Blimps take to the skies in search of a singular goal: your eyeballs. Thursday morning, one did just that, for all the wrong reasons: A blimp cruising over the US Open golf tournament in Erin Hills, Wisconsin appeared to deflate and crumple, then caught fire and crashed in a plume of black smoke.

The pilot, the only person aboard, rode the wreckage to the ground (he didn't parachute from the blimp, contrary to early reports). He was taken to the hospital and is expected to recover, according to the company operating the blimp, Florida-based Air Sign. There's no details yet on what caused the crash, but the National Transportation Safety Board has started an investigation.

The crash looks dramatic, but this is no Hindenberg. The Air Sign blimp, which was advertising a credit union at the time of its demise, belongs to a little-known variety of aircraft called the thermal airship, which is fancy talk for a football-shaped hot air balloon. It’s inflated and lifted by air heated with a propane-powered flame, controlled by the pilot riding in a gondola slung under the belly of the thing. The explosion of the propane tanks created the fireball when the wreckage was on the ground.

By contrast, the more famous, much larger Goodyear blimp uses a semi-rigid structure made from aluminum and carbon fiber, filled with lighter-than-air helium, and can carry 14 people. (Hydrogen hasn’t been used as a lifting gas for 80 years because it’s too dangerously flammable, as most famously seen in that Hindenburg disaster.)