Word: abruzzo
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Dates: during 1970-1979
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...first attempt to cross the Atlantic by balloon was made in 1873 from New York City but soon came to grief and earth in the Catskills. In all, some 17 transatlantic tries had been made before last week's successful flight, and seven lives lost. Abruzzo and Anderson themselves tried it last September but had to come down off Iceland, defeated, like the others, by the distance and the weather...
...Abruzzo and Anderson had the skill, experience and equipment to make the voyage. Good friends, they and Newman, a newcomer to ballooning, had spent thousands of hours developing their techniques in Albuquerque, which has become the center of ballooning in the U.S. in part because of its mild weather. All three are experienced aircraft pilots, and Newman, who has 6,000 hours flying time, is qualified to handle an airliner. Since ballooning on this scale is an expensive sport (they estimated the cost of their flight at $125,000), the fact that all are wealthy also helped. Newman is president...
They also have the panache that has always been characteristic of those who trust their lives to the winds and their wits. While passing over a mountain in Maine last September, Abruzzo began yodeling through an old brass megaphone on the pleasant theory that he could tell from the echoes how close they were to danger...
...spend $125,000 to cover the same ground in six days that thousands of airline passengers travel every week in a few hours? At a press conference, Abruzzo talked in much the same terms that explorers have used for centuries: "Unless frontiers are challenged from time to time-whether they be flying a balloon, breaking an altitude record in a plane or writing a fine piece of literature -we don't move forward as a society." And Anderson described the lure of ballooning: "There are no books or music up there, but there is the whole world...
What next? Why, to build a new balloon and circumnavigate the world. By soaring higher and ghosting along on stronger winds, Abruzzo figures that the trio might be able to do Jules Verne one better-in fact 50 days better-going around the world in 30 days. That dream itself provides a marvelous end to a marvelous adventure...