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 Not the ballooning profession as the boys had learned it.

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The Chums of Chance owe their ballooning legacy to the 1870-1871 Siege of Paris, as they described at some earlier point in the story. But with science changing so quickly in this liminal place and time which Pynchon chose for a reason (that reason probably being the Michelson-Morley experiment of 1887, according to my speculation and nonsense), the boys now have a lot more to contend with than filling a balloon with hot air and gauging which way the winds are blowing. They're not even flying through Æther anymore. I think?

Anyway, how long ago could the boys have learned ballooning anyway?! They're just lads! Unless they're ghost lads!

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 Presently, as the Inconvenience began to acquire its own sources of internal power, there would be other global streamings to be taken into account—electromagnetic lines of force, Æther-storm warnings, movements of population and capital.

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That's what I speculated and see? I didn't turn mption into an ass at all! Although Pynchon fills out the variables a little more thoroughly because he's Pynchon and he loves to be thorough unless he's currently being vague or abstruse? I guess he could be both thorough and abstruse as well! What do I mean "guess"?! I know he can be!

"electromagnetic lines of force, Æther-storm warnings, movements of population and capital"
Remember, the Frontier is dead, America has just finished its first period of history, technology is changing beliefs, and the population of the world is in constant flux. That last bit, "movements of population and capital," is probably meant to suggest the current "Scramble for Africa" going on by white Europeans, possibly also Americans obsession with mining precious metals and evicting Native Americans from their homes whenever any hint of those metals turned up in their current homes.

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 Once it had been enough to know the winds, and how they blew at each season of the year, to get a rough idea of where they might be headed.

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Things used to be easier! It's like that The Monkees song, "Shades of Grey" (unless it's "Shades of Gray" which I'm pretty sure it isn't or that title would have been located on the other side of the open parenthesis (I looked it up and now don't I look like a huge fool with my arrogant self-assuredness and cheap laptop I purchased with no backspace or delete key!)). "It was easy then to tell truth from lies, selling out from compromise." See? Like that except in this case, it was easy to tell the direction of the ship from the way the wind blew during every season.

Let me start over. I think what the Chums are getting at is that before greater technological innovations which enabled the Chums to propel the ship in any direction, winds be damned, they would have had to rely on the air currents, thus knowing, generally, where those currents were going to shove them. But now the orders are all, "East by south!" and the Chums just turn their rudder in that direction and fire up the thrusters and Pugnax shits out of the side of the balloon and they're off!

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 Speculation began to fill the day.

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Since we're apparently against the day, does that mean we should be against speculation as well? Because that's all I've got, Pynchon! Am I about to learn a lesson about speculation and how it's the academic version of worrying? Like without any solid proof to form theories, it's all just guesswork and nonsense? Because I'm 98% guesswork and nonsense.

Maybe speculation is like assumption and you know how that makes an ass out of "u" and "mption."

Oh yeah! I should speculate too being that I know the Chums are in Chicago and they're supposed to now head east by south. Let me see . . . I bet that means they're going into the center of the Earth! I did not read ahead! Your mom read ahead!