Wednesday, January 15, 1997
QUEST:
Historic flight, which could last 3 weeks, starts across the
AtlanticBy Malcolm W. Browne
New York Times
After a smooth launching from St. Louis and an uneventful trip
over the eastern United States, a solo balloonist headed out over
the Atlantic Ocean on Tuesday, beginning what he hopes will be a
nonstop voyage around the world.
The balloonist, Steve Fossett, is flying aboard the Solo Spirit
in an unpressurized pilot’s capsule with minimal equipment. Fellow
balloonists regard his flight as one of the most dangerous flights
ever tried, partly because he is not accompanied by any flight crew
and partly because of the physical exhaustion he faces during a
harrowing trip that could last three weeks.
But Fossett has confounded experts before. In 1995 he completed
the first solo balloon flight across the Pacific Ocean in a similar
balloon, setting a balloon distance record of 5,438 miles. He
believes that his relatively simple balloon gives him a better
chance than that of other balloonists trying to reach the
long-sought goal of being first to circle the world nonstop.
Fossett, 52, a commodities broker from Beaver Creek, Colo., is
the third balloonist to begin a round-the-world flight in one week.
The other two balloons, one of them British with Richard Branson in
command and the other Swiss, flown by Dr. Bertrand Piccard and a
Belgian balloonist, were both forced down by technical problems
after less than one day in the air.
At sunset Tuesday, Fossett was over the ocean 50 miles east of
Cape Hatteras, N.C., moving at about 60 mph at an altitude of
18,000 feet. Timothy Kemper of Loyola University in Chicago,
Fossett’s spokesman, said the balloon was expected to cross the
coast of Portugal on Thursday, and was expected to fly to Spain,
northern France, the English Channel, the North Sea, Denmark and
northern Poland. From there on, the balloon’s eastward track is
still difficult to predict.
Fossett’s Solo Spirit is equipped with a special automatic
pilot, a feature that makes long-duration solo flight possible. The
mechanism continuously measures the balloon’s altitude and flight
angle, and turns the balloon’s propane burners on or off as
needed.
The main lift is provided by helium in a cell at the top of the
balloon, but another cell below it contains air that can be heated
to provide extra lift as needed, especially during cold night
flight.
Fossett plans to cruise at about 18,000 feet for most of his
trip. Since his capsule is unpressurized, he will sometimes need to
breathe oxygen from a small tank. But to keep his oxygen
consumption minimal, he has prepared himself for the thin air by
conditioning his body at home in a special decompression chamber.
He will eat the same military field rations used by American
soldiers, and his toilet is a simple bucket.
Branson, chairman of the British Virgin Group of Companies, and
his two fellow crew members aboard the ill-fated Virgin Global
Challenger, began their own try from a launching site in Morocco on
Jan. 7, but a helium leak forced them to land in Algeria after less
than a day in the air. The crew of the balloon narrowly escaped
death when it began a plunge to earth, halting when a crew member
crawled outside the capsule to jettison a fuel tank.
After his rescue from the Algerian Sahara, Branson flew to
Chateau d’Oex, Switzerland, to watch the launching Sunday of a
competing balloon, the Breitling Orbiter, piloted by Piccard and
Wim Verstraeten. But a kerosene leak flooded the Swiss balloon’s
crew capsule and forced the balloon to ditch in the Mediterranean
Sea.
Branson then flew to St. Louis to watch Fossett take off from
the outfield of Busch Stadium.
"If Steve pulls this off," Branson said later, "it will go down
in the annals as one of the greatest feats of manned flight. I
really had a funny feeling as I watched his Solo Spirit rise. It
was like saying goodbye to a friend you may not see again."
Both Branson and Piccard announced Tuesday that they would try
again next year, unless Fossett’s effort succeeds.
A fourth team also plans to try a round-the-world trip a year
from now. Their balloon, the Dymocks Flyer (named for its main
sponsor, Dymocks Booksellers of Australia), is similar to large
unmanned balloons flown by NASA to collect scientific information
from the upper atmosphere.
The Dymocks crew, two Americans and an Australian, plans to
launch its balloon next December from Alice Springs, Australia, and
fly it around the earth’s Southern Hemisphere, where there is far
less land and fewer potential political problems than in the
Northern Hemisphere.
Political problems pose a big threat to balloonists drifting
over certain nations. Fossett has asked Americans to send e-mail to
President Clinton, requesting his help in persuading countries like
China to grant permission for balloon overflights.
Branson said in an interview Tuesday that he and his crew had
faced a crisis as they approached the Algerian border from Morocco
last week, when Algerian authorities radioed their refusal to allow
the Virgin balloon to fly over an Algerian military base that the
balloon had no way of avoiding.
"The king of Morocco interceded on our behalf," Branson said,
"and at almost the last minute Algerian authorities relented.
Later, the Algerian president himself sent his own plane to rescue
us from the desert. I hope that peaceful, harmless balloon flights
will help to melt international barriers."