Around the World In 14 Days

An anonymous reader writes: "Adventurer Steve Fossett succeeded Tuesday on his sixth try to pilot a balloon solo around the world, crossing the meridian where he started his historic journey June 19, his ground crew at Washington University in St. Louis, Missouri, announced. Here is the official site, while there's also several other articles, including this one."

Why?

[simetra]

What's the point? Those ballooners have blown millions of dollars to do this. Why? Plus, as a previous poster pointed out, did he really go around the globe? I say they should have to cross the equator once on each side of the earth, say within a 1000 mile buffer zone.

Re:Haha!

[fruey]

No, Branson gave up long ago. I met him when he took off from Marrakech, Morocco, in 1999. He was with Steve Fosset at that time and I was lucky to talk to Steve, who's a pretty genuine guy.

Branson never attempted the flight solo. He was pipped on the circumnavigation by some other team, and Fosset then went alone to become the first to do it solo.

Official rules as to what constitutes a flight which is a real circumnavigation are on the site, it has to be between the two 30 degree meridiens basically... in any case it will not be ratified until some weeks have passed.

One of the more quaint rules is...

[Thagg]

That you have to survive the landing for 48 hours, something that Fosset has thus far not demonstrated.

There was joke going around during the construction of Rutan's Voyager round-the-world-nonstop-nonrefueled plane, back in the mid 80's. Nothing was spared to reduce weight on that project, because every pound of additional structure required six or seven pounds of additional fuel, requiring more structure, and so on. Unfortunately, that philosophy turned the cockpit into a bit of a hellhole. The saying was, though, that any more than 48 hours of survival was excess design capacity; unneeded for the record attempt.

thad

Re:Wouldn't it have been easier...

[Usquebaugh]

In sailing circumnavigation is defined as crossing through the same start finish point and also the point of the earths surface you get by drawing a straight line from your start point through the center of the earth.

Steve Fossett would know this due to the fun he's had with his PlayStation.

Re:Why?

[Anonymous Coward]

Yeah, but look what happened to him [canoe.ca]

Re:Do something worthy

[davie]

I'll bet you I'm more tired of hearing from people who think they have the right to determine what other people should own. When it comes right down to it, you probably think that anyone who has more than you has too much. Nevermind that the person who signs (or will sign) your paychecks probably has a helluva lot more than you. Should we take what he has and give it away so you can be laid off?

The world is crawling with people who think you have too much and are perfectly willing to kill you in order to take it from you.

Bill Gates does give away his money, you fucker

[Anonymous Coward]

You blind lemming slashdotters may not want to hear this, but Bill Gates gives away the absolute most amount of money compared to anyone else in history, literally over $20 billion. He has already said that he intends to donate 99% of his wealth by the time he dies.

Can you imagine the good'ol'boys down in Texas that are pumping oil doing the same thing? Not a fucking chance. Bill Gates may want to take over computing, but he fully intends on helping out people around the world with his money.

Re:Wouldn't it have been easier...

[Japanese Fuckslut]

Take his route and superimpose it on the same latitudes in the Northern hemisphere. His entire trip would have been between Florida and the northern tip of Scotland. No one would have considered that to be cheating. If his whole trip was at the latitude of London, his trip would have been much shorter.