Random weird thoughts and comments

[Claire Koch]

I always wondered why hot air balloons weren't invented sooner? The basic materaials needed have been around forever. The Greeks (and many others) had to know hot air rose just by seeing the embers of a fire float up. They would have been a great advantage for defense and war.

But were they advanced enough to know that the whole thing would not go up in flames?  It probably would have taken quite a few tests and lost lives to actually get the thing up there.
I imagine they did think about it though.  I'm not an evolutionist but a lot of this stuff evolves out of people coming to grips on how to do it without losing everything on the trials.
They probably had mathmatical estimates by the time they tried to send the first one up.  On another note maybe unrelated since this is suppposed to be about weird thoughts.  I never did get
over seeing the hindenburg crash a burn.  I hate fires.