ML137961
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Subject: (Interview). Subtitle: Steve Fossett. Timecode In: 00:01:01. Timecode out: 00:35:14. Notes: Hot air balloon. Equipment Notes: Stereo=1; Split track. NPR/NGS Geographic Century Steve Fossett w/ Alex Chadwick Nov./98 -- "lighter than air" 11/7/98 AC 1:02 In your thinking about how you were going to approach your great ballooning attempts, did you go back in history and look at what other people had done? Steve Fosset [SF] 1:12 Not very much. I'm aware of some of the history. And then the most recent thing that led into the around-the-world flight was the completion of the transatlantic flight in 1978 by...and then once an ocean crossing had been done, then people started to think, well how can a flight around the world be done? AC 1:43 ...which seems to me utterly impossible....I guess if you look at the accomplishment of experience it is impossible because no one has achieved it. I mean how do you know it's impossible? SF 2:01 It's not impossible. It's just more difficult than we had presumed. Starting in the early attempts it was actually felt it was possible, after the first ocean crossings had been done. They started off rather optimistically to do around the world projects, and they weren't successful. And then as we came into the last four year period there have been a number of teams set up to do around the world attempts and each year we thought, it's likely someone will make it and each year we found out it was more difficult than we thought. But we're getting closer and we really do believe that it's possible to do this around the world mission and I believe it will be done, probably within the next two years. AC 2:50 Aren't you setting out on an expedition next month? SF 2:54 Yes, I'll be flying with Richard Branson's team...and we'll fly from Morocco in this around-the-world attempt. AC 3:04 Now, you and Mr. Branson had been in somewhat of a competition and now here you are flying together. How did that come about? SF 3:13 It's been a very friendly competition and he's helped me at certain times, like when I was having trouble getting permission from Libya...so the competition to be the first to fly around the world is actually being conducted with a great sense of sportsmanship. And we all know eachother. I mean I know substantially all the pilots in this competition. AC 3:45 How is it that you all have decided to join forces though? SF 3:48 In my last flight, in the Southern Hemisphere in August and I went down in the Coral Sea, and I lost all my equipment. Well, the season for the northern hemisphere is Dec. and Jan this year and I wouldn't have had time to rebuild a new set of equipment to take on the N. Hemisphere. And so Richard Branson called me on a timely basis, while I was still on the water...on this rescue, and invited me to come and fly with his team. And I did a little research on it and decided that this was a really strong team with a strong chance of success and decided to accept his invitation. AC 4:36 Provide a description of how you went into the Coral Sea. A lot of people thought that you were going to make this around-the-world flight and then all of a sudden you developed problems and you went down. SF 5:00 I thought I was going to make it too. We were having some difficulty with routing over Australia, but once leaving the coast of Australia, I thought I had a good clear shot to continue on to finish in Argentina...there was one small barrier and that was there was a line of thunderstorms 500 miles off the coast of Australia. But they only reached up to, at the maximum 30,000 ft, and I was already flying at 29,000 ft and I thought it would be highly coincidental to hit one of the thunderstorm heads. I was more likely to go between them. And I didn't think it would be a problem. I was actually asleep and an alarm went off ... (Notes truncated)
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- 17 Oct 2008 - Ben Brotman
- Digitized
- 17 Oct 2008 - Ben Brotman
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- 17 Oct 2008 - Ben Brotman