Wi if the Nazca had really invented hot air ballons?

Admiral Brown

What if this guy's theories were real (http://www.nott.com/Pages/projects.php), and the people of the Nazca culture had actually invented a hot air ballon around 500 D.C.

How could the Andean civilization have used this invention? What would happen when the Spanish (if they still come) get to Peru and find an united empire (if the Incas or other nation still unites these lands) who uses hot air ballons on a daily basis?

Nazca_globo aerostético.jpg
 
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Bavarian Raven

Banned
that would be cool, them flying out over the spanish ship (out of gun range) and dropping burning balls of pitch and the such into the sails...the first bombing raid:rolleyes:
 

Promethean

When the spanish come they see the balloons as evil servants of Lucifer and they decide to kill them and the people who builded them.
 

MerryPrankster

Could the Incan Emperor escape Spanish captivity in a balloon?

Assuming, of course, the widespread use of balloons doesn't butterfly Atahulpa (sp?) away...
 

tallwingedgoat

Trouble with hot air balloons is you can't really steer them. They go where the wind takes them. In places where you had predictable currents, you can move things for a short distance. But the balloon then has to be transported back to its origin by pack animals. In ancient times it would be hard to carry fuel with the balloon to sustain lift.

If used with a tether it can be a useful observation platform. However as a platform for deploying weapons, it would be ineffective.
 

HueyLong

Banned
tallwingedgoat said:
Trouble with hot air balloons is you can't really steer them. They go where the wind takes them. In places where you had predictable currents, you can move things for a short distance. But the balloon then has to be transported back to its origin by pack animals. In ancient times it would be hard to carry fuel with the balloon to sustain lift.

If used with a tether it can be a useful observation platform. However as a platform for deploying weapons, it would be ineffective.
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Tethered hot air balloons would be very useful for communications (heliophiles, maybe?) and for observation.
 

corourke

Donor
I can't see them being very useful, they're so slow. I guess it could help move goods but I can't see it being that much more efficient than llamas.

It's fun to think about but difficult to think of a reason to have them... Maybe for construction they could help in lifting materials up onto the top levels of huge buildings?
 

Legolas

If they are invented as early as 500BC, chances are some steering mechanism will be developed by the time the Europeans arrive. If the balloon is lightweight, a simple propeller would be enough to move it around, albeit slowly. Then they can be used as both science vessels and/or bombers.
 

David S Poepoe

Banned
Legolas said:
If they are invented as early as 500BC, chances are some steering mechanism will be developed by the time the Europeans arrive. If the balloon is lightweight, a simple propeller would be enough to move it around, albeit slowly. Then they can be used as both science vessels and/or bombers.
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They would only be moved by the wind, there is no way to direct a balloon with a simple handcranked propeller - except in Hollywood.
 

Legolas

David S Poepoe said:
They would only be moved by the wind, there is no way to direct a balloon with a simple handcranked propeller - except in Hollywood.
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I didn't mean a handcranked propeller, I meant something like a bicycle-type construction (I believe Leonardo da Vinci had designed something like that), or is that impossible/impractical either? Otherwise, what about sails?
 

Umbral

I doubt either would work. The force of a propeller is just too minute compared to the wind, and sails don't do anything more than the baloon without sea-friction.
 

Ofaloaf

Legolas said:
I didn't mean a handcranked propeller, I meant something like a bicycle-type construction (I believe Leonardo da Vinci had designed something like that), or is that impossible/impractical either? Otherwise, what about sails?
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Bicycle-like? Did these folk even have wheels yet?

How many Native American civilizations used sails in the first place?
 

David S Poepoe

Banned
Legolas said:
I didn't mean a handcranked propeller, I meant something like a bicycle-type construction (I believe Leonardo da Vinci had designed something like that), or is that impossible/impractical either? Otherwise, what about sails?
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Sails would be deadweight that would ADD to the overall weight that the balloon would have to overcome to become airborne. Exactly how are you suppose to deploy these sails anyway? Masts?!

If you want to move against the wind in these things one would have to have them pulled by either a ground crew or several pack animals, like llamas. Don't suggest tying condors to them as a means of pulling the balloon thru the skies since that won't work either.

What I wonder about, since these balloons certainly won't be widespread, would be the effect on the local vegitation since one would need to burn something in order to get the required hot air. The availability of fuel and access to it is what I consider the great limiting factors - as well as the whatever was used to build the envelope.
 

MerryPrankster

Hmm...here's an idea.

Say the Spanish come across the balloon-users and although some of the more degraded, fanatical conquistadors view them as demonic, they're restrained by the smarter conquistadors and/or the priests.

They then bring some of the Indian techies and balloons back to Europe.

Could the Spanish put them to good use and how long would it be until the other European powers develop them?
 

Legolas

Good ideas, I didn't think about wheels for some reason.

However, even though balloons would not be fit for transportation, they might be used as observation tools. I've no idea if there were any wars in the region, but the side that had balloons could have used them to an enormous advantage. Also, travel through mountains is facilitated if one can observe which pathways lead far ahead and which are blocked.
 

Atom

Legolas said:
Good ideas, I didn't think about wheels for some reason.

However, even though balloons would not be fit for transportation, they might be used as observation tools. I've no idea if there were any wars in the region, but the side that had balloons could have used them to an enormous advantage. Also, travel through mountains is facilitated if one can observe which pathways lead far ahead and which are blocked.
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There were quite a few wars, although in general it appears that the Inca (and the predecessors, Wari and Tiwanaku) preferred to use diplomacy and economics to achieve domination.

The roads in the Andes were usually well kept, but I can see your point.
 

Unalist

Balloons of the Stone Age to Airships Bronze Age!

Hello, I’m brand new here and contrary to good sense and decorum have decided not only to post immediately but to resurrect an old thread and bump it. :eek:

I’ve done a bit of research into pre-modern ballooning. I even corresponded with Mr. Nott himself, who freely provided information on this subject and gave his opinions on a few of my ideas. Any mistakes in fact or non sequitur are undoubtedly mine.

We begin with the Balloons of the Stone Age.

If we take as Point Of Departure that Stone Age societies such as Nazca not only could, as was proven by the experimental archeology of Nott and Woodman etal. but did in fact build hot air balloons. The Nasca Balloon was constructed out of one single piece of uncut cloth. The only technology required has clear archeological evidence before civilization. Bone and plant fiber needles as well as string and woven cloth are actually quite common going back into the Paleolithic during the last ice age. The loom however waited until the early Neolithic. Some designs such as the ground loom are still used by the Bedouin today which I have witnessed personally.

“Iod was a cloth merchant. He traveled to other lands with his children to buy and sell his wares. One evening as the cold gathered his family prepared a fire. Strangers were on the horizon and coming toward his camp. Iod clutched his spear and prepared to greet the visitors. He knelt and called his family to do the same the moment he recognized the new men were a Prince and his bodyguards. The Prince greeted him warmly and asked him his trade. Obedient and always ready to make a sale he called his youngest children to unpack and display the finest cloth. The children open it up running as children do careful to not let the clothe touch the ground. The billowing of the gossamer fabric displays it’s quality nicely and were commanded to continue their frolic. As they bore it they stray over the fire and the heat lifts the cloth and the smaller of the two young children up ward. All laugh but one. The chief of the guards has fought often and knows to be higher is to see farther having often climbed hills or trees to find those who oppose him first. Could the rising smoke and heated air be captured long enough to lift say a child high in the air to look around like a bird…?”

Instead of a peculiar accident; pure deductive observation watching leaves and other material float in the smoke could of inspired the concept. Weather the concept was for spiritual or tactical designs or for curiosity or to satisfy a consuming obsession the motivations and mechanics are readily at hand.

Given a few hundred years the improvements of a gondola with an alcohol burner, ballast and vents could easily develop increasing the aerial time and control. With early ballooning advances would develop in the knowledge of atmospherics, metrology and possibly land management/urban planning. Military and economic observation would influence tactics possibly increasing the use of smoke screens and communication such as smoke signals. The avenue of religious incorporation and utilization are another alternative. Likely the development of gliders and parachutes would be accelerated.

The desire for directed and powered flight is a given. The propeller I actually am confident would have been applied to ballooning if a balloon had been demonstrated to a man such as Archimedes or Leonardo da Vinci. After all a propeller is only an extended lever. In my opinion when a man starts with a screw, really only a spiraling lever, encloses it and creates the Archimedean screw to pump water he’s demonstrated the nimble mindedness necessary to apply it in other situations. I would actually be surprised if he hadn’t tried to apply "a lever large enough" to move it, a balloon, if one had been shown him. Consider the Wright brothers developed the propeller that enabled their machine to fly not by application of higher mathematics unavailable to the ancients but by trial and error. An "engine" is quite a different matter.

Where to now? What Butterflies to accompany us?

An age of the Supremacy of the “Eye of Ra”?

Instead of a Daedalus, a Prometheus of the Air?

Brave Achilles air assaulting into Troy?

Alexander over the World?
 
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