First cluster balloon flight

The first crewed flight in a cluster balloon (a gondola suspended beneath a large cluster of small gas-filled balloons, instead of a single large one), was made by Swiss-born American aeronautical engineer Jean-Felix Piccard on 18 July 1937. Piccard (the twin brother of physicist-adventurer Auguste Piccard) took off from Rochester, Minnesota, USA, and landed near Lansing, Iowa -- around 110 miles (160 km) from his start point. He reportedly reached an altitude of 11,000 ft (3,350 m).

Jean-Felix Piccard made his first balloon flights with his twin brother Auguste in the mid-1900s. He moved to the United States in 1926 having been offered a position as a research chemist at the Hercules Powder Company, but later moved into academia. He was active in the development of high altitude balloon technology, working closely with his wife Jeannette Ridlon-Piccard. They developed the first plastic lifting balloons and made high-altitude flights where she piloted the balloon and Jean ran the experiments.

Piccard's first cluster balloon flight didn't go smoothly. He climbed to an altitude of around 11,000 ft (3,350 m) sooner than expected, and struggled to run his experiments as the temperature rapidly dropped in his small, cramped cabin. When it came time to begin his descent -- which was to be controlled by releasing individual balloons -- Piccard discovered that some of the balloons were stuck. He ended up having to "kill" several by shooting them with a pistol he had packed in case of an emergency.

The final descent was controlled by the detonation of a pyrotechnic charge, which disengaged the upper half of the balloon cluster. Unfortunately, this pyrotechnic charge also ignited the thermal insulation on the gondola. Piccard came down in a remote wooded gully near the small town of Lansing, Iowa, and had to scramble out of the gondola as the flames spread. He then walked for about an hour to the nearest farmhouse, where Piccard greeted farmer Mort Madden with a simple "good morning" and a request to use his telephone.

While the flight was broadly successful, the fire that consumed the gondola on landing destroyed all his instruments, meaning that he had no data to study or use to inform future designs. This caused problems for his and Jeannette's long-term plan of breaking the altitude record in a gigantic 2,000-balloon cluster.