Word: fossette
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Since 1981 there have been nearly 20 attempts to circumnavigate the globe in a balloon. Steve Fossett, a Chicago millionaire who attempted the feat five times, plunged into the Coral Sea after traveling 14,236 miles last August. And on Christmas Day he went down again near the coast of Hawaii, taking along his partners, Per Lindstrand of Sweden and Branson. The U.S. Coast Guard fished them out at a cost--to taxpayers--of about $130,000. Setting the elusive record was worth the trouble to Fossett. "I can't tell you how it ranks with the others, like climbing...
...PILOTS] Richard Branson Steve Fossett Per Lindstrand...
...balloon. The Breitling, which headed south and then east from Switzerland on March 1, raced across Mexico from the Pacific on Tuesday, and headed out over the Caribbean. Piccard and Jones have already broken the world record of 14,235 miles set last August by American Steve Fossett...
...winds are a crucial boost, they are also what makes this the most dangerous leg of the journey: Right now the balloonists are headed straight for a weather pattern that could spell serious trouble for the helium-and-hot-air craft, just as it did for team member Steve Fossett, who fell thousands of feet and was nearly killed by a storm in the South Pacific during his last ballooning attempt. Shipping traffic gets pretty sparse in the vast reaches of the Pacific, and no one wants to find out how long it would take to be rescued...
...accomplishment of all -- get away with it. That's the scorecard so far for Richard Branson, as China bowed to pressure from the British government late Tuesday and granted the entrepreneur and balloonist extraordinaire permission to fly over its airspace.?Branson and his two balloon-mates, American millionaire Steve Fossett and Per Lindstrand of Sweden, then drifted placidly -- if more slowly than they'd like -- over the terra-cotta warriors of the walled city of Xi'an, about 550?miles southwest of Beijing, Wednesday, and are now drifting toward the high seas...