Word: balloon
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Dates: during 1990-1999
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...pilots headed toward Morocco, over Mauritania and then turned northeast to catch a jet stream blowing toward India. In theory, balloons can't be steered, but pilots improvise by dropping up and down between different altitudes in search of the right wind pattern. Like surfers trying to catch a wave, balloonists try to ride jet streams, high-altitude currents that usually move from west to east. "It's magical what pilots can achieve," says balloonmaker Don Cameron. "In competitions with hot-air balloons, they'll set a target 10 miles away and ask pilots to drop a marker...
...misfortune--and it was good news for their quest. On that day their competitors, the British team of Andy Elson and Colin Prescot, ditched over the Pacific Ocean. After setting an endurance record of 17 days, 18 hrs., 25 min. aloft, the duo, in the Cable & Wireless balloon, was knocked out by what amounted to a one-two punch. First, peeved that Branson's December flight had infringed upon its airspace, China denied entry to his countrymen, forcing them to follow a more convoluted route. And then, while traveling over Thailand, Elson and Prescot were hit by a thunderstorm that...
...Jones flew over the endless expanse of the Pacific Ocean. Progress toward Hawaii was slow, and they lost contact with mission control for four days. "I realized that the worst desert wasn't made of sand but of water," Piccard said when communications were re-established. Then the balloon popped out of its jet stream over Mexico and drifted in the wrong direction. They were using up precious fuel without making much headway. Even worse, a heater faltered, and temperatures on board plummeted to 46[degrees]F. Both pilots were exhausted, and Piccard had to resort to self-hypnosis...
...spindly, twin-boomed plane that in 1986 was the first to fly around the world without refueling. Aircraft designed by Burt Rutan don't look like other planes. One of the industry's most innovative and influential designers, Rutan has built a pressurized gondola for a round-the-world balloon attempt, a rigid winglike sail for an America's Cup winner, GM's Ultralight show car and the X-38 NASA crew-return vehicle. He is now testing his most exotic craft yet, the asymmetrical twin-engined Boomerang, designed to prevent instability should one engine fail...
Hubble went on to trump even that achievement by showing that this galaxy-studded cosmos is expanding--inflating majestically like an unimaginably gigantic balloon--a finding that prompted Albert Einstein to acknowledge and retract what he called "the greatest blunder of my life." Hubble did nothing less, in short, than invent the idea of the universe and then provide the first evidence for the Big Bang theory, which describes the birth and evolution of the universe. He discovered the cosmos, and in doing so founded the science of cosmology...