Montociel the sheep and the first test flight

Can people endure flying at high altitudes as easily as birds? This was the question that interested scientific minds in the late 1700s, when hot-air balloon demonstrations showed that these reliable contraptions could lift people into the air and then return them safely to the ground. In 1783, King Louis XVI and Queen Marie Antoinette led a large crowd that came to see a "manned" balloon flight at Versailles. The heroes of the flight were a duck, a rooster and a sheep named Montociel. These three passengers were to become the first aeronauts in human history.

The duck was used as a control as it is used to high altitudes. The rooster was there because he was a bird that did not fly at high altitudes. The main attention during this flight was focused on the Montociel the sheep, whose biological characteristics, in any case, according to the experimenters, were close to human ones. Scientists believed that if Montociel survived the flight, then it is likely that a person could also survive it.

The balloon was very beautiful, had a blue color and was decorated with golden royal insignia and signs of the zodiac. In fact, it was better decorated than it could fly. The balloon covered about 1.5 kilometers and reached a height of about 450 meters, after which it landed. When the onlookers saw Montociel, she was eating calmly. At first, there was some concern about the rooster, which had a broken wing, until one of the witnesses said that Montociel kicked the unfortunate guy before taking off. So the experiment was a success, and Montociel quietly chewed on the grass, as if guaranteeing that the next manned balloon flight would be safe for people.