Long before anyone had photographed the earth’s curvature or measured cosmic rays above the clouds, an Auguste Piccard balloon carried a Swiss physicist higher than any human being had ever flown. On May 27, 1931, Auguste Piccard and his assistant Paul Kipfer climbed into a pressurized aluminum gondola slung beneath a hydrogen balloon and rose into the stratosphere, opening a chapter of ballooning history that would run through three generations of one remarkable family.
At Wicked Balloons, we spend our mornings drifting over Worcester at a gentle few thousand feet, so the Piccards’ achievements always strike us with a kind of reverent astonishment. Their story is a reminder of just how far a balloon and a spirit of curiosity can take you.
Auguste Piccard and the First Stratospheric Balloon
Auguste Piccard was a professor of physics in Brussels with a fascination for cosmic rays, the high-energy particles raining down from space that are absorbed by the lower atmosphere before they ever reach the ground. To study them properly, he needed to get above most of that atmosphere. The solution was an Auguste Piccard balloon design unlike anything flown before: a sealed, spherical aluminum cabin that would let its occupants survive in the thin, frigid air of the stratosphere without pressure suits.
On that May morning in 1931, Piccard and Kipfer launched from Augsburg, Germany, and ascended to roughly 51,000 feet, more than 15,000 meters above the earth. They became the first humans to see the curvature of the planet with their own eyes and the first to visit the stratosphere. A year later, in 1932, Piccard flew again, this time with Max Cosyns, pushing even higher and gathering more data on cosmic radiation.
A Design Ahead of Its Time
The pressurized cabin Piccard engineered was a direct ancestor of the cabins later used in high-altitude aircraft and early spacecraft. Some aviation historians consider his sealed gondola one of the conceptual bridges between lighter-than-air flight and the space age. It is a fitting legacy for a man who simply wanted to answer a physics question and ended up rewriting what people believed was possible for a balloon.
A Family of Explorers: Jean Felix and Jeannette Piccard
Auguste had a twin brother, Jean Felix Piccard, who shared his passion for high-altitude ballooning and eventually settled in the United States. Jean Felix’s wife, Jeannette Piccard, trained as a balloon pilot herself and, in 1934, flew a stratosphere balloon named the Century of Progress to an altitude of around 57,000 feet. She became the first woman to reach the stratosphere, a milestone that later earned her recognition from NASA, which named her an honorary astronaut decades afterward.
Together, the Piccards were not a single genius but a family enterprise, trading ideas about ballast, cabin design, and gas expansion across the Atlantic. Their work fed directly into the American high-altitude ballooning programs of the 1930s and beyond.
Jacques Piccard Takes the Family Underwater
The next generation took the Piccard name in an unexpected direction: down instead of up. Auguste’s son, Jacques Piccard, partnered with his father to design the bathyscaphe, a deep-diving vessel that used the same basic principle as a balloon, buoyancy control through ballast, but adapted for the crushing pressures of the deep ocean rather than the near-vacuum of the stratosphere.
On January 23, 1960, Jacques Piccard and U.S. Navy Lieutenant Don Walsh piloted the bathyscaphe Trieste to the bottom of the Challenger Deep in the Mariana Trench, the deepest known point in the world’s oceans. It remains one of the great feats of exploration, and it only exists because Auguste Piccard had already proven, at the opposite extreme of altitude, that a sealed pressure vessel could carry a person somewhere no one had gone before.
- Auguste Piccard: first stratospheric balloon flight, 1931 and 1932
- Jean Felix and Jeannette Piccard: American stratosphere ballooning, Century of Progress flight, 1934
- Jacques Piccard: deepest ocean dive, Challenger Deep, 1960
- Bertrand Piccard: first nonstop round-the-world balloon flight, 1999
Bertrand Piccard Circles the Globe
The family’s ballooning legacy came full circle with Auguste’s grandson, Bertrand Piccard. In March 1999, Bertrand and British pilot Brian Jones completed the first nonstop, circumnavigational balloon flight around the world aboard the Breitling Orbiter 3, landing in the Egyptian desert after nearly three weeks aloft. It was a feat many aviators had chased for decades, and a Piccard finally claimed it.
Bertrand later turned his attention to solar-powered flight, piloting the Solar Impulse aircraft around the globe using only the sun’s energy. Across four generations, the Piccards kept pushing at the edges of what flight could do, from the stratosphere to the seafloor to an unbroken lap of the earth.
Why the Piccards Still Matter to Modern Ballooning
Every hot air balloon pilot today owes something to Auguste Piccard’s stubborn insistence that a balloon could go places no one thought survivable. Modern envelope materials, burner technology, and flight instrumentation trace their lineage back to an era when ballooning was still a frontier science, and the Piccard family was writing the textbook in real time.
Here in Worcester, our own flights are a good deal more relaxed than a trip to the stratosphere. We are not chasing altitude records, we are chasing sunrise light over the New England hills. But the same basic physics that lifted Auguste Piccard’s aluminum sphere in 1931 lifts our envelopes today: hot air, buoyancy, and a willingness to trust the sky. If you would like to learn more about how we approach flying and who is behind the burner, our team’s story is a good place to start.
Frequently Asked Questions
Who was Auguste Piccard?
Auguste Piccard was a Swiss physicist who, in 1931, became the first person to fly a balloon into the stratosphere, using a sealed pressurized cabin of his own design to study cosmic rays at extreme altitude.
How high did the Piccard stratosphere balloon fly?
Piccard’s 1931 flight reached roughly 51,000 feet, and his 1932 flight climbed even higher, both well into the stratosphere, an altitude no human had previously experienced directly.
Is the Piccard family connected to Star Trek?
The surname is a coincidence rather than a direct inspiration, though the family’s fame in exploration circles is sometimes cited as part of the cultural backdrop the name evokes. What is well documented is that Auguste Piccard inspired the eccentric Professor Cuthbert Calculus in Hergé’s Tintin comics.
What did Jacques and Bertrand Piccard accomplish?
Jacques Piccard, Auguste’s son, co-designed the bathyscaphe Trieste and reached the deepest point in the ocean in 1960. Bertrand Piccard, Auguste’s grandson, completed the first nonstop balloon flight around the world in 1999 and later flew a solar-powered aircraft around the globe.
The Piccards remind us that ballooning has always been a family of dreamers willing to go higher, deeper, and farther than seemed possible. We would love to have you join us for a much gentler kind of adventure over Worcester; check our reservations page to book a sunrise flight of your own.
