|
THE GREAT NON-STOP AROUND THE WORLD BALLOON RACE
Chapter Twelve - January 1, 1999 Merry Christmas! Being dumped into the Pacific Ocean is not the most pleasant way to celebrate it, though. 7 days and 8 hours after a perfect liftoff from Marrakech, Morocco the ICO Global Challenge was forced to ditch off Honolulu. It "hit a brick wall," a weather trough which turned it to the South & slowed the balloon to 13 mph. It had been going along at almost 200 mph which delivered the false promise of being over the USA sometime Christmas day. They had successfully avoided Iraqi, Russian, and Iranian air space by "threading the needle" through a narrow geographic corridor while going over, around and through threatening thunderstorms. They entered forbidden territory over China as they tracked down the Himalayas between Mt. Everest and K2, the two tallest mountains in the world. The Chinese told them to land at Lhasa airport on the 20,000 foot elevation Tibetan plain. Richard told them that such an attempt at night descending through clouds was guaranteed to cause the balloon to ice up and crash. It would cost the aeronauts & possibly some people on the ground their lives. They kept going. Diplomatic efforts to re-instate the then-denied over-flight clearance continued for several hours. Richard explained that they were 250 miles North of their permitted entry point by accident of wind direction, not purposely. The Chinese finally relented and said they could continue if they would exit as soon as possible. The next political stumbling block was North Korea. They are normally so antagonistic and feisty an initial decision was made to not even ask for over-flight clearance. Then for a while it looked as if the balloon might not be able to avoid it so permission was requested. Surprisingly it was immediately approved. Meanwhile, however, efforts to find a more Southerly wind track paid off and they sailed over South Korea headed for Japan. For a while there they looked like a shoo-in. Speculation raged as to whether or not the others would even bother to try. Then meteorological reality brought everyone including the balloon and its three co-pilots back to earth. The 3 adventurers were plucked uninjured from the sea by a couple of Coast Guard helicopters, brought to a Honolulu hospital where all were pronounced fit and were making arrangements to leave to spend the rest of the Christmas season with their families at home. Per Lindstrand says they'll try again. ICO Global Communications have certainly got their moneys worth. The multi-billion dollar consortium, with Richard Branson, Per Lindstrand and Steve Fossett in the ICO Global Challenge balloon have had over 60 million viewers at their website which provided exciting viewing for the last few weeks. Many of them are repeat viewers who came back to the website again and again so that the 60,000,000 hits may be between 6 and 10 million persons. The "Flight Tracker", after having its initial software bugs fixed, proved to be the star of the show giving everyone instant visual access to the balloons position, altitude, and ground speed at a given moment in time. Meanwhile, things are pretty much the same as before with the other teams at the ready or nearly ready to go stage except for the Global Conqueror and the World Quest which are still working on their funding. The Team RE/MAX , The Global Conqueror, and the World Quest balloons are unconcerned about China or other political problems as they will fly over 19 friendly countries on their Southern Hemisphere routes. Northern Hemisphere lower altitude teams must consider avoidance of Russian, Iraqi, Iranian, Libyan and Chinese airspace as well as meteorological factors. Right now China has asked that all balloonists avoid Chinese air space until they have had a chance to review air safety considerations raised by the overflight of the ICO Global Challenge balloon. They have a legitimate concern in that their voice air traffic control system does not have modern radar to prevent midair collisions in their busy airspace. Many of their flight controllers speak nothing but Chinese so that even if a balloon reported its position accurately and frequently they could not understand. We viewed a preview copy on VHS tape of Quest TVs moving-illustration assisted hour-long RTW documentary film and heard four of the eight contenders tell their reasons why they expected to win. Fascinating, and a worthwhile addition to any ballooning fans film library: http://www.quest-tv.com. Gosh films website at http://www.gosh-films.com/subgosh.html allowed many who had a problem getting into the ICO site to get news and track the balloon. It chronicles each of the announced teams and allows you to track their progress. Don't miss it. The weather has not been good for the five teams that are ready to go. The meteorologists in charge are unanimous in predicting a favorable change for the near future, however. Who will be the next away? We will post daily bulletins as soon as one or more are anticipating a liftoff. Our friends in each team all hope it may be sometime this week! Stay with us and join the excitement. Click on the Index of addresses to go take a look. All of the websites and the team sites are interesting and informative. Bookmark ARMCHAIR so you can check back with a single click to keep in touch with new events in this great adventure! |