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."

Comments

not 24,000 miles

[crow]

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.

Here are the "official rules"

[Lev13than]

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.