Balloonist Deflated After Falling Short

Balloonist Steve Fossett knows something about luck, and when not to push it.

After bouncing between thunderstorms across South America, the millionaire adventurer set his balloon down at a cattle ranch in southern Brazil on Friday, abandoning his latest attempt to float around the globe halfway to his goal.

With more bad weather looming in the South Atlantic, Fossett aborted his flight--about 150 miles from the ocean. Going down in the water is far more dangerous than doing so on land.

“I did have a chance to make it to the end,” the 57-year-old Chicago businessman said in a teleconference. “But you have to assess the risk, and the weather pattern was just plain shaky across the Atlantic, and if I were to miss South Africa I would be left out in the water.”

Even so, Fossett did set a record in his fifth bid to become the first solo balloonist to circle the Earth. His flight lasted 12 days, 13 hours, making it the longest solo balloon flight in terms of duration. And he traveled 12,258 miles, making it the second-longest solo flight in distance.

Fossett also holds the record for the longest solo flight in distance at 14,235 miles, set in his third attempt in August 1998. The longest balloon flight ever was made by Bertrand Picard and Brian Jones, who flew around the world in March 1999.

The balloon went down in Espantoso--a Portuguese word meaning “astonishing”--about 30 miles from Bage, a city in Brazil’s southern pampas near the border with Uruguay and about 900 miles southwest of Rio de Janeiro, police Sgt. Carlos Duarte Vieira said.

The landing was a bit rocky--the balloon wouldn’t deflate and took Fossett along on a sleigh ride.

Fossett said the mechanism to deflate the balloon didn’t work, and he was dragged along for about a mile, “bouncing along.” Finally, he said, he used cable cutters to get the job done: “Then the balloon dragged along for another mile and caught on a line of trees.”

Fossett’s troubles began Thursday when he crossed the towering Andes, enduring strong winds that bounced his Solo Spirit and prompted him to don a parachute as he passed the halfway mark of his trip.

Crossing Argentina and sailing into Brazil, he ran into deadly thunderstorms. Pilots in the region know the danger well--the storms routinely force even small jets to land.

“We thought it was just going to be some isolated thunderstorms and it turned out to be a minefield of thunderstorms, and I thought my life was at risk all day long,” he said.

The weather was so bad it grounded four planes the Argentine air force planned to send to accompany the balloon, spokesman Jorge Reta said. Fossett was 20 miles from the eye of one storm but managed to fly up to safety.

Otherwise, said Reta, “he would probably not be alive today.”

Fossett got help along the way from countries he flew over.

The Argentine air force suspended its usual daily exercises in the northeast, and commercial flights were rerouted when Fossett crossed. The air force also provided Fossett with constant weather updates, especially after his radar weather-tracking system broke down, Reta said.

Brazilians tracked the flight on radar and were ready to send out a helicopter when Fossett was reported down safely Friday morning, said Jesus Eron, head of the airport management company Infraero in Bage.

Fossett said the potential cost to him was just too high.

“It comes to a point when even by round-the-world-balloonists’ standards the risks just became too high,” said Joe Ritchie, director of mission control for the flight at Washington University in St. Louis.

Fossett launched his balloon Aug. 4 from Australia. The balloon was an unpressurized gondola, 140 feet tall and 60 feet wide. It contained 550,000 cubic feet of helium plus 100,000 cubic feet of hot air.

“My initial reaction was that this is the greatest disappointment of my life,” Fossett said. “It’s a huge disappointment. But then, I suppose I’ve had many disappointments, so it doesn’t loom quite as heavy on me anymore.”

Will there be another try?

“I don’t want to speculate at this moment,” he said. “I’ve tried so many times before; I’m afraid my luck will run out if I try it again.”