A Dream of Flight |
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When I was a boy, my
parents bought me a children's science book about the force of gravity.
One chapter in the book was about ways that people have attempted to overcome
force of gravity, and included a photograph of a man floating into the sky
in a harness tied to a cluster of large orange weather balloons. "Ballooning
into the Sky," read the caption. "Balloons filled with
helium can indeed carry a man aloft, but control is limited."
To me at eight years old, the picture was mesmerizing. I dreamed that I was the man in the harness, waving to the people below as the balloons carried me up over the clouds, higher and higher into the sky. |
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A year or two later, I saw the film "The Red Balloon", which ends with the little French boy, Pascal, floating over Paris with a huge bouquet of toy balloons. It was, beyond a doubt, the most wonderful thing I could ever imagine doing. I promised myself then that someday I would float off into the sky with helium balloons too. | 
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| I was hoping, of course, that it would happen sooner rather than later. A practical-minded boy, I sent away for the Edmund Scientific catalog, from which you could order weather balloons and little aerosol cans of helium. However, even some optimistic guesses at the size and number of balloons required convinced me that it would cost me more than my allowance and my lunch money for the next decade to buy what I needed. So I was stuck on the ground. | ||
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as the years passed, I never lost interest in the idea of flying with helium
balloons. As a teenager I didn't say anything about it, since it was
unusual and not likely to make me look cool with other teenagers.
But it was still something I dreamed of doing. Ballooning into
the sky -- what could be better than that?
Practical-minded again, I looked for activities that might provide me with some part of my ballooning dream. While I was in college, I learned to fly hot-air balloons, and some years later, I began flying Cloudhoppers, both of which have been a source of great fun and pleasure. However, the dream of flying with a cluster of colorful helium-filled balloons stayed with me through the years. Finally, in 1997, I set out to my make my dream come true. |
The First Four Flights |
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My first four flights all took place in a nine month period in 1997. In these flights I taught myself the basics of how to rig and fly helium balloon clusters. I experimented with different equipment, transitioning from mylar to synthetic latex balloons, and learned to control my aircraft by extension of the techniques I used as a hot-air balloonist. It was an exhilarating and occasionally scary education: figuring out how to do something that I knew from science and experience should work, but that was somewhere in the realm of craziness or fantasy as far as most of the world was concerned. In the end, though, I had the experience I dreamed of as a boy, and it was as wonderful as I had ever imagined. |
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Silver Pleiades:
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Mixed Bouquet:
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Celebration:
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Celebration II:
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For a more detailed and slightly more technical description of these flights, please see the articles I wrote for the ballooning magazines: |
| • "Ballooning into the Sky", Balloon Life magazine, June 1997: a description of the Silver Pleiades flight. |
| • "A Condition of Complete Simplicity", Ballooning magazine, September 1997: an account of the Silver Pleiades, Mixed Bouquet and Celebration flights. |
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Detailed photos and narratives are also available for most of my later flights. Links to the webpage for each flight are found on the Logbook page; links to the flights from the States of Enlightenment project are also found on the States of Enlightenment page. |
