the aircraft into the air by making it buoyant (lighter than air). This is because the hot air has a lower density than the colder air outside the envelope. The opening at the bottom of the balloon can be left open, not only because of the burner that is used, but because the air around the opening is at the same pressure as the air surrounding it. Hot air balloons are the oldest aircraft that could successfully carry humans, and have been used long before they became a vehicle of transportation! As early as 220 A.D., airborne lanterns called kongming lanterns were used by Zhuge Liang of the Shu Han Kingdom in China for military signalling.

The Montgolfier brothers, Joseph-Michel and Jacques-Étienne are credited with the invention of the Montgolfière-style hot air balloon, the globe aerostatique. It is said that the Montgolfiers, coming from a family of paper manufacturers, drew inspiration from watching ash rise in paper fires. By 1783, they had developed a hot air balloon in France and were ready to publicly demonstrate its flight capabilities.

On September 19th, 1783, they completed the first “manned” flight for 10 minutes; the pilots were (click here for picture) a sheep called Montauciel (“Climb-to-the-sky”), a duck, and a rooster.Why do you think these animals were chosen?-the sheep was believed to be very similar to human physiology-the duck was expected to be unharmed by the high altitude, and was used to see the effects of the actual aircraft-the rooster was used as a control to see the effects of the aircraft and altitude as it is a bird that does not fly at high altitudes

’inspiring dreams of flight’This flight was performed before a crowd at the royal palace in Versailles, before King Louis XVI of France and Queen Marie Antoinette. The flight lasted approximately 8 minutes, covered 3km, and obtained an altitude of about 460 meters (1500 feet)About a month after this flight, Étienne performed the first tethered flight with a human aboard, with a second flight taking place that day by the scientist Jean-Franҫois Pilâtre de Rozier (remember this name!)

On November 21st, the Montgolfiers wanted to test out the first ever untethered, free flight with human passengers. King Louis decreed that for this first flight, the pilots should be condemned criminals in case anything terrible happened. However, this was soon overturned as de Rozier, along with the Marquis Franҫois d’Arlandes, successfully battled for the honour of flying the balloon.The diameter of the balloon reached almost 50 feet across, and had a smoky fire slung under the opening in an iron basket that was controllable by the balloonists. In 25 minutes the two men travelled just over 5 miles with enough fuel on board at the end of the flight to have flown 4 or 5 times as far. Now is a good time to click for the questions to ask the students.1 click for the title; 2 clicks for questions to read

Although modern hot air balloons are still very similar in design to the Montgolfier’s original balloon, there have been some changes.The envelopes on modern balloons are usually made from nylon fabric, with the material closest to the burner flames made from fire-resistant material such as Nomex. The heated air comes from a hydrocarbon gas burner instead of from burning coals. Using a gas burner helps balloonists to control lift by adjusting the burning rate of the gas. A valve at the top of the balloon has a rope attached so that passengers can control descent and buoyancy, and a rip cord and rip panel allow the rapid release of gas on landing to prevent the dragging of the load on impact.

Let’s take a look at a video from a modern-day balloon festival

Before we talk about what makes a gas balloon different from a hot air balloon, can you spot any differences already?Although gas balloons follow the same principles that hot air balloons do, there ARE a few differences.

• The envelope is sealed at the bottom• The balloon is filled with a lighter than air gas like helium or hydrogen

instead of hot air• This also means no burner is needed.

’inspiring dreams of flight’Around the same time as the Montgolfiers’ hot air balloon successes, there was another group of inventors who were looking at other ways to fly a balloon.They soon developed a lightweight, airtight envelope that would hold the gas inside. Because of the gas needing to be held inside the balloon, a different inflation method was needed. How do you think they inflated the balloon?First, the hydrogen gas had to be created: nearly a quarter of a tonne (to put it into perspective, a fully grown elephant weighs about 1 tonne, or 1000 lbs) (click here for animation of elephant) of sulphuric acid was poured onto half a tonne of scrap iron, the result was hydrogen gas! This hot hydrogen gas was then fed into the balloon through lead pipes.

On August 27, 1783, Jacques Charles and the Robert brothers, Anne-Jean and Nicolas-Louis, launched the world’s first hydrogen-filled balloon from the Champ-de-Mars (now the site of the Eiffel Tower) in Paris, France. The balloon flew for 45 minutes, pursued by chasers on horseback and landed 21 kilometres away in the village of Gonesse, where reportedly terrified local peasants attacked it with pitchforks and knives, and destroyed it!They did not give up, however! On December 1, 1783, they launched a new balloon, this time manned by Jacques Charles and Nicolas-Louis Robert , from Paris. This time balloon was held on ropes and led to its final launch place by 4 of the leading noblemen in France.

To help give you a perspective at how much gas is needed to create lift, and how big the envelope needs to be, here’s a video of some experimenters trying to lift just 1 person with only lighter-than-air gas balloons.

You just saw how much gas is needed to create enough lift; that costs a lot of money! But by using only hot air, you cannot fly as long as a gas-lifted balloon can.So in 1785, Jean-François Pilâtre de Rozier, the same Rozier I told you to remember earlier, came up with an idea for a new balloon. Can anyone guess what it was?He decided to combine the two together and create a hybrid balloon that had separate chambers for a non-heated lifting gas (like hydrogen or helium) as well as a heated lifting gas (the hot air). (click here for diagram) This allowed him to still keep some control over the buoyancy with less fuel needed. This allowed Roziere balloons and their crew to achieve very long flight time, up to several days or even weeks!

’inspiring dreams of flight’When you blow up a balloon, and then let go of the end letting all the air out, what happens?The force from the air releasing through the throat of the balloon causes the balloon to move forwards – this follows Isaac Newton’s Third Law of Motion: for every action there is a reaction. When you think of a rocket, what do you think of?How old do you think rocket technology is?Archytas, a Greek philosopher, mathematician, and astronomer, who lived from 428 to 347 B.C., was said to have constructed and flown a small, bird-like deice that was propelled by a jet of steam or compressed air. The ‘bird’ may have been suspended by a wire or mounted at the end of a bar that revolved around some sort of pivot. This is the first reported device to use rocket propulsion.

As early as the first century, a very simple form of gunpowder was discovered and used in China. They used a mixture of saltpeter, sulfur, and charcoal dust; the combination created colourful sparks and smoke when it was ignited. Tubes of bamboo and leather were packed with this gunpowder and closed off at one end and depending on how the powder was packed and the size of the opening, a fountain of sparks of a bang would result when the powder ignited. Does this sound familiar to you? These were the first fireworks!It is likely that the thrust produced by the gases escaping from the open end made some of these fireworks skip around. Thus the rocket was born. (click for first picture) In 1232, these primitive rockets were attached to arrows and used to repel Mongol invaders in the battle of Kai-keng (click for second picture)

Let’s look at this experiment Mythbusters did, making a Hwacha – a medieval Korean arrow rocket launcher, just to see how powerful these could be.

According to legend, a Chinese stargazer, and local official named Wan Hu, dreamed of spaceflight. To achieve his dream, he constructed a chair and attached 47 gunpowder rockets to its base; in some versions of the story, kite wings were also attached. On launch day, 47 assistants rushed up and simultaneously lit the fuses of all the rockets, causing a huge explosion. When the smoke cleared, Wan Hu was gone! (click once here to make Wan Hu picture disappear) Some have suggested Wan Hu actually made it into space, and now he is known as the “Man in the Moon.” (click here for last picture)

’inspiring dreams of flight’Let’s fast forward a bit and jump forward to the 1900’s when, just like Wan Hu, mankind really started to want to be amongst the stars.So how did we go from this (click for first picture) to this (click for second picture)?As humans got more curious, they discovered that if they were going to shoot to the stars, they had to have a good scientific and mathematical understanding of motion.

In the late 1500s, Galileo Galilei (click for picture of Galileo) started conducting a wide range of experiments involving motion, and through these he discovered the principle of inertia: that all matter, because of its mass, resists change in motion. Essentially, the more mass, the more resistance to move. Isaac Newton (click for picture of Newton), who was born the year Galileo died, took Galileo’s discoveries and those of others by proposing 3 basic laws of motion.

Let’s watch this short video that explains those 3 laws.These 3 laws are the foundation of rocket science. Understand these and you’ll know just about everything you need to build successful rockets.

Before we go too far in time, let’s go back a little bit back to the great space race of the 1960s.Keep in mind what Newton said about the laws of motion: what do we need?To beat inertia with thrustAn action to cause a reaction

To beat inertia and create a big enough reaction to get a rocket off of earth means you need an enormous amount of power, AKA fuel.The first space rockets were part of the Apollo program and were built in stages. As the rocket went higher and higher, and further and further away from earth, each stage dropped off as it was no longer needed.The problem with this approach, is that it’s expensive. The cost of the rockets from development through manufacturing was huge, especially since once it went up, it couldn’t be used again.

Now, in an effort to cut the costs of rockets, two companies called Blue Origin and SpaceX have developed rockets that can go up and come back down safe enough to be reused! This new achievement is playing out as we speak. It has the potential to cut rocket costs 100 fold. What do you think these new rockets could help us do?

’inspiring dreams of flight’Time to prepare your class for the craft activity!