The message sounded jaunty, but the voyage, as Piccard himself said in an earlier transmission to his ground controllers in Switzerland, was “no picnic.” Like other modern high-altitude balloons, the Orbiter is a hybrid design that uses both helium and hot air for lift. The gondola, 9 feet by 8 feet by 18 feet, is about the size of a small house trailer, but much of that space is occupied by fuel tanks for the craft’s propane burners. Piccard, 41, and Jones, 51, spent nearly three weeks in the cramped, chilly cabin, subsisting on freeze-dried rations and sleeping in short snatches. At one point they were forced to reach outside to chip off a layer of ice that threatened to force the balloon down: around 30,000 feet the temperature outside is 40 below zero. Piccard, making his third attempt to balloon around the world, was so stressed that he had trouble sleeping–and midway through the trip, he had himself hypnotized by radio so he could get some rest.
Their success, where so many others have failed, was partly luck and partly skill–every balloon voyage is a race between capricious winds and the amount of fuel on board. Unlike their competitors, Piccard and Jones managed to get permission to overfly southern China, which significantly shortened their route. They also had expert meteorological advice from their support team to help them play the jet stream. From liftoff in the Alps, they headed south toward Africa; crossed the Middle East, India and China, and spent six days transiting the Pacific. Then the jet stream fizzled and their chances began to look slim. Morale on board plummeted until Orbiter 3 found a patch of 155-mile-an-hour winds over the Atlantic. Tired but jubilant, Piccard and Jones raced toward a landing in Egypt, where in all probability, a hero’s welcome awaited.
