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Steve Fossett's Unfinished Project
MazzThePianoman writes "Steve Fossett left behind a secret vessel project called the Deep Flight Challenger. Fossett was funding the development of a winged submersible being designed by Hawkes Ocean Technologies in California. The intent was for the vehicle to be capable of travel to the very bottom of the ocean — the Mariana Trench, more than 11,000 meters beneath the surface. 'It would have dramatically, dramatically opened the oceans for exploration. It would have been a game changer,' said Graham Hawkes, the designer. Testing had been completed at Department of Defense facilities. Field testing was only four weeks away when Fossett's untimely death, a year ago, put the project on hold." Hawkes Ocean Technologies owns the design, but the vehicle itself is owned by Fossett's estate.
I mean, the dude flew around the world in a balloon. Flew around the world again, nonstop, solo, in an aircraft. Set all kinds of records in sailboats and sailplanes. He was building a submarine to "fly" to the deepest point on earth, but meanwhile he killed himself while scouting for a location to run his 800 mph rocket car and break the land speed record.
My first thought was, "man, this guy has a freakin' deathwish, or else he's a goddamn idiot. It's amazing that someone with so little sense of self-preservation lived this long." Doesn't the guy know that there are old pilots, and bold pilots, but there are no old, bold pilots?
But after thinking about it for a while... he probably did know that. He was flying long enough that he must have come to understand that if he kept it up the way he did, he wasn't going to die in his bed. Any one of his record-setting endeavors could have resulted in his death. But he must have decided that he'd rather live a brief life on his own terms, than a long, safe, boring life. After reading his Wikipedia entry, it's no surprise that he didn't die in an assisted living facility, but I think he'd probably be OK with the way he went out. Vicious downdrafts smashed his plane into bite-sized pieces against a granite escarpment of the Sierra Nevada mountains, while he was scouting a location to break the land speed record in a jet car, and he wasn't found for a year... the man had a hell of an interesting life, and one hell of a death, and packed more living into 63 years than most people could pack into 100. He did things on his terms, took chances, pushed things, and went out doing so. Personally, I'll play things a bit safer, but I do respect the guy's choices.