Aëronaut

From Srafopedia

Aëronauts, such as Lee Scoresby, are men and women who use hot-air or lighter-than-air balloons to fly. Traditionally spherical gasbags with a tapered lower section (to prevent the gas or heated air from escaping through the entry hole) and a wicker basket below to hold occupants. The gas used was Hydrogen, until the safer and less explosive Helium was discovered. In a hot-air balloon, the air within the gasbag is heated, causing it to rise, sucking more in through the entry hole (which the becomes heated as well, rising, sucking in more, and so forth), until the bag itself is stretched taut, giving it enough lift to pull the basket and occupants (weighing as much as half a metric ton) into the air. Direction is either controlled by a system of propellors and rudders attached to the basket (which work, albeit giving the balloon a larger turning circle than the Titanic), or, more commonly, the direction of the wind. The balloon can rise or fall by losing ballast, in the form of sandbags, to rise, or losing gas from the gasbag to fall. Landing is not so much skilled as accidental.