As children, we watched John Glenn orbit the earth on TV in our grade school classrooms. Our children will be watching Dave Liniger of RE/MAX and his team on the Internet as they orbit the world in a space balloon.

"Man has walked on the moon, climbed Mount Everest, sailed around the world, broken the sound barrier, touched the North and South poles and landed a spacecraft on Mars," says Liniger. "And yet, no one has ever circumnavigated the globe nonstop in a manned balloon."

"It remains one of the great unfulfilled quests of aviation."

But flying a balloon in the stratosphere is not as easy as jumping in a basket gondola and turning on the burners. Liniger's launch is a production of world-wide dimensions, akin closer to something NASA would produce.

In December, 1998 (or early 1999, weather permitting,) Liniger and two other balloonist aeronauts, pilots John Wallington and Bob Martin will launch from Alice Springs, Australia for a 16-18 day flight to circumnavigate the Southern hemisphere, about 22,800 miles. A number of records will be attempted in the flight including distance, duration, altitude and circumnavigation.

To date, no individual or team has been able to successfully go round the world in a continuous trip, and certainly not 24 miles from sea level into the stratosphere.

The three men will travel in a pressurized gondola attached to a 900 ft. stratospheric NASA weather balloon. It will mark the longest period men have been confined in such a small space for space travel. The men will travel 70,000 ft above the jet stream and the weather, but conditions will be extremely hostile. There is less than .03% atmosphere at 130,000 plus feet. In the event of a catastrophe, the men will have less than four seconds to respond.

To say that this is the most ambitious and dangerous expedition of its kind is an understatement. Other teams attempting a world record have confined themselves to gas-powered balloons that fly well under the jet stream, about 30,000 -40,000 feet. Heat and cold temperature fluctuations in unprotected areas of the ship will be extreme - 200 degrees by day and 100 degrees below freezing at night. If a porthole or a seam were to blow apart, the men would have less than four seconds to react before their blood began to boil.

In the past a balloon record in global circumnavigation has been stalled by weather problems, equipment problems and hostile countries who refuse to give permission to fly above their "air space." Liniger and his team will avoid those problems by launching in the Southern hemisphere, as Steve Fossett recently did, and by flying miles above the weather in the stratosphere. One of the first details organized was permission to fly across the countries involved in the balloon's route.

Despite the risks, Liniger maintains that there is nothing foolhardy or reckless about the mission. "This is not a daredevil deal. This is a very logical, methodical, scientific approach," he says. The mission will be moored in down-to-earth research, fail-safe systems, and good old-fashioned homework. And Team RE/MAX will have a lot of support from the ground from scientific agencies around the world.

A number of scientific studies will be performed inside the gondola as the team tracks such things as upward lightning for the Los Alamos National Laboratory and measures the ozone in the Southern hemisphere. The effects of the flight on the team will be the source of ongoing study for NASA's Marshall Space Flight Center and other research facilities. Life-support monitors will be attached to each team member and reports will go directly to the teams of physicians and scientists on the ground every four seconds.

The aeronauts are undergoing a complete endurance and psychological training comparable to that astronauts. "We are already working with Olympic trainers to get our bodies in optimum shape. As we are monitored during the flight all the information will be microbursts into a computer file to medical centers all over the world. If anything is wrong, the doctors can contact us via satellite phone or radio system, and we can address the problem."

The scientific aspect is one of the main drivers of the mission as far as Liniger is concerned, but the real icing on the cake is what the mission will mean to children. "This is an opportunity to show community involvement on a global level. We want to get the kids involved in the sense of adventure on the Internet," explains Liniger.

"We have developed a curriculum through Colorado State University that will debut on Sept. 1 which is translated into five major languages. We will have 30 experiments from weather, aviation, science, geography that the kids can do. We have created training videos with child actors that explain the history of adventuring to ballooning to general aviation which is age-appropriate from kindergarten and up. The kids can make balloons in school and coat the balloon and they can take off the continents and past them onto the globe, draw on the globes, study the globes and follow our progress.

For 1st through 4th graders, the teachers could ask, " What are the most necessary things you would bring? Then they can compare their lists with the aeronauts. The older kids can take a Bunsen burner and melt an ice cube, weigh it, refreeze it and coat the ice cube with various things to see how it performs. RE/MAX agents will be adopting various classrooms and will show the videos, give out pins, put up posters, and help the kids follow the flight on the Internet."

The K-12 curriculum will be available for teachers and students across the world via the Internet at www.remax.com/balloon beginning September 1, 1998. Students will be able to follow the actual flight minute by minute.

Fun Facts:

• RE/MAX has the largest corporate balloon fleet in the world - 88 balloons.
• The Houston Astrodome would fit neatly inside the balloon, which is 460 ft in diameter and 700 feet tall.
• The team will travel at an estimated speed of 80 m.p.h. during the day and drop to 30 m.p.h. at night to complete its mission in 16 to 18 days.
• Landing a manned balloon of this size has never been done before.
• Anheuser-Busch is offering $1 million dollars to the first team to circumnavigate the globe in a balloon.
• The flight will take place during the land masses' rainy season, so that the balloon can collect data about storms.
• Dave Liniger also flies fixed wing aircraft, scuba dives, races on the NASCAR circuit, raises Arabian horses, plays golf, and runs the world's largest privately owned real estate franchise company.

Risk Taker, Reward Sharer: Part I

Risk Taker, Reward Sharer: Part II

Team Re/Max Global Balloon Mission Pilots Regret Failed Fossett Balloon Attempt

Published: August 17, 1998

Use of this article without permission is a violation of federal copyright laws.

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