U.S. Balloonist Set to Lift Off on Trip of Global Proportions
CHICAGO — A U.S. securities dealer-turned-adventurer hopes to lift off from a dry riverbed in South Dakota today in a bid to become the first person to circumnavigate the globe by balloon.
Steve Fossett, 51, who last year became the first to cross the Pacific Ocean solo in a balloon, hopes to make his nonstop global journey in 16 to 21 days.
“We’re going. We expect a launch,” Bo Kemper, spokesman for the project, said from his office in Chicago. While there was still a chance the departure could be delayed, Kemper said all signs point to a launch.
Kemper calls the mark “the last great record in aviation history [still] to be broken.”
Solar power, backed up by a propane generator, will provide electricity to support systems on board. If the voyage goes as planned, Fossett will be propelled by wind across the Atlantic and Europe, over Ukraine, Kazakhstan, China, Japan and finally the Pacific Ocean, Kemper said. Fossett plans to end the trip in the northwestern United States or western Canada.
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