“In an airship, one does not fly, one does not drive. Instead, one travels in a most beautiful way that gives meaning to the word journey.” – Hugo Eckener

Aeromodeller: Panamarenko, 1969-1971
“Panamarenko wilde ooit echt gaan vliegen met de ballon, die 28 meter lang is en een diameter heeft van 6,5 meter”, vertelt Huys. “Hij vulde de zeppelin met waterstof voor een openluchttentoonstelling in 1971 in het Belgische Balen. De sigaarvormige ballon bleef echter niet horizontaal hangen, maar draaide verticaal en dreigde er op eigen houtje vandoor te gaan. Panamarenko kon niets anders doen dan met een schaar een flinke scheur in de ballon aan te brengen. Vanaf dat moment was The Aeromodeller alleen nog een kunstwerk.” “Om te kunnen vliegen moest Panamarenko materiaal kiezen dat licht en stevig was”, zegt Van Oosten. “Hij had polyetheen of polypropeen kunnen gebruiken, maar die plastics zijn niet transparant en hij wilde graag een doorzichtige ballon. Daarom koos hij voor 0,35 millimeter dik pvc, dat stevig is en ook transparant.”

1. Unknown Air-oared airship and aeronaut at unknown location (baseball park) circa 1905
2. Air-oared airship ~ 1905. Airship build by Captain Thomas C. Baldwin was flown by l. Guy Mecklem for balwin at Washington Gardens (commonly known as Chutes Park)Los Angelas. Propelled by two air-oares operated by the pilot who “rowed” the airshio throught the air. Note inflatation valve at the aft end of the airbag.
source: http://www.earlyaviator.com/ note; at this site one can find a most wonderfull early airships and captive balloon collection.

1.COPYWRIGHT_FOTOT_PAOLO_OGGIONI_FEst:The Upside-Down balloon from Festo appears at first glance to be standing on its head. In actual fact, there is a concealed cabin on the underside and a further dummy cabin on the top. The engineers of the manufacturing company Cameron Balloons worked with great enthusiasm to produce this “special shape” balloon, which is unique throughout the world.
2.Joel Tauber, Searching for the Impossible: The Flying Project 2003
source: http://images.google.com/imgres?imgurl=http://www.artnet.de

EL VUELO, Playa del Carabassi, Alicante 2003. “Alunizada” es una serie de piezas realizadas entre los años 2001 y 2003 cuya temática gira entorno a la idea de volar. http://olgadiegoalunizada.blogspot.nl/

Simon Faithfull’s Escape Vehicle No.6 started as a live event commissioned by The Arts Catalyst for its first International Artists Airshow. The live audience witnessed the launching of a weather balloon with a domestic chair dangling in space beneath it. Once the apparatus had disappeared into the sky, they then watched a live video relay from the weather balloon on a giant screen as it journeyed from the ground to the edge of space (30km up). http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1hSDbAo2WMk.2004. http://www.artscatalyst.org/projects/detail/escapevehicle6/

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rtmmrYM3nWM
Graham Stevens work rejects the idea of architecture as something static and explores the interaction between human and the invisible environments surrounds them daily.Atmosfields 1971, Dessert Cloud 1974. http://szvet.blog.hu/\\http://cup2013.wordpress.com/tag/graham-stevens/ watch this movie at !!! http://unprojects.org.au/magazine/issues/issue-6-1/now-history-repeats-itself-with-graham-stevens-pneumatic-art/


Breitling Orbiter, photographed by Jeremy l. Hinton, 1973
Breitling Orbiter 3 was the first balloon to fly around the world non-stop, piloted by Bertrand Piccard and Brian Jones. Designed and built by Cameron Balloons, of Bristol, England, Breitling Orbiter 3 stood 55 m (180 ft) tall when fully inflated. The propane gas that fueled the six burners was contained in 28 titanium cylinders mounted in two rows along the sides of the gondola. Concerned about fuel consumption, the team added four additional propane containers prior to take-off; these additional four tanks would be needed to complete the trip.

“Complementary balloon-borne experiment to measure the Cosmic Microwave Background Radiation (CMBR) Such measurements have become increasingly important for providing information on the initial conditions from which the large-scale structure of the Universe has evolved. The detailed measurement phase promises quantitative answers to some of the fundamental questions of structure evolution in our Universe: How did matter first distribute itself to eventually form the bubbles, voids and galaxy clusters that we observe? What is the amplitude of the quantum fluctuations which existed before the Universe entered the `inflationary' epoch, approximately 10-35 seconds after the Big Bang? Is the bulk of the matter in the Universe composed of a new kind of non-baryonic, nonluminous matter, as proposed by Cold Dark Matter theories? These questions have guided us to formulate the following program of current and planned experiments.”
source: http://topweb.gsfc.nasa.gov/index.html

In 1995, Graham Dorrington flew a helium-filled airship “Dirigible-4” over Borneo's tropical rain forest. The dirigible was especially designed to have low noise to minimize wildlife disturbance and hence was powered by electric motors rather than using a noisy internal combustion engine. It was flown successfully thirty times and used usefully to collect pollinating insects as well as to count orang-utan nests in a forest area of about one square kilometer. These pioneering efforts proved that controlled movement close to the forest canopy is in fact viable. On its penultimate flight the dirigible was soft-landed atop a flowering Merbau tree and rested there for twenty minutes, further demonstrating the effectiveness of similar platforms for canopy research.
In 2004, Dorrington flew another electric powered dirigible (with a helium capacity of 480 cubic metres and powered by a state-of-the-art rechargable lithium battery) over the Kaieteur National Park, Guyana, while filming the documentary “The White Diamond” by Werner Herzog, 2004. Herzog filmed aswell the Nasa balloon project above in his documentary; Encounters at the end of the World, 2007.
source: http://www.dendronautics.org/page4.htm http://www.thewhitediamond.de/fotosdreh.htm pictures: http://lenaherzog.com/gallery.asp?action=vie

desert stranding balloon

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