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He says it was between a balloon and an autogyro – a sort of mini-
helicopter that looks like a motorcycle with a big rotary blade on top.
There were only five of those around, and three of them were involved
in fatal accidents in 1970, the year he opted for a balloon instead.
“It’s a good thing I bought a balloon!” he laughs.
Balloons weren’t much more commonplace than autogyros – there
were around 50 in the world when Nott bought his. (There are 50,000
now.) But, piloting a balloon had its advantages.
“Part of why I stuck with it,” Nott confesses, “is that if you flew
across the Santa Barbara Creek in a hot-air balloon, it was the first
crossing of the Santa Barbara Creek. Anything you did was a first.”
For example, when Nott sailed to 36,000 feet some years after
buying his balloon, he set an altitude record. “Ergo, I was an expert,”
says Nott, “but I knew better. I was the partially sighted in the world of
the largely blind.”
It was a world, though, that was ideal for the sort of tinkering and
innovating Nott grew up on. For instance, when he set that altitude
record, he did so by modifying the burners that pushed hot air into
the balloon’s envelope so they could keep burning at higher altitudes.
He also flew in a tiny basket to save weight. He tinkered with oxygen
systems and parachutes. He did primitive computer
modeling to work out an equation for the optimum
rate of decline.
“It was a few hundred lines of code. It’s the
sort of thing teenagers write for their homework
projects these days, but nobody else was doing
it. And computer modeling had been central to
everything I’ve done since.”
Nott has done a lot.
BATHTUB MOMENTS
I
n 1973, he traversed the Alps in a helium balloon. Two years later, he
built and flew a hot-air balloon in Peru employing only materials and
technology that could have been used by the Nazca civilization in first
century A.D. In the process, he offered up one explanation for how the
Nazca gained perspective to draw their geoglyphs – massive drawings
in the arid eastern Peruvian desert floor of animals and other cultural
icons. Later, he would cross the English Channel in a solar-powered hot-
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Nott has pioneered a unique range of balloon
designs. He was the first person to design and pilot
a “pumpkin” balloon, shown here making the first
crossing of Australia. NASA has subsequently
developed the pumpkin for long duration science
flights. He also developed an entirely new type,
the cryogenic balloon, shown here launching from
Kansas and flying at 18,000 feet.