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This month we have the most exciting news to report on. The ultimate dream of any air sports enthusiast has been converted into a reality - the circumnavigation of the globe in a balloon. Bertrand Piccard and Brian Jones have reason to be proud of having flown with the angels to make mankind’s century-old dream of going around the world in a hot air balloon come true. It was like the days of Jules Verne all over again, if better, as their huge silver balloon, christened Breitling Orbiter 3, drifted into the Egyptian desert and history this past fortnight, almost twenty days since lifting of from the snowy Swiss Alps on 1 March. The 42,000 km non-stop balloon-borne circumnavigation of the earth achieved by these intrepid aviators will make up for all those ill-starred earlier attempts by dozens of balloonists. Although the formal record will take some time to be ratified by Federation Aeronautique Internationale, the fact of having completed the attempt with reasonable certainty of having broken the record, deserves our salute. But perhaps, more importantly, their signal success may encourage enthusiasts to take the next and, indeed, the last logical step in ballooning : a round-the-world balloon race, which would be a fitting tribute to those early pioneers who, in the late 1700s, gave a new dimension to humanity’s yearning to emulate the birds. It was a fortuitous coincidence that experimenters had then discovered the lifting properties of both heated air and hydrogen, and inventors had begun to apply this knowledge in the construction of balloons carrying humans. Along with its share of heroics and heartbreaks, ballooning has had its moments of humour, too. As had happened to the pioneering physicist, Jacques Charles, one December morning in Paris just after he had made the second manned balloon flight in history (after the Montgolfier brothers). On landing back safely, Charles’s companion jumped out of the hydrogen-filled balloon’s gondola, automatically lightening it. The balloon, with a startled Charles in it, soared back up some 9000 feet into the air, inadvertently making him the first human being to take a solo flight! Balloons are prey to the whims of the wind, and data from the Breitling Orbiter 3’s historic flight will be keenly studied by aviators and meteorologists alike. Piccard and Jones must have had to bring all their ballooning skills and airmanship to bear as they sailed the high winds to gingerly make their way through icing, fog, and sudden wind shears. The treacherous high-flying jetstreams, in particular, blow at nearly 400 mph over the Pacific and it is remarkable that the balloonists had a relatively smooth six days of ocean crossing. The aviation world now toasts these intrepid adventurers and their achievement. Ballooning will never be the same again. Air Sports International salutes these two brave men and their entire ground control team and looks forward to carrying a more detailed account of their saga in the coming issues.
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