Roanoke Times
Copyright (c) 1995, Landmark Communications, Inc.
DATE: THURSDAY, May 10, 1990 TAG: 9005100610
SECTION: NATIONAL/INTERNATIONAL PAGE: A/1 EDITION: EVENING
SOURCE: Associated Press
DATELINE: WASHINGTON LENGTH: Medium
"Only three years ago, such a trip as this would have been considered unthinkable," co-captain Richard Branson of the United Kingdom said Wednesday at a news conference announcing the attempt.
In the past, the Soviet Union refused to allow a balloon into its airspace, said project leader and captain Larry Newman of Scottsdale, Ariz. But the Soviet space agency Glavkosmos last year agreed to permit the expedition and even offered cosmonaut Vladimir Dzhanibekov as a partner, Newman said.
Newman, an America West pilot, made the first successful trans-Atlantic balloon flight in 1978 and holds the world distance record for a balloon, 5,209 miles across the Pacific in 1981.
Branson crossed the Atlantic in a hot-air balloon in 1987. Dzhanibekov, a pilot, is chief of Glavkosmos' cosmonaut training department and has been in space five times.
The helium balloon will take off from Loral Airdock in Akron, Ohio, between November and February, whenever weather conditions are best.
Newman, Branson and Dzhanibekov will spend 14 to 25 days at an altitude of at least 35,000 feet in the balloon's 24-by-10-foot pressurized capsule.
The 1,200-pound fiberglass craft, insulated with Styrofoam to protect the crew from temperatures that can reach 60 below zero, will have no steering capability, leaving the crew at the mercy of the winds.
The three expect to be carried at 75 to 200 mph across the Atlantic, central Europe, the Soviet Union, north of the Himalayas, across the Pacific and back to the United States. They hope to land "anywhere east of the longitudinal line of Akron," Newman said.
by CNB