Excerpts from JUST WIND Excerpts from JUST WIND
| Gatch flew more than 1,800 miles during the first 18 hours of his flight, talking with passing commercial airliners. Communication with Light Heart ceased about mid-day on Feb. 19 -- about the same time the balloon entered a trough of low pressure in mid-ocean. |
NIGHT LAUNCH
Without warning, the center balloon exploded!
Tom heard the loud report, then felt the limp fabric collapse onto the top of the gondola. A shock wave went through Light Heart, first shuddering down from the cluster, and then back up the lines again to the balloons. There was an immediate danger that, in the bouncing free-for-all overhead, another balloon might shatter.
Gatch knew almost at once what had happened. His eyes moved quickly toward his instruments. The variometer needle signaled a descent; the altimeter started a discouraging counter-clockwise motion. Light Heart began sinking slowly back toward the ground.
His data had predicted that the loss of one balloon would not bring him down. The flight could endure the loss of one balloon. In fact, that was why he had installed explosive squibs on three balloons. However, those careful calculations were just then being proved wrong, for he was quickly losing altitude. Collecting his thoughts, he recalled the advice he had received from Keuser, "If you start to lose altitude early at night and it looks like you will lose five thousand feet or more, ballast gently, not to regain all lost altitude, but only to stop or slow the descent."
Tom knew that this emergency threatened his life and that he had to act quickly. Thoughts of revenge against the manufacturer of the balloons flashed through his mind as he prepared his counter-attack. Reaching behind his seat, he pulled up a plastic bottle of liquid antifreeze, opened the container and inserted the long white hose into it. Then he reached for the spigot. As soon as he turned it, nature's vacuum began sucking blue liquid from the plastic container.
He watched intently as the liquid level dropped to the halfway mark in a matter of seconds, and then began sucking air from the cabin with a loud swoosh.
MORNING ALOFT
At 1520 Greenwich time (10:20 a.m. Eastern), the radio crackled. Air France Flight 227 was giving him a call. At that time, the Boeing 747 Jumbo Jet was midway on its flight from Paris to Point-a-Pitre, Guadeloupe. Tom reported that he was steady at thirty-six thousand feet, but did not know his precise position. Obligingly, the Air France captain advised the balloonist that he was approximately twenty-four degrees and eleven minutes North latitude and fifty-two degrees and forty-eight minutes West longitude, about halfway across the Atlantic Ocean.
Gradually, as he surveyed his position, he was struck by the realization that the Light Heart gondola in which he rode was the smallest, most fragile man-carrying craft ever to visit this part of the world. It was smaller than any passenger-carrying space capsule, tinier than the shortest sailboat.
Tom continued peering out at the blue and green ocean and the immaculately beautiful horizon. There wasn't a sound anywhere. He noted a phenomenon: as the sun played on his balloons, Light Heart rotated completely around every hour or so. Occasionally, he burst into song, perhaps one of his own compositions. He discovered a strange echo and resonance inside the gondola as his baritone voice hit certain notes.
At 1605 Greenwich (12:05 p.m. Eastern), thirty minutes after the Iberian freighter flew past, British Airways Flight 683 contacted Tom on 126.7 mHz. They reported that he had a steady velocity of fifty-two knots in the jet stream at two hundred twenty degrees (toward the northeast) and that his position was approximately as given by the Air France flight an hour earlier.
Tom responded that he was holding a nice altitude track of thirty-six thousand feet. He did not report any distress.
He was more than one thousand eight hundred fifty miles from Harrisburg and had been aloft for sixteen and a half hours.
SEARCH AND HOPE
By the end of March there was an unorchestrated worldwide circus taking place-- with Nancy making low passes over Canary Islands' volcanoes, an army flaring out across the Sahara Desert, psychics calling for searches in the Indian Ocean, Portuguese Guinea and the Atlantic Ocean, the State Department flashing messages from Capetown to Casablanca, and the Pentagon projecting and computing a six-million square mile search area.
To top it off, voodoo-worshipping Guadeloupean gendarmes on foot patrol, in helicopters, and private planes started searching through tall sugarcane fields based on latitude and longitude positions plotted by a Laurel, Maryland housewife.
On May 9, 1990, Larry, Richard and Vladimir marched onto a stage at the National Press Club in Washington, D.C. to announce their ambitious intentions. At the press conference the flyers and the filmmaker were joined by NASA Administrator Richard Truly, himself a former astronaut.
The room radiated an upbeat air of enthusiasm, anticipation and cooperation. This meeting had the flavor of the famous press conference that had taken place near there, three decades earlier, when the original seven Mercury astronauts were introduced to the media.
Here were the new orbital adventurers! … men from three countries planning a project with private funds! ... and they would build the thing themselves! A Congressional Gold Medal recipient who had conquered both oceans and was the master of any machine that flew! A Hero of the Soviet Union who faced down demons in the voids of space! An eccentric Brit who dropped out of school, became a billionaire and conquered the Atlantic by sea and by air!
You could almost hear the trumpets coming up on Tom Wolfe's script. These brave lads -- men of achievement, aviation record-holders all -- had the new right stuff!
`All I want to do is just fly a balloon around the world,' said Larry Newman.
Slumped in his swivel chair, he looked pale, exhausted and besieged.
`Just fly a balloon around the world’ --a simple thought -- meant designing, building and managing the most complex privately funded aviation project ever to leave the ground.
On the afternoon of his complaint, he had encountered recalcitrant bureaucrats from the Federal Aviation Administration, faulty electrical wires in his capsule, a plumbing and exhaust system that leaked, belligerent faxes from his primary sponsor, and he suffered from terrible stomach acid and a nasty head cold. People were lined up outside the cold hangar door to discuss other problems. Time was running out. And this was just a normal day for Larry, leading the project to build an experimental, one-of-a-kind aircraft that was designed to fly only one time.
Before me was a complex, driven man whose public persona approached heroic proportions, but who freely acknowledged that his private personality induced angst within his support staff.
Larry had called months before and asked me to coordinate media relations for his project, Earthwinds. As the project unfolded, we were both going to have a lot of stories to tell . . .
THE FLIGHT TO HALLELUJAH JUNCTION
Larry Newman and John Wilcox had started this whole project four years before.
They had raised and spent more than five million dollars, hired and abandoned scores of staff members, excited the imagination of millions of school children and teachers, persuaded hundreds of volunteers in half a dozen states to devote tens of thousands of hours to make their dream come to life, enlisted the approval of 95 nations for overflight clearance, appeared on all the network talk and news shows, broadcast three documentaries on international cable-TV about their project, been profiled in dozens of newspaper stories in big cities and small towns, moved governments of the two most powerful countries on earth to contribute their brightest talent, convinced corporations to offer their people and their facilities for free, and on and on.
Now it had to end.
John Wilcox wearily rode the elevator to the top floor and walked down the hall to Suite 2714. He carried a sheaf of dissolution papers in his hand.
INTO THIN AIR
At 8:12 a.m. {January 12, 1994}, nearly an hour after leaving the ground, Earthwinds passed through 18,000 feet. Smiles broke out among the cognoscenti. Barron Hilton, chasing in a helicopter, was immensely relieved.
Neil Cohen, Hilton's marketing vice-president, ordered that a wire be sent to all the sponsors advising that the 18,000-foot threshold had been crossed. To meet their legal requirement, executives at American Express, AT&T, Miller Brewing Company and Nescafe should immediately wire-transfer the balance of their sponsorship funds.
Within minutes, tidy sums totaling more than $700,000 flowed into the Earthwinds Hilton account at a Beverly Hills bank.
At that same moment, John Ackroyd had been eating breakfast with Malcolm Browne. The New York Times science writer, having brought the adventure to the public's attention, was still following the story in earnest. He had made friends with many of the project's workers. But he was astonished when Ackroyd rose to leave.
`If you'll excuse me, I have to go to California now,' the engineer said. Why, asked Browne, are you going to California?
`Because that's where they are going to land,' Ackroyd declared matter-of-factly.
Browne didn't know whether he should believe Ackroyd, but the comment troubled him. How could Ackroyd know that? What was going on?