BTW, I accept you misspoke since the Kongming Latern is a balloon from the 3rd century BCE.
Misspoke? Read much? Miss this line in my post?
... we've had floating lanterns since at least the 3rd Century BCE...
That he demonstrated a toy in the Lisbon court in 1709 is more widely accepted.
A toy China had had for at least 2000 years and still no man-rated balloons. Curious, no?
I'm glad you agree with me that it is technologically possible.
It's technologically possible. What you're seemingly unable to understand is that it is not technologically
plausible. We deal with plausibility on this forum. There's another forum for implausible stuff, it's called ASB.
For example, it's entirely
possible for me to construct a crystal radio set using Stone Age tools and materials. It's also completely
implausible that Otzi would be carrying a crystal radio set in his pack him when he murdered on the east ridge of Fineilspitze in 3300 BCE.
Using the knowledge we have now, I can build a radio receiver out of simple materials. However, no one would be able to fashion the same device before the invention of radio. Knowledge counts just as much as materials. With the knowledge in hand, you can use far simpler materials to make advanced devices.
That's what that moron Woodmann and his dupe Nott never realized. They were using their 20th Century knowledge to fashion their balloon and, because of that, their "experiment" proved nothing.
(I notice you failed to reply to my critique of Woodmann's claims. Did some reading, did you?)
So someone observing Kongming Latern may have had the materials to build a "man rated" balloon avalible to him.
And yet no one did so for the 2100 years between roughly the Third Century BCE and 1782. That's a gap you and the others here have made no attempt to explain beyond
"Someone watched a lantern and got the idea..."
You should say
"What Plausibly If", unless you want to post in ASB.
(that is what we do here at AlternateHistory.com isn't it?

)
I'll explain again that this particular forum is for plausible ifs. There's another forum on this very site for the type of wide eyed, reality denying speculation you seemingly want on this topic and it's called ASB.
... that someone tried to build a larger balloon then? Not "man rated" at first but larger and larger versions until someone later did build one "man rated"?
Twenty centuries, Unalist, they had floating lanterns for more than twenty centuries. They build by the tens and hundreds of thousands, built them in all shapes and sizes, used them for religious observances and in warfare, and they still never sent a single man aloft.
You've got twenty centuries to explain away and proposing
"Herp derp somebody got an idea herpity derpity doo" doesn't cut it.
Come up with an actual POD, not wishful thinking, and we might have a thread.