Balloonist Bias and Current Day Aeronautical Balloons

While reading this week's section on balloons, I found it interesting how enthralled the world was with balloons at the time of their creation. Masses swarmed the area of a balloon launch, excited and blown away by the majesty and innovation they witnessed. While reading, I recalled the first week's reading and lecture on John Berger's ten ways of viewing landscapes. When ballooning first emerged, very few people had the privilege of going up in a balloon. At first, people on the ground only heard about the views from the balloonist himself, as photography was incompatible with balloon flight and the rockiness of air travel. The aerial views these balloonists reported were tainted with their own bias. If, for example, a balloonist was focused on the possible monetary value of commercializing ballooning to the public, he would be more concerned with which views would bring in the most money and how he could get the largest number of people in the air in the shortest amount of time, instead of reporting the cartographic values of balloon exploration.
I myself have no previous knowledge of ballooning, but I am very interested in the later years of air and space exploration, especially NASA's (National Aeronautics and Space Exploration’s) current missions. The fact that aeronautics began with balloons and set the stage for modern flight is fascinating, and while I read about them, I began to wonder if there are any current applications of balloons in space exploration. My curiosity led me to NASA's website, specifically an article on their current project, the Ares 1 Rocket, which will propel the new Orion capsule into space. The Ares 1 is equipped with three "brightly-colored canopies that cover more than two acres" (Marconi). After the first stage of the Ares 1 Rocket separates from the rest of the rocket, it falls back towards the ocean. The three parachutes engage and slow the rocket's fall so as to cause as little damage as possible. 

Whether these current day parachutes are descended from nineteenth century balloons or not, I found the fact that balloon-like structures are still present in current aeronautics to be a very interesting connection.

Marconi, Elaine. "What Goes Up, Must Come Down." NASA. n.d. Web. 17 Oct 2013. <http://www.nasa.gov>