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Around the World In 14 Days
An anonymous reader writes: "Adventurer Steve Fossett succeeded Tuesday on his sixth try to pilot a balloon solo around the world, crossing the meridian where he started his historic journey June 19, his ground crew at Washington University in St. Louis, Missouri, announced. Here is the official site, while there's also several other articles, including this one."
Not a great circle, but about 17% shorter.
The Earth is about 24,000 miles around, and he's about 8,000 miles short of that. Obviously, as you said, if he had gone on a 15-minute 1-mile trip around the South Pole, nobody would have considered it a round-the-world trip. At what point does it count?
Sure, he set a record for the longest distance solo flight, I'll give him that.
It appears that the rules for balloon flights are established by The Fédération Aéronautique Internationale (FAI):
http://www.fai.org/ballooning/rtw2-98.asp
There's lots of interesting info on their website at http://www.fai.org/
It's a good read, if for no other reason than gaining the ability to drop "homologation" into your next conversation.
When you have nothing left to burn you must set yourself on fire
"He's going to try to put down some place safe. A safe landing is the key to everything right now," says the Sydney Morning Herald
The print version of the story goes on to describe a safe landing was a large open area, dotted with a few trees to avoid dragging him around.
The catch ? He was planning on flying over the Nullarbor plain in Western Australia. Nullarbor is not Australain Aboriginal - it means "No Trees" in Latin for obvious reasons.
So they are going to skip that, stay south and will probably hit South Australia in a couple of hours, continuing to clock up the miles.