The annual hot air balloon festival is going on now here in Indianola. My Dad used to volunteer at the National Hot Air Balloon Museum.

Sometimes I send photos to the local NBC station. Last night the following two photos were used on the broadcast.

“The hot air balloon is the first successful human-carrying flight technology. The first untethered manned hot air balloon flight was performed by Jean-François Pilâtre de Rozier and François Laurent d’Arlandes on November 21, 1783, in Paris, France,^[1] in a balloon created by the Montgolfier brothers.^[2]”    https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hot_air_balloon

The balloons look so graceful as they float through the air.

I was thinking it would be great if there was a way for them to fly without using fossil fuel (hot air balloons use propane burners to created the heat for buoyancy). Then I found there actually are solar balloons.