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Origins of Flight -

Man has always sought flight as a dream unconquerable. All men yearn to fly at times, either for tts tranquility or its adventure. Flying strike a cord with all of us in some special way, and though not everyone is fit to fly among the clouds there are quite a few who have worked toward making the very dream a reality. Like many amazing journeys in history it begins humbly. For hundreds of years various families have been creating thermal balloons consisting of little more than a rice paper bag with a candle set inside it. It doesn’t take long for a bright mind, and a adventurous heart to want to take the next logical step and create a craft capable of carrying them to the heights above.

The established intelligentsia at the time as one might expect originally saw early airship designs as flights of fancy. They were after all little more than toys at first, consisting of a small paper or cloth bag also known as the envelope and either a small oil lamp, or a very small elemental firestone attached to an opening at the bottom by small pieces of string. Experiments with the design at the time showed that it made no difference which method provided heat for the envelope which made experimentation open to many tinkers since they were not bound to using expensive Elemental stones when a simple oil lamp would provide the same effect. As such even with many of the leading minds frowning upon such frivolous playing many tinkers were able to advance the design and theory of airships to the point that larger and more practical airships could be built to scale.

Thermal Airships-

Who exactly built the first Thermal Airship is not precisely known as at the time many were trying to accomplish the same goal and achieved similar results within a very short span of each other. As a historical example perhaps the best-documented airship design of the period came from an engineer by the name of Verilliac. His design could be considered as the proto-typical Thermal Airship as it contains most of the elements of designs that are still used today in the design and construction of these simple machines.

Verilliac’s design utilized a Gondola that was quite literally a true gondola taken from the canals of Valenista to which a larger charcoal burner box was installed at the boats center point, this burner box contained charcoal soaked with an accelerant that unfortunately was not listed in his design though one may assumes it was pitch or tar. This fire was stoked by a foot-powered bellow controlled by Verilliac himself from his control chair and allowed him some meager control over his altitude. Above the fire was a water tank with ample clearance to either side to allow the hot air to pass around the water-tank heating it but still allow the hot air to rise. It was said that due to the heat exchanging properties of the water tank that once the fire was started it would take quite awhile for the fire to stoke up enough that enough warm air would build up in the ships envelope. This water tank was however a necessary evil however as the steam from it drove a rotary turbine, and via long drive shaft a two bladed propeller made of wood.

The envelope of the Airship was a long tubular design constructed of sailcloth that was sewn-up at either end to from a chisel shape envelope. This envelope was attached to the top of the burner box so as to funnel the hot air directly into the envelope. At the center of the envelope was a wooden ring sewn into the envelope and glued in place. A wooden valve ringed in dried asphalt was used on the inner edges of the ring to act as a seal. A spring mechanism helped keep the valve closed during flight, however should pressure overwhelm the envelope the pressure would force the valve up and prevent the envelope form over inflating. If Verilliac wanted to descend he could simply lift up the valve by means of a long pole to release a small amount of the hot air stored within it, however should he release too much he risked crashing or tumbling to his death should he not equalize his lift with his ballast properly. To counter an opposite problem and prevent him from simply rising into the sky without control the rear and front of his airship contained ballast tanks of water that could be opened slightly to let water out and thus lighten the airship allowing it to rise.

There was no room in his design for Verilliac to walk around in his airship and he used a swiveling chair that only allowed him access to his controls and allow him to rotate around to occasionally feed the burner box with more charcoal as needed. The next major hurdle for Verrilliac was direction. Obviously very few test models could be controlled remotely so no testing could be done as to the viable control of a vessel in flight. It goes without saying that much of the early flights of Thermal Airships were done without much control beyond going up and down with wind steering the vessel at its leisure. After several weeks of experimentation and consultation with other early airship pioneers he developed a rudder system that used a tall lightweight rudder of rattan and sail cloth that ran from the bottom of the gondola to just below the airships envelope.

Though the early years of airships were a dangerous and exciting time, eventual demand for the airship, first as an amusement for the rich, then later as essential means of quick travel to remote destinations within a decade Airships had proven they were here to stay.

Experimentation-

Having conquered one of mans great limitations Thermal airships in various sizes and shapes remained essentially unchanged for fifty years before the first experimentations into possible replacements began in earnest. Despite all their advances Thermal Airships had a number of issues. Primary among these was because the envelopes were not of rigid design they were hard to control and tended to ‘flop’ in hard turns which unless handled properly by following through with the turn could cause disastrous consequences, it also made them difficult to control in quick descents making any sort of control a fallacy in an emergency dive. Though one of the primary concerns with Thermal airships was that they were open to the elements lacking any rigid structure or potent enough lifting capacity to support an enclosed cabin making long journeys a hellish miserable encounter by those who could afford such journeys.

Further experience with the cutting and shaping of Elemental stones began to open up in connection with the growing mutual support between the Miner Mages and the universities. With new ways to refine elemental stones and a better understanding of the forces they produced came new theories on the nature of the stones and how they might be used. Though firestones had been used occasionally in some of the larger Airships to alleviate maintenance, weight, and space needed for a larger burner box they had acted merely as a means to and end and were merely an option. Experimentation with the various elemental stones, mores specifically air stones lead to the discovery that air moving across the stones surface produced lift. Why this was no one quite understood but the action and result were repeatable, and confirmable and thus the early experiments with Air stones as a lifting body began.

While limited research into Air stones as a lifting body had begun, continued research into improving Thermal airships continued. Case in point is the Imperial Valenian Airship Archos. The Archos was an experimental ‘Semi-rigid’ airship. Unlike Verilliacs design the Archos used an ogival envelope with an Enclosed Rigid Keel ran from point of the envelope to just short of the pointed tail. The enclosed keel acted as the gondola and as ballast to keep the heavier crew section below the actual envelope. Because of the enclosed keel military personnel were now somewhat protected from the scattered ground fire that was some times leveled against airships by ground forces. At that time however Airships had little to fear as ground-based artillery was strongly limited in both its elevation and attainable altitude allowing airships a sense of invulnerability when sailing over a battlefield. The Archos due to its large size and weight was able to carry the first official armament for an Airship, a pair of Eight-inch howitzers that were suspended in turret below the keel gave it tremendous firepower though at the cost of available ammunition stowage.

For all its success the Archos had many problems. Because of the airships size it was seen as improbable that a burner box or indeed multiple such facilities would be able to provide sufficient thermal volume to get the craft airborne. As such multiple watermelon-sized firestones were used to provide the necessary volume of hot air. This made the Archos exceedingly expensive, and because of the enclosed keel the heat from such a power plant made for very uncomfortably hot working conditions for its crew. The last nail in the Archos’ coffin unfortunately was its speed, at barely over three knots with its engines on red-line it was easily out maneuvered by the enemy leaving it few targets of opportunity. After three years of service the Archos was decommissioned and scrapped; a successful but imperfect experiment.