James Stephen Fossett, businessman and adventurer, born April 221944; died on or after September 3 2007
The US adventurer and businessman Steve Fossett set more than 100 worldrecords, among them five circumnavigations of the globe, straining the limits of aeroplanes, boats and balloons. He accumulated records much ashe did the merit badges he had sewn on to his sash while on his way tobecoming an eagle scout. Once a millionaire, he became dedicated to achievement for its own sake.
On September 3 this year, he had been a guest at the Flying M, a Nevadaranch owned by the hotel heir Barron Hilton. At 8am, he left for a shortspin in the ranch’s single-engine Citabria two-seater, filing no flightplan and omitting to take a distress pack. Neither he nor the plane wereseen again, despite a widespread air search of rugged terrain lastingfor more than a month. Last Monday his wife Peggy petitioned a court inChicago as the first step in having him declared legally dead at the ageof 63, saying that “after three months we must accept that Steve did notsurvive”.
Fossett was best known in Britain first for his rivalry, and then hiscollaborations, with Sir Richard Branson. The two became friends afterballooning together in Morocco, and in 1998 crashed memorably in Hawaiion Christmas Day while competing together in a round-the-world balloonrace. Fossett went on in 2005 to make the first solo non-stop andunrefuelled circumnavigation of the world in the Branson-sponsoredaircraft Global Flyer, and last year set a world record for the longestnon-stop flight in the same craft, covering 26,389 miles in 76 hours.
Although they shared a passion for setting records, Fossett lackedBranson’s self-publicising urge. His indulgence, facilitated by thefortunes he made, lost and made again in commodity brokerage, were morea reflection of a desire to reach ever more distant goals, an extensionof an ethos developed as a boy scout.
Born in Jackson, Tennessee, Fossett was raised in California, where hisfather was an electrical engineer. Self-confessedly unathletic, hedeveloped asthma, but found an outlet for his energies in scouting.There, he began a lifelong passion for mountain climbing, which helpedovercome his asthma. He rose to scouting’s highest level, Eagle Scout,an achievement he rated along with his most challenging world records.
He graduated from Stanford University in 1966, and took an MBA fromWashington University, in St Louis, Missouri, two years later. A spellas a computer programmer in Chicago convinced him to look for somethingelse, and, having determined that stock and commodity brokers were thetwo best-paid professions, he took a job with Merrill Lynch. Making (andlosing) fortunes in commodities, particularly soya beans, he opened hisown brokerage firms, Lakota Trading, Marathon Securities and LarkspurSecurities, and retired in 1990.
By then he was already devoted to endurance sports. Despite lackingexperience with cross-country skis, in 1979 he was an inauguralparticipant in the Worldloppet, a series of Nordic marathon races basedon Sweden’s Vasaloppet. In 1980 he became only the eighth person tocomplete all 10 Worldloppet events.
He competed in the Iditarod sled dog race, the Ironman triathlon, the24-hour motor races at Le Mans and Daytona and even swam the EnglishChannel, winning the prize in 1985 for the slowest crossing, taking 22hours 15 minutes to complete the swim.
But Fossett found his metier piloting craft on the sea and in the air. Akeen sailor, between 1993 and 2004 he set 23 world records and ninedistance race records in his maxi-catamaran, originally named PlayStation, but later renamed Cheyenne. In 2001 he and his crew made atransatlantic crossing in four days 17 hours, knocking more than 43hours off the record for such a craft. Three years later, they wentround the world in 58 days nine hours, a record since broken by Bruno Peyron.
The round-the-world and longest flight records by the Global Flyer werearguably his finest achievements, and indicated his commitment tosetting his marks. The lightweight plane was constructed by Americanaerospace engineer Burt Rutan, who had designed the previous recordholder, Voyager, piloted by his brother Dick and Jeana Yeager.
As a pilot in heavier aircraft, Fossett set two records in one day,February 5 2003, when he first flew his Cessna Citation X jet from SanDiego to Charleston, South Carolina, in less than three hours at anaverage speed of 726.8mph, a record for non-supersonic aircraft. Then hemade the return trip as co-pilot to Joe Ritchie, and broke theturbo-prop record set by test pilot Chuck Yeager, featured in TomWolfe’s book The Right Stuff (and no relation to Jeana).
Fossett then moved to gliders, setting 10 world records with NewZealander Terry Delore as his co-pilot. Wearing pressurised Nasa spacesuits, he and Icelander Einar Enevoldson set an altitude record bygliding at 50,727 feet.
However, hot-air ballooning may have provided his biggest and mostsatisfying challenge. In 1995 he made the first solo Pacific crossing,but it took six attempts before he was able to finally complete acircumnavigation. In one attempt, he was brought down into the Pacificfrom 29,000 feet. But in 2002, taking off from Northam, WesternAustralia, he piloted a balloon around the world, eventually bringing itdown in Queensland after flying for 14 days 19 hours. Besides balloons,Fossett also took up airships, and set a record with a Zeppelin, thoughat only 71.5mph.
The Global Flyer now sits in the Smithsonian Institution in WashingtonDC. Fossett was elected to the US National Aeronautical Hall of Fame,and received a gold medal from the International Aeronautics Federation.But as his recent launch of an attempt at the world land speed recordshowed, he remained an over-achieving Eagle Scout to the end, andrecords and medals were there to be achieved. Given his track record,there seemed no reason to assume he would not achieve his next goal, ofmore than 800mph on land.
Copyright Guardian News and Media Limited
We woke the following morning (Mon 14th January) to a clear and beautiful blue sky, so after the “all clear” at the briefing we marched to the launch field with eager attitudes and inflated our Alba Balloon. A flight of 1hr 30mins took part that morning for ourselves, due to a heavy load and indecisive winds. Meanwhile however our Dutch friends flew for 3hrs!
