0% of players answered correctly.

THE CORRECT ANSWER: La rozière combining light gas and hot air

Crossing the Channel represented the first major aeronautical challenge after the invention of balloons. To overcome the limits of hot air balloons, which consume fuel, and charlières, whose gas contracts in the cold, the physicist Jean-François Pilâtre de Rozier imagines a revolutionary hybrid concept.He designed an aircraft, later named “rozière”, which superimposed a cylindrical envelope of hot air under a sphere filled with hydrogen. The scientific goal was to use heat from the lower hearth to expand the upper gas without having to drop valuable ballast or release gas to control altitude.Unfortunately, the coexistence of an open fire burner and a highly flammable gas turns out to be catastrophic. On June 15, 1785, during the attempted crossing from Boulogne-sur-Mer, the aircraft caught fire at altitude, leading to the tragic death of its inventor, the first martyr in the history of aviation.