The field is wet and cold, and the balloon is lying on its side in the grass like something asleep. A fan pushes air into the open mouth of it, and the tall colored panels of the envelope start to fill and lift and breathe. Every flight starts here, long before anyone leaves the ground.
A hot air balloon is one of the calmest big machines a kid will ever meet. No engine to race away with, no wheels, no speed. It rises because warm air wants to go up, and it sinks again when that air cools. The whole trip is slow on purpose. These pages follow one flight, from the first cold minute on the grass to the soft bump of landing.
On the ground, before the sun
Balloons launch early, usually right after dawn, when the wind is gentle and the air still cool. The crew unrolls the envelope flat across the field. A big fan blows cold air in first to give it shape, a pale half-moon of fabric spreading over the grass. Then the burner breathes a long flame into the mouth, the air inside warms, and the balloon stands itself up. A heap of cloth becomes a tower taller than a house in a few minutes, and it is the part most people never get to see.
The burner roars, and you lift
There is one loud moment in an otherwise quiet morning, and it is the burner. The pilot pulls a lever, propane rushes up, and a flame several feet tall pours heat into the envelope. The roar is sudden and warm on the back of your neck. Then the ropes go slack, the basket leans, and the ground simply drops away. No lurch, no countdown. One second you stand in a field, the next the field is below you.
It works because hot air is lighter than the cool air around it. Heat the air inside the envelope and the whole balloon becomes lighter than the sky it sits in, so it floats upward the way a bubble rises through water. To come down, the pilot lets the air cool or opens a vent at the top. There is no steering wheel. A balloon travels wherever the wind travels, and the pilot finds new directions only by rising or sinking into winds that move different ways.
