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Adventurers take aim at a balloon trip around the world
Monday, October 19, 1998 By Michael Woods, Post-Gazette Washington Bureau
ALBUQUERQUE, N.M. -- The 20th century's last great adventure in the air may finally be at hand.
Wilbur and Orville Wright flew the first practical airplane in 1903. Charles Lindberg flew solo nonstop across the Atlantic Ocean in 1927. Chuck Yeager broke the sound barrier in 1947. Californians Dick Rutan and Jeanna Yeager in 1986 piloted the first nonstop around-the-world airplane flight without refueling.
Nevertheless, nobody has managed to use humanity's first flying machine -- a balloon -- to circle the globe nonstop.
Another chapter in the quest is about to open with one of the most intensive assaults ever attempted on what balloonists call ATW -- an around-the-world flight. More than a half dozen teams plan ATW flights in the months ahead, including one with the only kind of balloon that has ever circled the globe unmanned.
"I think we have a legitimate chance," said David Liniger of Denver, Colo., one of three co-pilots of the latter mission, called Team Re/Max. "The concept that this will be the first civilian space mission in history is fascinating."
Indeed, Liniger and his co-pilots, Bob Martin of Albuquerque and John Wallington of Canberra, Australia, will fly at the very fringe of space, 130,000 feet above earth in the stratosphere. During an 18-21 day flight, the three will live in a pressurized capsule, slung beneath a NASA-style research balloon, wearing Russian cosmonaut space suits during ascent and descent.
All three recently came to a special fabrication facility here to oversee final work on their capsule, or gondola, which is being prepared for a December launch from Australia.
Among the other major competitors is Steve Fossett, the millionaire adventurer from Chicago who thrilled millions last summer with his fourth attempt at circumnavigating the globe.
Fossett launched from Chile in August and flew a record 15,202 miles. . . He was about 400 miles east of Australia, on the home stretch back to Chile, when a thunderstorm sent Fossett and his Solo Spirit balloon plummeting 30,000 feet into the Coral Sea.
With his gondola wrecked and equipment lost, Fossett appeared to be out of the running for the 1998-99 autumn/winter season, when winds are best for ATW attempts. But during the rescue, a call came from none other than Fossett's archrival, Richard Branson, the flamboyant British businessman who runs Virgin Atlantic Airlines and heads another ATW team.
"With Steve out of the race for this year, I realized I would miss the rivalry we had enjoyed over the last three years," Branson said. "I decided to ask Steve to join Per (Lindstrand) and I on this year's Virgin Global Challenger attempt. We were both delighted when he said yes."
Fossett remarked: " The thought of going again this year with Richard and Per was simply too good an offer to refuse."
Plans for the Global Challenger call for a northern hemisphere route, with launch in late 1998 or early 1999 from Morocco.
Besides a place in aviation history, all the groups are competing for a $1 million prize -- half of which must go to a non-profit group -- offered by Anheuser Busch.
Although the ATW quest has gotten little of the global attention that riveted previous assaults on aviation records, new distance and endurance records have fallen as balloonists have taken advantage of high-tech fabrics for their balloon envelopes and light-but-super-strong composite materials for the gondolas.
Most of the ATW challengers will use sophisticated Rozier balloons, named for Jean Francois de Rozier, the French scientist who in 1783 became the first person to make a balloon ascent.
A Rozier is a combination hot air and helium balloon. It uses an inner core of helium, a gas that is lighter than and thus rises without being heated. The outer envelope holds hot air. At night, when the helium cools and loses lift, pilots compensate by starting the burners.
The Team Re/Max balloon departs from this pattern of previous ATW attempts. It will rely on a helium balloon similar to the scientific balloons that the National Aeronautics and Space Administration uses for atmospheric and other research.
"These are the only balloons that have ever flown around the world," said Kevin Roark, a spokesman for the University of Pittsburgh who is handling media relations for the flight. "More than a dozen make the trip each year unmanned, of course."
At its daytime altitude of 130,000 feet, the balloon will be big enough to fill the Houston Astrodome, according to Liniger. It will be 460 feet in diameter, 700 feet high, and hold 40 million cubic feet of helium. The volume will drop with cooling when the sun sets. But the balloon will descend slowly to a minimum of 80,000 feet, and then ascend to 130,000 with the warmth of dawn.
Liniger expects the cycling to continue during the circumnavigation, which should take 16-18 days if winds average the expected 80 miles per hour. The crew will ride inside a pressurized 6,000-pound gondola equipped with a life support system similar to that used on space craft. It will be seaworthy, ready to float for several days if ditching is necessary.
Landing poses a small problem for the stratospheric flight. Nobody has ever landed such a big balloon.
On research flights, NASA severs the balloon from the payload at about 10,000 feet, and the payload descends to the ground by parachute. International rules for the ATW flight, however, require a landing of the entire balloon.
Liniger said engineers are still conducting computer simulations on the problem. Current plans call for the copilots to release helium for a controlled descent from the stratosphere, and then drop ballast to slow the descent.
Launch will be in late December from Alice Springs, Australia, at a site also used to launch research balloons.
"Historically, the stratospheric winds at this latitude and time of year are very predictable," Liniger said. "In fact, one scientific balloon launched from Alice Springs went around the world twice and landed nine miles from the launch site."
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