Ed Yost, 87, Father of Modern Hot-Air Ballooning

Ed Yost, who died Sunday at 87, invented the modern hot-air balloon and demonstrated it by becoming the first hot-air balloonist to cross the English Channel, in 1963.Yost’s innovations included using laminated Mylar for the balloon and creating the distinctive “teardrop” shape and the propane burner system used to generate hot air, subject of his 1961 patent. He had a score more balloon patents for systems and designs, which were assigned to a leading manufacturer of hot-air balloons, Raven Industries of Sioux Falls, S.D. In 1978, a balloon he designed became the first to cross the Atlantic successfully.Although the balloons first flown in 1783 by the French Montgolfière brothers, Joseph and Jacques-Étienne, were taken aloft by hot air, the method had proved unreliable over the years, as sparks from fuel tended to spread to balloon material, creating a sometimes fatal problem of catastrophic descent. Hydrogen and especially noncombustible helium became the rule. But helium was much more expensive than propane. A modern helium balloon might cost several thousand dollars to fill with enough helium for a weekend of flight, while the propane to for hot air would cost a tiny fraction of that amount.It was as an engineer building high-altitude balloons for the Office of Naval Intelligence at a General Mills plant in Minneapolis that Yost got his start in ballooning. An Iowa farm boy who translated his love of flight into a degree in aeronautical engineering and a job as a bush pilot in Alaska, Yost initially designed balloons to carry propaganda behind the Iron Curtain. He later worked on projects to take balloons into the stratosphere for space research and intelligence gathering, but it was at lower altitudes that he was most innovative.In 1955, he helped design and then piloted a hot-air balloon prototype on a tethered flight in a tiny, 25-foot diameter balloon. Five years later, he was the pilot of what is generally accepted as the first free flight of a modern hot-air balloon, reaching 9,300 feet. The first applications were military and included unloading tanks from ships. But it soon became evident that the advent of hot-air ballooning made the sport accessible to amateurs.In 1963, Yost piloted the first ever hot-air crossing of the English Channel. He took off from Rye, in Sussex, and landed less than four hours later inland of Calais, the balloon narrowly missing power lines on a rapid descent. The legendary French balloonist Charles Dollfus toasted Yost at a banquet that night and insisted on dropping his pants to show Yost tattoos of an old balloon on one cheek and a Montgolfière on the other, according to balloon historian Jim Ellis of the Connecticut Lighter Than Air Society.Through the 1960s, Yost pushed for greater heights and distances while registering more patents for balloon designs. His efforts met with tragedy in 1966, when he was on the ground crew and a young man tried to set an altitude record for free-fall by jumping out of a gas balloon gondola at 125,000 feet. The parachutist’s oxygen equipment malfunctioned on the ascent, and he died in a hospital after lapsing into a coma.In 1973, Yost designed a hot-air balloon for Malcolm Forbes, who flew it in stages from Tillamook, Ore., to Chesapeake Bay, where he crashed it into knee-deep water and was rescued by a crab boat.Yost’s most audacious feat was an attempt to make the first-ever balloon crossing of the Atlantic Ocean, which he attempted in October 1976, in a balloon fitted with a gondola that doubled as a catamaran. He took off from Baldwin’s Head, Maine, but the catamaran proved necessary when he came up 750 miles short, dunking into the Atlantic near the Azores. The solo flight set records for time aloft (107 hours) and distance (2,500 miles) and was featured on the cover of National Geographic. Two years later, a Yost-designed balloon was the first to complete the crossing, though without Yost aboard.Yost helped found the Balloon Federation of America but had a rocky relationship with the organization and for a time maintained his membership through the surrogacy of his dog.

Ed Yost, 87, Father of Modern Hot-Air Ballooning

Ed Yost, 87, Father of Modern Hot-Air Ballooning

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