aerostation

Compare French aérostation, the art of using aerostats.

aerostation (countable and uncountable, plural aerostations)

1. (obsolete, uncountable) Aerial navigation; the act or science of raising and guiding balloons in the air.
2. (archaic, countable) A flight or expedition by hot-air balloon.
   • 1850, John Wise, A System of Aeronautics, Comprehending Its Earliest Investigations and Modern Practice and Art, page 229:

     The balloon ascension advertised by Mr. Wise, the celebrated aeronaut of forty aerostations, took place in this borough on Saturday last.

   • 2015, Siobhan Carroll, An Empire of Air and Water, page 229:

     As he notes, the spread of aerostations testifies to the effectiveness of Enlightenment networks at disseminating information: Most of the early aeronauts had never seen an ascension with their own eyes, but they built their balloons based on the descriptions given by their written sources (19).

   • 2016, Sandra Heath, The Wrong Miss Richmond:

     After a moment she gave an excited gasp. "Look! Oh, do look! It's a balloon!" Mr. Richmond sat forward sharply. "One of those infernal aerostations?” he growled.

3. (obsolete, uncountable) The science of weighing air; aerostatics.
4. (countable, chiefly science fiction) A floating or elevated station.
   • 1955, Institution of Engineers Australia, The Journal of the Institution of Engineers, Australia, page 14:

     It is expected that an analysis of the fist year's records will lead to a clear decision as to whether or not to engage in the second phase of the research, which will comprise a re-arrangement of the survey stations on a finer geographical pattern and the collection of design data for aerostations.

   • 1976, John O'M. Bockris, Energy: The Solar-hydrogen Alternative, page 75:

     Seaborne aerostations could be anchored in the strong windbelts which exist in many areas of the world, for example, off the north-east part of the U.S.A.

   • 2009, Maurice G. Dantec, Grand Junction, page 444:

     ... everywhere—in the streets, on the sidewalks, in the abandoned pathways of the slums and the huge boulevards of the megacities, inside makeshift shelters, Recyclo particleboard houses, prefabricated houses, Combi-cubes, luxury hotels-turned-superprotected bunkers, malls-turned-colonies, office buildings taken over by hordes of migrants, aerostations, factories, ports, docks, dikes, breakwaters, cartels of floating houses, offshore cities, clusters of drilling platforms, cargo ships and ocean liners-turned-nautical cities— the scene is identical, ...

   • 2019, Damiano Anselmi, From physics to life:

     Similar advancements in space lead to the construction of elevated aerostations in cities, where people can catch autonomous planes as frequently as they take the subway.

   • 2019, Craig Buckley, Graphic Assembly, page cxxxiv:

     It was clear to Drexler that the work of Hollein, Pichler, and Abraham was most legible in comparison to the steamships of Le Corbusier or the aerostations of Antonio Sant'Elia, even as he struggled (as the eliminations on the draft of his press release text indicate) over whether this was a "new monumentality" and how one might read the vehicles and machines in these montages.