Silver Pleiades

April 15, 1997

In 1997 I resolved that I would learn to fly with helium balloons.

At the time I was already an experienced hot-air balloon pilot and had also flown a few times in conventional gas balloons. For all of that, there was still a dream of balloon flight I longed to fulfill, something I'd first seen in a children's science book as a young boy: a man floating into the sky suspended beneath a cluster of huge helium balloons.

It was not a form of flight that had a great track record of success, with the best-known actual practitioner (Larry Walters, the lawn chair balloon man) having become a legendary example of whimsical dumbness gone dangerously wrong. But it was something that had always fascinated me, my original inspiration as a balloonist, and now I was determined to learn to fly with helium balloons myself.

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Don Piccard was one of the pioneers of modern hot-air ballooning, as a pilot, engineer, and early manufacturer. Don was also very experienced with gas balloons and had done some flights in the with clusters of helium-filled plastic balloons in the 1950’s. He was semi-retired, at that point, but still active and, by reputation, something of a character.

On the e-mail reflector, Don described some mylar balloons he had built which were intended to be flown in a cluster over a basket. He had inflated them once, for a gas balloon race in Germany, but the flight had been cancelled due to weather, so they remained untested for actual manned flight. I wrote to Don and asked if he’d be interested in selling some of his balloons, describing the kind of flight I was planning. He agreed enthusiastically and said he would come to California to assist with the flight.

So, suddenly, my dream was a looming reality.

The balloons Don had made were very simply constructed: mylar sheets taped together into a cylinder that was tied together at the top. When inflated, the balloons assumed a rounded natural balloon shape, with the excess material being absorbed into creases. At the bottom, the mylar was gathered and tied with a red webbing line, the end of which ran down to attach to the basket, or in my case, harness. Some openings were intentionally left where the mylar was gathered, to allow gas to escape when the helium expanded at higher altitudes – otherwise, since the mylar lacked any significant elasticity, the balloons would burst.

The metallized mylar was about the thickness of a mylar birthday balloon from the florist, and the tape appeared to be very wide gauge transparent tape. Don had packed each of the balloons in a black plastic garbage bag for transport.

I remembered uneasily that Don's balloons had never been tested by a human pilot. However it was probably safer than what I would come up with on my own. Worst case, I would be killed by the Father of Modern Hot-air Ballooning, which was a kind of honor.

The plan was for me to use seven of Don's balloons for my flight. We dubbed my craft “Silver Pleiades”, after the seven-star constellation, and also after the scientific balloon Pleiades, a cluster of dozens of weather balloons attached to a gondola that Don’s father had flown to the stratosphere in 1937.

The balloons were like giant mirrors, reflecting the blue sky and the tan lakebed. They seemed huge.

The remaining balloons were now inflatted. The inflation had taken much longer than I had expected; it was getting towards 9 AM. I got back into my harness. The crew attached my water ballast bags and clipped on the remaining three balloons. It was time for me to fly.

I vented some helium and set up a 200 feet per minute descent. I was off the lakebed now, over an area populated mostly by creosote bushes, along with an occasional battered house. On the radio, Ernie told me that the earlier calm on the surface had given way to light winds.

As I dropped in, I saw a paved road along my current track, and directed crew over to it. They got out of the truck and walked out into the field where I seemed to be headed. But as I descended, the wind direction changed and also sped up, and they had to run back to the truck to follow me.

I flew into an adjacent field, now being carried along faster than I could run, still descending. I landed in some bushes and dragged for a short distance behind the balloons, which were leaned over hard now in the wind. I managed to cut away a couple of the balloons and slow myself so that the crew could run in and grab me.

Silver Pleiades

Crew Chief: Ernie Hartt

Crew (left to right): Don Piccard, Phil Brandt, Ernie Hartt, Richard Douglass, John Ninomiya

Photography: Don Piccard, John Ninomiya, Life Magazine

In Memory of Don Piccard: 1926-2020