"The balloon Victoria is snagged by an elephant." Illustration by Riou et de Montaut. Courtesy Smithsonian Institution Libraries.

When Jules Verne’s novel Five Weeks in a Balloon: or, Journeys and Discoveries in Africa by Three Englishmen was translated into English in 1869, it appeared with this publisher’s note: “So far as the geography, the inhabitants, the animals, and the features of the countries the travellers pass over are described, [the book] is entirely accurate…. The mode of locomotion is, of course, purely imaginary…” (The Smithsonian Institution Libraries owns many early editions of Verne’s works; see a lovely on-line exhibition here.)

Verne may have been influenced by Edgar Allan Poe, whose 1844 New York Sun newspaper article (which came to be known as “The Balloon-Hoax”) caused such a stir that the paper had to print a retraction.

Poe’s story—entirely fictional but presented as a straightforward newspaper article—informed readers of a three-day Atlantic Ocean crossing by balloon. (Notice that Poe’s and Verne’s balloons are both named Victoria.) Poe wrote that “The Atlantic has been actually crossed in a Balloon; and this too without difficulty—without any great apparent danger—with thorough control of the machine—and in the inconceivably brief period of seventy-five hours from shore to shore!” Supposedly, the details of the journey were “copied verbatim from the joint diaries of Mr. Monck Mason and Mr. Harrison Ainsworth,” two of the eight passengers aboard. (“Monck Mason” was based upon real-life aeronaut Thomas Monck Mason; “Harrison Ainsworth” was novelist William Harrison Ainsworth.)

The first aviators to actually cross the Atlantic were the pilots and crew of the NC-4 flying boat, which (along with the NC-1 and NC-3) left New York on May 8, 1919, arriving in Lisbon, Portugal, on May 27, 1919. Their journey was eclipsed in June 1919, when British pilots John Alcock and Arthur Whitten Brown made the first direct nonstop flight across the Atlantic, flying a Vickers Vimy bomber. The first lighter-than-air crossing was made by the R34 rigid airship, commanded by Major George Herbert Scott, which left Britain on July 2, 1919, and arrived on Long Island, New York on July 6.

Five Weeks in a Balloon was made into a movie (starring Red Buttons, pop singer Fabian, Barbara Eden, and Peter Lorre) in 1962. At one point, as the balloon is about to land in the jungle, Sir Henry Vining exclaims, “It’s a forest full of trees!”

Glad we’ve got a genius on board.

Once you get used to the slightly overcaffeinated host, this is a pretty cool project —to drop a bunch of paper airplanes from a high-altitude balloon and see where they land. The team launched their balloon earlier this month, as the video shows. But, from what I can tell on their website and Twitter feed, nobody has turned up an airplane yet.

They aren’t the first to try it, by the way:

No. 6 rounding the Eiffel Tower, October 19, 1901.

As prizes go, this was a big one. In 1901, French oil tycoon and aviation patron Henry Deutsch de la Meurthe put up 100,000 francs (equivalent to more than $500,000 today) for the first airman who could fly a 7-mile circuit starting from a park in Paris, rounding the Eiffel Tower, then returning to the starting point, within 30 minutes. Heavier-than-air flight was still a couple of years away, so this was a contest for powered balloons. And Brazilian-born Alberto Santos-Dumont, the most famous airman in France, was ready with his airship No. 6.

In his 1904 autobiography, Santos-Dumont grumbled about some of the rules attached to the Deutsch prize. First, the flight had to be witnessed by a committee of the Aero Club, which had to be notified of the attempt 24 hours in advance (even though the balloonist wouldn’t know about weather conditions so far ahead of time). Once the committee was gathered, Santos-Dumont feared he “would be under a kind of moral pressure to go on with his trial,” whether or not he and his machine were ready. And it would be inconsiderate to ask the committee to show up at dawn, when atmospheric conditions would be best. “The duellist may call out his friends at that sacred hour, but not the air-ship captain,” he wrote.

So it was that at the inconvenient (for the balloonist) hour of 2:42 p.m. on Saturday, October 19, 1901, No. 6 rose 250 yards into the air and headed for the Eiffel Tower. It wasn’t an easy flight. The balloon’s engine failed three times, but Santos-Dumont managed to restart it each time, and crossed over his starting point with 45 seconds to spare in the half hour. According to biographer Paul Hoffman, after he came down, he leaned over the side of his craft and yelled “Have I won the prize?”

Hundreds of spectators responded in unison, “Yes! Yes!” and swarmed the airship. He was showered with flower petals that swirled like confetti. Men and women cried. The Comtesse d’Eu dropped to her knees, raised her hands to the heavens, and thanked God for protecting her fellow countryman. The countess’ companion, the wife of John D. Rockefeller, squealed like a schoolgirl. A stranger presented Santos-Dumont with a small white rabbit, and another handed him a steaming cup of Brazilian coffee.

Now the bad news: According to the Aero Club, he hadn’t won the prize. The rules stated that his round-trip flight had to be completed (when ground crews grabbed the balloon’s guide rope) within 30 minutes. And he’d been 40 seconds late. The Parisian press and public were furious on their hero’s behalf, but the club stuck to its rules. Not until November 4 did it finally vote to award Santos-Dumont the prize money.

“But the action was too late to appease him,” according to Hoffman. “He promptly resigned from the Aero Club, thanked the people of Paris for their support, and announced that he would be spending the winter in Monte Carlo.” Then he gave half the prize money to the poor.

The Neptune, the first balloon used to deliver mail during the Siege of Paris. NASM.

In September 1870, not long after the start of the Franco-Prussian War, the city of Paris was under siege by Prussian soldiers. By the 19th, the German army had blocked all communication into or out of the city. There was nothing worse, wrote French journalist Francisque Sarcey, than to “live cut off from the universe in the capital of the civilized world, like Robinson on his island.”

Rumors swept through the city. Some said the Prussian army was about to be crushed by a million-ton sledge hammer carried aloft by a fleet of balloons. Others reported seeing French and Prussian aeronauts battle in the air.

What was true was that the director general of the Posts immediately established a “Balloon Post” to carry messages outside the city. For Parisians, “The success of this aerial trip,” wrote Wilfrid de Fonvielle, “produced a feeling of happiness as if the enemy had been vanquished in a great battle.”

National Postal Museum.

Some 67 balloons ascended from Paris during the 128-day siege, carrying more than 24,000 pounds of mail. (The National Postal Museum has an extensive collection of these letters. In an attempt to send messages into Paris, letters were placed inside zinc balls, which were tossed into the Seine and were supposed to float downriver until captured by a net; while none were recovered by Parisian residents during the siege, the balls continued to turn up as late as 1982.)

National Postal Museum.

There weren’t enough balloons for the task, so Parisians immediately set up two balloon-making factories. Silk was difficult to find, so calico was used for the envelopes, yards of it varnished by women seated at long tables. Sailors made the dragging ropes, netting and baskets; each balloon took 12 days to make. Pilots were recruited from naval detachments in the city and from the civilian population. By October 12, two of the new balloons—the Washington and the Louis Blanc—were ready. The Washington came under fire, eventually smashing into some trees. The Louis Blanc traveled for three hours and finally made it to Belgium.

Two aeronauts were lost at sea. Six were captured by Germans. One drifted more than 800 miles to Norway. But these novice pilots transported at least 110 passengers, some 400 pigeons (letters were sent into Paris using an early form of microfilm; once the pigeons carrying their fragile film reached Paris, a group of clerks copied each message and sent it to the addressee), three million letters—and hope. John Fisher writes in his 1965 book Airlift 1870, “As the siege went on, as ascent followed ascent, the balloons, in the eyes of Parisians and in the eyes of the world, came to be regarded not merely as useful carriers but as symbols of French daring and enterprise and success. Each flight accomplished, each letter delivered, was in a sense another little victory over the great German war-machine; a defiance, a gesture made by an individual.”

In the wake of several misleading news headlines, researchers at Cranfield University in the U.K. have had to set the record straight: No, they’re not looking for aliens in Earth’s atmosphere.

But they are looking for microbes floating around in the stratosphere, at altitudes up to 22 miles.  The Cranfield Astrobiological Stratospheric Sampling Experiment (CASS-E) team hopes to launch a balloon any day now from the ESRANGE launch center in Sweden. Taking a census of the single-celled critters that can survive in such an extreme environment will help scientists stake out the limits of biological adaptability, and help them design instruments for future life detection experiments on other planets.

Follow the team’s progress here.

Garnerin's first fall (Library of Congress)

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 in the air that forced a sudden cry of fear from the whole multitude, and made a number of women faint. Meanwhile Citizen Garnerin descended into the plain of Monceau; he mounted his horse upon the spot, and rode back to the park attended by an immense multitude, who gave vent to their admiration for the skill and talent of the young aeronaut.

The wild swinging of the parachute was as hard on Garnerin’s stomach as it was on spectators’ nerves. From an account of a later jump in England:

The countless multitude that witnessed his ascent uttered a scream of terror as the Parachute…was seen to fall with the utmost velocity and in a collapsed state. For some moments, feelings of dread and anxiety thrilled every spectator; but the Parachute at length slowly expanded, and hope revived; yet the oscillations of the machine became so violent that the basket, swinging like a pendulum, very frequently appeared to be nearly in a horizontal position with the Parachute. In approaching the earth, the air, from its increasing density, opposed a stronger resistance, and the oscillations proportionally decreased. The intrepid aeronaut reached the ground in a field…His entire descent [had] occupied about ten minutes: he was extremely pale, and the violent rocking he had experienced produced a short sickness, but was not attended by any further inconvenience.

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 flew a Montgolfier brothers’ balloon over the countryside near Paris on November 21, 1783. Less than two weeks later, on December 1, Charles made his own free flight accompanied by Marie-Noël Robert, the younger of two brothers who had built the balloon. Charles later wrote:

“Nothing will ever equal that moment of joyous excitement which filled my whole being when I felt myself flying away from the earth. It was not mere pleasure; it was perfect bliss…

To this sentiment succeeded one more lively still—the admiration of the majestic spectacle that spread itself out before us. On whatever side we looked, all was glorious; a cloudless sky above, a most delicious view around. ‘Oh, my friend,’ said I to M. Robert, ‘how great is our good fortune! I care not what may be the condition of the earth; it is the sky that is for me now.”

After flying over the countryside for two hours, during which time “The peasants ran after us without being able to catch us, like children pursuing a butterfly in the fields,” the pair landed their balloon in a field and were surrounded by a crowd. Charles then ascended again, by himself—the first solo flight:

“I said to the duke, ‘Monseigneur, I go.’ I said to the peasants who held down the balloon, ‘My friends, go away, all of you, from the car at the moment I give the signal.’ I then rose like a bird, and in ten minutes I was more than 3,000 feet above the ground. I no longer perceived terrestrial objects; I only saw the great masses of nature…

I passed in ten minutes from the temperature of spring to that of winter; the cold was keen and dry, but not insupportable. I examined all my sensations calmly; I could hear myself live, so to speak, and I am certain that at first I experienced nothing disagreeable in this sudden passage from one temperature to another…

At the end of some minutes the cold caught my fingers; I could hardly hold the pen, but I no longer had need to do so. I was stationary, or rather moved only in a horizontal direction.

I raised myself in the middle of the car, and abandoned myself to the spectacle before me. At my departure from the meadow the sun had sunk to the people of the valleys; soon he shone for me alone, and came again to pour his rays upon the balloon and the car. I was the only creature in the horizon in sunshine—all the rest of nature was in shade. Ere long, however, the sun disappeared, and thus I had the pleasure of seeing him set twice in the same day. I contemplated for some moments the mists and vapours that rose from the valley and the rivers. The clouds seemed to come forth from the earth, and to accumulate the one upon the other. Their colour was a monotonous grey—a natural effect, for there was no light save that of the moon.

I observed that I had tacked round twice, and I felt currents which called me to my senses. I found with surprise the effect of the wind, and saw the cloth of my flag: extended horizontally.

In the midst of the inexpressible pleasure of this state of ecstatic contemplation, I was recalled to myself by a most extraordinary pain which I felt in the interior of the ears and in the maxillary glands. This I attributed to the dilation of the air contained in the cellular tissue of the organ as much as to the cold outside. I was in my vest, with my head uncovered. I immediately covered my head with a bonnet of wool which was at my feet, but the pain only disappeared with my descent to the ground.

It was now seven or eight minutes since I had arrived at this elevation, and I now commenced to descend. I remembered the promise I had made to the Duke of Chartres, to return in half an hour. I quickened my descent by opening the valve from time to time. Soon the balloon, empty now to one half, presented the appearance of a hemisphere.

Arrived at twenty-three fathoms from the earth, I suddenly threw over two or three pounds of ballast, which arrested my descent, and which I had carefully kept for this purpose. I then slowly descended upon the ground, which I had, so to speak, chosen.”

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 Saturn’s moon Titan any time soon. And that’s a pity.

Two teams of planetary scientists and engineers spent the last year hammering out detailed proposals for the next multibillion-dollar mission to the outer solar system. The two concepts went mano a mano to compete for one near-term funding opportunity, with the Europa Jupiter System Mission emerging the winner after being judged “more technically ready.”

That relegates the Titan Saturn System Mission to some vague and distant future.

Fair enough. But Titan is one of only four places in the solar system with an atmosphere, which means we could send balloons, airplanes, or some other flying machine to roam over the surface taking pictures, sniffing the air, and covering far more territory than a rover could. Titan balloons have been studied by engineers on both sides of the Atlantic, but it was a French Montgolfière design that was included in the ESA-NASA Titan proposal. The balloon measures 35 feet across and would fly at an altitude of six miles for six months or more.

Future missions could go beyond these floaters to include Titan airplanes, which have been imagined in various sizes. My favorite is the Titan Bumblebee, a two-and-a-half-pound UAV that would fly over the moon’s surface for several hours after being released from a lander. I don’t even care if that one works, I like the name so much.

Ah well, maybe someday.