Is Ballooning Just a Bunch of Hot Air?

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This morning, my alarm clock went off very early.

I tried to ignore it.

When the noise insisted on continuing, my brain finally acknowledged its consciousness.

The time reads 5:05 AM, hours before sunrise.

Today is definitely balloon day.





The Albuquerque Balloon Fiesta started as a promotional stunt in 1972, and became the largest festival of its type.

It now features hundreds of balloons from around the world.

Some are regular hot air balloons painted all sorts of colors, while others are shaped like everything from cows to alien monsters.

Balloon pilots love Albuquerque thanks to unusual air currents around the Sandia Mountains.

Winds low to the ground generally blow south, while those high up over the mountains generally blow north.

The end result is that a balloon with enough altitude will land pretty close to where it started, a rarity in the hot air balloon world.

Mass Ascension

One of the festival’s most popular events happens this morning, the weekend mass ascension.

Every balloon at the festival (hopefully) inflates and launches at the same time.

The ascension happens soon after sunrise.

It’s a photographer’s dream, and a visitor’s possible nightmare.

Huge numbers of people try to get to the festival grounds at the same time, leading to backups whose combination of frustration and sleep deprivation is only equaled by the entrance road on the first day of Burning Man (see The Lonely Road to Paradise).

To avoid the worst of it, I need to get there early, hence the need to be awake at 5 AM.





The hotel staff earned every bit of praise thrown at them this morning.

They normally start the free breakfast at 8 AM.

When I stumbled downstairs, it was already going.

The food variety was significantly better than American continental too, with hot entries like eggs.

They had all the coffee and hot chocolate people could drink too.

Good thing, we need to wake up!

Checkout was surprisingly efficient.





Visitors aren’t the only people who worry about the traffic.

The event organizers are fully aware of the havoc it causes.

Their solution was to set up bus routes.

People park in outlying areas of the city and take a bus to the festival.

The bus ticket costs more than entrance to the festival, but it includes a free event ticket, so things come out close to even.

The problem for visitors is that many of the parking areas are situated in places far from the major hotel clusters.

With lots of research I found one of the bus sites (Cliff’s Amusement Park) within a half hour of the hotel, so I took the bus.

I’m sleepy enough this was a very good idea.





I got to the field just before dawn.

I saw a huge grassy area with lots of balloon baskets.

Not one inflated balloon appeared in sight.

Something is clearly wrong here.

The announcement system finally gave the bad news, high winds above the mountains.

When winds are too fast, balloons can’t be controlled and are dangerous to fly.

I and thousands of other cold tired people settled in to wait.

Personally, it took everything I had just to stay awake.

I did see a beautiful sunrise over the snow covered Sandia Mountains while waiting.





After about an hour, the organizers announced the launch would finally proceed.

Pilots had the choice of whether to fly or not, with the recommendation to stay low.

Practically, this meant they would land somewhere in the city further away from planned.

I honestly believe most flew because they feared facing a small riot otherwise!

Remember just how many people spent hours before dawn to see this ascension.





With the go ahead, teams could finally inflate.

These balloons exist in an unbelievable variety.

I saw a group of fifteen people laying out huge pieces of plastic on the field.

This is Airabelle, the cow balloon from a local dairy, one of the favorites of festival visitors (Yes, “Holy Cow!” puns were ubiquitous.)

This one took a long time to inflate once it was set up.

Next door was a large stagecoach balloon, Center Stage, sponsored by Wells Fargo.

Further away was a balloon shaped like a pig in a Spiderman outfit, Spyderpig, which supposedly predates the Simpson’s episode.





Once the balloons finished inflating, up they went.

Most of the bigger ones stayed on the ground, but the rest launched.

Unlike some festivals, spectators are allowed in most the grounds at Albuquerque, so balloons launch literally all around.

Colorful objects soon filled the sky, glistening in the morning sun.

One balloon was shaped like a basketball landing in a hoop, Basketball.

Another looked like the head of a green alien, Alien Inflation.

One special balloon was a head wearing sunglasses, with (painted) balloons reflected in the glasses, Pencil Boy.

The list goes on and on, every color combination in existence.

All I wanted to do was look up.

I took hundreds of photographs, and I wasn’t the only one.

(LATE UPDATE)

A time lapse from earlier in the week:

I stayed at the launch until the fatigue got overwhelming, then headed for the bus.

On the ride back, I got to see what happens to balloons after they launch.

A hot air balloon has no choice but to follow the winds.

The pilot can control the altitude, by either adding or letting out hot air.

They land anywhere safe.

I saw landings on vacant lots, parking areas, and a semi-dangerous one on the side of an Interstate exit.

A few drifted directly over the parking lot for the bus; all of them kept right on going.





When I got back to my car, I really felt just how early I got up this morning.

I passed out in the front seat for a few hours, despite the discomfort (and I kept the top up for safety reasons).

Convertibles are not really made for sleeping like this.

National Museum of Nuclear History

I had some time between festival events, so I went to the National Museum of Nuclear History.

It tells the story of nuclear research in the United States.

It used to be located in downtown Albuquerque, but has since moved to near the Kirtland Air Force Base.

This is appropriate, since one of the base’s missions is keeping US atomic weapons functioning.





The displays start with brief overview of nuclear science.

Atoms contain protons and neutrons in their nucleus.

Nuclei can break apart for various reasons.

When they do, they emit particles and radiation.

The two main particles are alpha (basically a helium nucleus) and beta (heavy particles plus electrons).

The main radiation is gamma radiation, the most energetic type of light.

The display doesn’t mention that sufficient exposure to any of these will cause cancer.





This leads into a long section on nuclear research during World War II.

The museum has the point of view that decisions around this research, particularly creating and using nuclear bombs, must be understood within the context of their time.

Four different countries had some sort of research program during the war, the United States, Britain, Germany, and Japan.

The displays discuss the overall war aims of each.

They have some amazing artifacts, including the samurai swords given to Japanese fighter pilots, British code breaking computers, and the empty shoes used to symbolize the Holocaust.

The write-ups push the idea that things may have turned out very differently if other countries had succeeded in their research efforts.





The Manhattan project comes next.

It was sparked by a letter from Albert Eisenstein to President Roosevelt in 1939 urging him to fund the research effort needed to build a bomb before the Nazis.

The basic ideas were already well known: start an atomic reaction and then keep the material compressed enough to generate the force needed for an explosion.

Roosevelt created a group called the ‘Uranium Committee’ to study the issue.





In 1942, Enrico Fermi proved a sustaining reaction was possible by setting up a reactor in a squash court underneath the disused football stadium at the University of Chicago.

The university had disbanded their football team three years earlier.

He chose the space mostly because it was large enough and available.

The museum has one of the actual graphite blocks from this reactor, plus a model made of Legos!





After that success, the US and British governments consolidated their nuclear research projects and launched the Manhattan Project.

Leslie Groves, an Army Corps of Engineer Colonel, got the job of running it.

He then hired J. Robert Oppenheimer, a physicist from the University of California at Berkeley, to direct the civilian scientists.

Oppenheimer was considered an unusual choice at the time, because he had published essays in communist leaning journals in the 1930s.

He got the job because he had proven project leadership skills and Groves knew him well.





The actual project was done at three secret sites in the United States.

Two of those sites produced bomb fuel.

Three methods existed to do so.

In Hanford Washington, the army set up a series of reactors based on the Chicago reactor to turn uranium into plutonium.

Plutonium is the most radioactive element known and easily fissions.

It is also chemically the most toxic substance in existence.

By the end of the war, the reactors had produced enough plutonium for a single bomb.





In Oark Ridge, Tennessee (see Mountain Ingenuity), the army built a complex to enrich uranium by two methods, gaseous diffusion and the electric cyclotron.

Natural uranium comes in two isotopes, U238 and U235.

The latter easily fissions while the former requires much more energy.

Both methods turn the uranium into a gas and try to separate the two isotopes by their weight.

Gaseous diffusion passes the gas through metal that acts as a filter, while the cyclotron spins it around to make the heavier U238 float to the outside.

Only gaseous diffusion produced fuel in time, enough for two bombs.

Ironically, the cyclotron has proven the most reliable method in the long run and all bomb fuel now comes from this method.

The museum has a model of the device used during the Project.





The difficult work of bomb design happened at Los Alamos in New Mexico.

During the war this complex was so secret that nobody involved could acknowledge it even existed.

The basic design of the bomb is to send a shockwave with very specific properties through a ball of enriched uranium or plutonium using conventional explosives.

This creates the critical mass needed to get a reaction, at which point a device called an emitter starts it off.

The shock wave must last long enough that the reaction reaches critical mass.

For obvious reasons, the design of the first bomb and all since is highly classified.

The exhibit does NOT mention that several physics students have tested the difficulty of recreating the design, and one actually succeeded in doing so (the design, not the bomb, thankfully).





After the bomb was built, the army and Manhattan Project scientists had a long argument over whether to test it before using it.

They only had enough fuel for three.

The generals ultimately went ahead with the test because they feared the bomb may not actually work.

The museum has copies of the famous photos of the result.

When the bomb went off at Trinity Site in New Mexico, the heat fused the sand underneath into radioactive green glass now called Trinitite.

The exhibit has a sample.

It also has the odd artifact of the Packard limousine that carried scientists from Los Alamos to the test.





Next to this sits two full size models of the bombs ultimately used, Fat Man and Little Boy.

Both look like giant iron footballs with fins.

These models are more authentic that most, because they were created during the research for testing purposes.





The bomb models lead into a section on the decision to use them.

This section really pushes the point of view that the decision must be analyzed in the context of the conditions under which it was made, a major war.





For the pro-bomb side, capturing little islands like Okinawa and Iwo Jima had cost the lives of thousands of Marines.

The army had intelligence that the Japanese government was training every single civilian to fight to death as last resort.

Invading Japan would create a bloodbath that makes the Pacific war to that point look minor.

The Japanese government had already rejected multiple surrender ultimatums, and dropping the bomb would shock them into reconsidering.





For the anti-bomb side, the US was already laying waste to Japanese cities.

Bombers were dropping thousands of incendiaries daily, burning everything from factories to part of the Imperial Palace.

The only effect a much larger bomb could have is terrorizing the populace.

The REAL goal of using the bomb was to end the war quickly enough that the Soviet Union would not invade Japan and extend its influence over the Pacific.





As history records, the pro-bomb side won the argument.

The museum has the famous before and after pictures of Hiroshima shot from planes, along with a long list of gruesome statistics about the aftermath.

One atomic bomb caused more destruction than an entire day of incendiary attacks.

Thousands of people died.

In the shock and awe department, the bomb worked like a charm because the Japanese government surrendered unconditionally soon afterward.





The bomb ended a bloody hot war, but ushered in the Cold War.

People enter this section of the museum through a black curtain with a blood red hammer and sickle.

Paranoia reigned supreme, especially after Klaus Fuchs leaked atomic secrets to the Soviet Union.

This was coupled with an odd sense of euphoria, as people treated the bomb as a signpost of scientific progress.

For a few years, Las Vegas had a Miss Atomic Bomb pageant!





In the 1950s, this nuclear fear manifested itself in the Civil Defense program.

The section has a model fallout shelter from those days, with concrete walls, canned food, water, and radios.

Next to it are a wide selection of propaganda pamphlets, including some from the Soviet Union.

Those sit next to ‘Duck and Cover’ and other school age lessons about how to survive an atomic attack.

Seen today, much of this material is unintentionally hilarious, such as the pamphlet stating people should not fear radiation because radiation from the sun passes through the earth every day.

The gift shop, incidentally, carries old Civil Defense manuals which may be the most unusual souvenir in the state (and worth the price of admission).



(LATE UPDATE)

Watch some of the films!

The Civil Defense area leads into a grimly serious one on nuclear defense.

The main strategy for decades has been Mutually Assured Destruction, that any country initiating an attack would itself be wiped out by a counterattack.

The museum has models of old missiles from many countries, plus portable atomic weapons designed for combat use.

A single panel covers the closest countries have ever come to another atomic war, the Cuban Missile Crisis in 1962.





The museum’s inherent bias shows up in the next section, on maintaining the nuclear stockpile.

It’s all safe and sound; really, move on, there is nothing to see here.

The section does admit that six bombs have had their firing mechanism detonate, including one carried by a plane that crashed in 1966.

The bombs did not go off due to safety redundancy in their design.

The section also has the great comment that people can worry even less about nuclear safety that before, because safety testing has improved by leaps and bounds over the years.





While warfare gets all the publicity, nuclear science does have other uses.

One of those is medicine.

The museum has a whole wall of quack cures from the turn of the century when people believed radiation would cure anything.

Some people dissolved radium in water and marketed the result as a tonic.

Modern medicine is much more science based with things like CAT scanners.





Few people realize it now, but uranium once showed up in home ceramics.

Manufacturers added trace uranium to molten glass to create an ethereal green glow in the final product.

The Homer Laughlin Company created Fiestaware, bowls and plates with neon colors.

These products ended in the early years of World War II when the government confiscated all known uranium supplies for the Manhattan Project.

After the war, people knew enough about radiation effects that they didn’t come back.





The final section is on nuclear power.

These displays are so biased toward the nuclear industry that I wanted to throw up.

They have a long discussion about how nuclear plants are better for the environment because they do not emit greenhouse gasses.

Another long discussion covers reactor designs and how new improvements will prevent accidents and leaks.

The final bit covers how waste can now be disposed of safely by locking it in vaults deep underground (which is not currently happening).

This was the least satisfying part of the entire museum.

Balloon Night Glow

Tonight, I went to the other major weekend event at the Balloon Festival, the night glow.

The organizers want people there early, to the point they deliberately misprint the starting time in the online schedule.

Regular patrons know it starts close to sunset.

I had paperwork to catch up on, so I went early anyway.

I encountered tolerable traffic getting in.





Close to sunset, a Navy transport plane crossed over the airfield.

Soon afterward, four sky divers carrying smoke devices swopped across the sky.

Their acrobatics were really fun to watch.

Once they landed, the event started in earnest.





Like the Louisville Night Glow (see Luminescent Visions), the balloons stayed on the ground and lit up with their burners.

Unlike the planned glow in Louisville, here people lit up when they wanted to.

Spectators just wander around looking at various balloons.

I saw a soccer ball, one shaped like a butterfly, another all black balloon sponsored by a whisky company, and much else.

Some stayed up a long time while others dropped remarkably early.





The festival fireworks happened close to the end of the glow.

I say “close to” because a few balloons where still up when they started.

Like Bella Foche (see The Western Tradition), the show was a series of preprogrammed bursts, one after the other.

No real artistry, but the volume was impressive.

No music either.

The biggest burst was a huge wall of low level fireworks cannons that went off simultaneously.



(LATE UPDATE)

A taste of the show:

The fireworks show was followed by a funk concert by a local band.

This show had a really strange feel.

The band was clearly around in the 1970s, loves the music, and played it with infectious energy.

The weird part is that they all acted like it still was the 1970s and the music was current, not a nostalgia trip.

The end result was an odd unintentional Austin Powers type parody.

At least they sounded good, and people danced.

Their best feature, though, was spreading out the exodus of people leaving, just like in St. Petersburg (see The City of Sunshine).





I stayed at a Motel 6 tonight.

I mention this because the chain has joined the designer hotel trend.

Instead of the usual boring but functional white box, my room had walls painted primary colors, a small flat screen TV, and knockoffs of designer furniture.

It’s still a Motel 6, though, with thin towels, no toilet lid, cheap bathroom amenities, and no alarm clock.

It’s also still the cheapest passable hotel room in Albuquerque this weekend.

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Photos

Albuquerque Balloon Fiesta
The Saturday mass ascension at the Albuquerque Balloon Fiesta

Laying out Airabelle
Crew setting up Airbelle, one of the largest balloons as the festival

Ascension begins
Balloons take to the sky at the start of the mass ascension

Special Shapes
A wall of special shapes balloons (plus one normal one):
Tic Toc, Spirit of Colorado, two of the Little Bees, and Spyderpig

Pencilboy
Pencilboy, with balloons reflected in his glasses!

On their way
Balloons fly into a perfect high desert sunrise

Balloon landing
What goes up must come down...eventually

First Reactor
Graphite brick from the first nuclear reactor, built by Enrico Fermi at the University of Chicago

Trinitite
Trinitite, radioactive glass created by the heat of the first nuclear bomb test

Bomb Aftermath
Exhibit on the the devastating effects of the atomic bombing of Hiroshima

Fallout shelter
Model of a fallout shelter, how 1950s military strategists thought people could survive an atomic attack

Broken Arrow
Replica of a bomb whose firing mechanism went off after the plane carrying it crashed

Fiestaware
Radioactive home goods produced in the 1920s, containing a coating made of uranium

Navy skydivers
Navy Skydivers at the start of the Fiesta Night Glow

Night glow
Lots of balloons light up during the night glow

Burn it up
Close view of firing burners during the night glow

Bright Cow
Airabelle lights up during the night glow

Fireworks wall
The wall of low level fireworks at Afterglow

Comments

[D MJ Binkley]

Love your impressions of the festival
We've been to the one in Reno. Such an impressive sight. We rode in a balloon when we were living in Richmond, Virginia. The flight took us over all the fall foliage. It was lovely.